Michael still writes to me, sometimes, from the life he built for himself out of the wreckage of ours.

For a long time his letters blamed everyone but himself, blamed Rachel, then his lawyer, then his dead father, then me.

His most recent one was different, and I will not pretend it did not move me, because it did.

After years of blaming everyone else, my son had finally, in a few plain sentences, told the truth about himself, and there is a part of a mother that never stops listening for exactly that, that waits, against all evidence, for the child to come back to honesty.

His most recent one was different.