But I have done something else, something I have come to think is healthier than the forgiveness people usually mean.

I have set her down.

I have stopped carrying her.

For a while, in the early months, my sister lived in my head constantly, a hot coal of rage and grief and betrayal that I turned over and over, unable to let go of the question of how she could have done it.

And then I understood that as long as I carried that coal, she was still, in a sense, controlling me, still shaping my days from her prison cell, still occupying the mind and the heart that I needed for my mother and for my own healing.

So I set her down.