The Receipt in the Gray Jacket
She remembered the coat.
She’d been fifteen.
It was navy and it came from the outlet mall and she had worn it for four years.
I read it three times and I put it in the drawer of my desk, and it is still there.
I never wrote back.
I’ve thought about it many times over the years and I’ve decided something about myself, which is that I am capable of forgiving her and I am not capable of resuming with her, and that these are two different operations that everybody insists on treating as one.
I don’t wish her harm.