“Yes,” she said.

“And that is the part that hurts the most.” I understood, watching her, something about forgiveness that I had not understood before: that forgiving people does not mean pretending they did nothing, and that some wounds do not ask for revenge — they only ask to be remembered honestly, so that they are not repeated.

I want to dwell on that, because it is the wisdom I watched Vivienne arrive at over the months that followed, and it is harder and better than either of the two things a person is usually offered after being wronged.

The world tends to present a false choice to those who have been hurt: either you nurse your grievance and let it harden you into bitterness, plotting revenge, defined forever by the wrong that was done to you, or you perform a bright, total forgiveness, pretend the wound never happened, insist that you have let it go and moved on, and privately carry the untended damage anyway.