His father laid a warm hand on his shoulder.
“The only guilt worth keeping,” Wendell said quietly, “is the kind that teaches you to do better.
The kind that just eats you from the inside — let that one go.
It’s no use to anybody.”
In the days that followed, the true cost surfaced, the part no bank statement could measure.
A doctor found that Wendell had been putting off cardiology appointments for the better part of a year because they cost money the family supposedly didn’t have.