“I should have stopped Diane years ago,” he said. “And I should have taught James how to be a man.”
It wasn’t my job to comfort him. But I nodded.
“Sometimes lessons come late,” I replied.
The last time I saw Diane was from a distance at a market. She looked at me as if still expecting me to lower my head. I didn’t. I kept walking.
That Christmas, a year later, I had dinner at my house with friends. No forced carols, no threats wrapped in smiles, no “introductions.” There was bread, there was butter, and there was a peace that didn’t depend on pleasing anyone.
And I thought about the irony: Diane had tried to humiliate me by presenting Emma. What she actually did was show me, in front of everyone, that I wasn’t in the wrong place—I was with the wrong people.
