Dawson shoved his hands in his pockets, suddenly wanting to be anywhere but here. “I won’t visit or bring flowers again,” he muttered. “You have my word.”
She looked at him. “And you think that makes it okay that you’ve come here at all? Considering what you did in the first place? Considering that my husband is here, instead of with me? That he missed the chance to watch his children grow up?”
“No,” he said.
“Of course you don’t,” she said. “Because you still feel guilty about what you did. That’s why you’ve been sending us money all these years, am I right?”
He wanted to lie to her but couldn’t.
“How long have you known?” he asked.
“Since the first check,” she said. “You’d stopped by my house just a couple of weeks earlier, remember? It wasn’t too hard to put two and two together.” She hesitated. “You wanted to apologize, didn’t you? In person. When you came to the porch that day?”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t let you. I said… a lot of things that day. Things that maybe I shouldn’t have said.”
“You had every right to say what you did.”
A flicker of a smile formed on her lips. “You were twenty-two years old. I saw a grown man on the porch, but the older I’ve gotten, the more I’ve come to believe that people don’t really grow up until they’re at least thirty. My son is older than you were then, and I still think of him as a child.”
“You did what anyone would do.”
“Maybe,” she said, offering the slightest of shrugs. She stepped closer to him. “The money you sent helped,” she said. “It helped a lot over the years, but I don’t need your money anymore. So please stop sending it.”
“I just wanted—”
“I know what you wanted,” she interrupted. “But all the money in the world can’t bring David back, or undo the loss I felt after he died. And it can’t give my children the father they never knew.”
“I know.”
“And money can’t buy forgiveness.”
Dawson felt his shoulders sag. “I should go,” he said, turning to leave.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, you probably should. But before you leave, there’s something else you should know.”
When he turned, she willed him to meet her eyes. “I know that what happened was an accident. I’ve always known that. And I know you’d do anything to change the past. Everything you’ve done since then makes that clear. And yes, I’ll admit that I was angry and frightened and lonely when you came to my house, but I never, ever believed there was anything malicious about your actions that night. It was just one of those awful, terrible things that happen sometimes, and when you came by, I took it out on you.” She let the words sink in, and when she went on, her voice was almost kind. “I’m fine now, and my kids are fine, too. We’ve survived. We’re okay.”
When Dawson turned away, she waited until he finally faced her again.
“I came here to tell you that you don’t need my forgiveness anymore,” she said, drawing out the words. “But I also know that’s not what any of this has ever been about. It’s never been about me, or my family. It’s about you. It’s always been about you. You’ve been clinging to a terrible mistake for too long, and if you were my son, I’d tell you that it was time you finally let this go. So let it go, Dawson,” she said. “Do that for me.”
She stared at him, making sure he understood her, then turned and walked away. Dawson remained frozen as her figure receded, winding through the sentinel gravestones until she eventually vanished from sight.
18
Amanda drove on autopilot, oblivious to the crawling weekend traffic. Families in minivans and SUVs, some towing boats, thronged the highway after spending the weekend at the beach.
As she drove, she couldn’t imagine going home and having to pretend that the past few days hadn’t happened. She understood that she could tell no one about them, yet, strangely, she felt no guilt about the weekend, either. If anything, she felt regret, and she found herself wishing that she had done things differently. Had she known from the beginning how their weekend would end, she would have stayed longer with Dawson on their first night together, and she wouldn’t have turned away when she’d suspected that he was going to kiss her. She would have seen him Friday night as well, no matter how many lies she had to tell her mother, and she would give anything to have spent all of Saturday wrapped in his arms. After all, had she given in to her feelings sooner, Saturday night might have had a different ending. Perhaps the barriers, the ones that came with her marriage vows, would have been overridden. And they almost were. As they’d danced in the living room, letting him make love to her was all she could think about; as they’d kissed, she’d known exactly what would happen. She wanted him, in the way they’d once been together.