Chapter 4: No Easy Answers

The officers confirmed there was an active warrant connected to my mother’s case. Cindy cooperated. Before leaving, she gave them a pawn ticket from her purse and said she had been making small anonymous payments toward what she stole.

At the doorway, she turned to Daniel.

“You were the first good thing I had not lied to obtain,” she said. “But I lied by staying silent. I’m sorry.”

Daniel did not answer. I could see that part of him wanted to follow her and another part understood that love could not erase what she had done.

After the police left, the steaks sat untouched. Tom switched off the stove while Daniel sank into a chair.

“Was any of it real?” he asked.

“Your feelings were real,” I told him. “Hers may have been, too. But real feelings do not make a rushed marriage wise.”

Daniel spent that night in his old room. He blamed Cindy, then himself, then me. I let him be angry without accepting blame for calling the police.

Compassion did not require us to pretend no crime had occurred. And accountability did not require us to stop seeing Cindy as human.

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