…leave town. Mom says you told everyone at church she was a homewrecker.”
I stared at the girl on the porch. She was maybe sixteen. She had long dark hair and her mother’s eyes. And then the front door opened wider, and her mother stepped out behind her. I knew her immediately.
Sarah Mitchell. My best friend from fifteen years ago.
We’d been inseparable for a decade. Then, one Christmas party, I saw her and my husband, Dan, standing too close in the kitchen. Laughing. Her hand on his arm. I’d confronted her in front of everyone. I’d said things I wasn’t proud of. She’d sworn nothing was going on. I didn’t believe her. She’d moved away with her two kids a few months later. I’d felt guilty about it for years. I’d thought I’d been wrong. I’d thought I’d ruined her life over nothing.
I hadn’t been wrong.
“He followed us,” the girl said, crying. “After we moved. He visits us every night. He said someday he’d leave you and we’d be a real family. Mom told me you’d hate us forever because of what you said at that party. I always wanted to meet you. I wanted to say I’m sorry.”
I looked at Sarah. She couldn’t meet my eyes.
Dan was standing in the hallway behind her. He looked like a man who’d been waiting fifteen years for this moment and still wasn’t ready.
“Fifteen years,” I said. “I apologized to you, Sarah. I wrote you a letter. I told you I’d been jealous and paranoid and I was so, so sorry.”
“I got it,” Sarah said quietly. “Dan said not to answer.”
I drove home. I didn’t cry until I was in my own driveway. Then I couldn’t stop.
I filed for divorce the next week. My lawyer found that Dan had been paying Sarah’s mortgage for twelve years from our joint account. Over three hundred thousand dollars. The court took that very seriously.
Here’s the part I didn’t expect. A month later, Sarah’s daughter, Lily, sent me a message on Instagram. “I know you probably hate us. But I meant what I said. I’m sorry. It wasn’t your fault. It was never your fault.”
I wrote back. “None of it was your fault either. You were a baby. I hope you know that.”
We’ve been messaging ever since. She’s applying to colleges. She asked me for help with her essay last month. I helped her.
I still don’t speak to Sarah. Maybe I never will. But I took that apology letter, the one she never answered, out of my desk drawer and threw it away. I’d spent fifteen years believing I owed her one. I don’t.
