Paige met my eyes.
“Myra…”
“Don’t,” I said.
She stopped.
I wasn’t ready for an apology, especially not one delivered because the consequences had finally entered the hallway.
Carol looked between the three of us.
Then she seemed to remember what she had said to me minutes earlier.
Her shoulders sagged.
“I didn’t know.”
I folded my arms.
“You didn’t ask.”
She swallowed.
“Mark should have told me.”
“Yes.”
“But you could have.”
There it was again—the instinct to make his silence my responsibility.
I shook my head.
“It was his medical information.
He asked me to keep it private.
I did.
Even after our divorce.”
Carol looked at the folder.
“Then why show me this now?”
“Because that page also contains my medical information, and tonight you used a lie about my body to humiliate me publicly.
I am allowed to correct a lie about myself.”
She had no answer.
The nurses nearby were no longer pretending not to listen.
I didn’t blame them.
Carol had invited them into the story when she raised her voice.
Now she had to stand in the ending she had created.
Mark picked up the fallen gift bag and set it beside his mother.
“You need to apologize to her.”
Carol looked up at him.
He repeated it.
“Mom.
You need to apologize to Myra.”
A year earlier, hearing him defend me would have meant everything.
Now it felt like hearing a fire alarm after the building had already burned down.
Necessary.
But late.
Carol stood.
Her voice was much smaller than before.
“Myra, I was cruel to you.
Tonight, and…
before.”
I waited.
She seemed to understand that “before” was too convenient a word for six years.
“I blamed you for something I didn’t understand,” she continued.
“And I said things I had no right to say.
I’m sorry.”
I believed she meant it in that moment.
Forgiveness was another question.
“Thank you for saying it,” I replied.
I didn’t tell her everything was fine.
It wasn’t.
