The Fidelity Files (Jennifer Hunter #1)(152)

"I'm sorry if I upset you on the phone, Jenny," my mom said, walking over and taking a seat next to me. She pulled a Milky Way bar from the bowl and unwrapped it.

"You didn't," I began softly. "I mean...you did, but it's not your fault. You were right. I need to learn how to forgive him. I just don't know how."

My mom reached out and tenderly stroked my hair. I fell into her, the tears slowly starting to make their way down my face as she held me close to her and kissed the top of my head.

Little did she know there was a lifetime of secrets trying to push their way out of my mouth. Secrets that could have changed everything. Secrets that might have given her happiness instead of stealing it away.

But just as I'd always done, I would keep them inside. Maybe for another few days. Maybe forever.

She rubbed the top of my head and cooed into my ear. "Shhh. It's okay. It's all right, sweetie."

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry," I whimpered into her chest.

She laughed lovingly. "You have nothing to be sorry about."

I wanted to lift my head and cry out, "But I do! I have everything in the world to be sorry about! I ruined your life! Please just let me be sorry for it!"

But instead I simply laid in her arms and wiped the tears away from my cheeks.

"People are people," my mom said softly. "People make mistakes. In fact, life wouldn't be life without them. Your father made a mistake. And true, I would never be his wife again. I could never love him the way I used to love him. And I don't regret leaving. But leaving isn't what allows you to move on. Forgiving is."

I pulled my head up and looked at her. She smiled at me and reached out to wipe a patch of dampness from my cheek. I wasn't sure where all her strength was coming from. It didn't even sound like my mom. It sounded more like some spiritual Zen expert, leading a room full of lost souls seeking guidance and salvation. Not the wounded, brokenhearted victim I had comforted and nursed back to stability so many times in the past two years.

And now she was telling me to forgive? But it seemed so impossible. How can you forgive something that kept you chained to a life you didn't choose for so long?

You can't just flip a switch and absolve that kind of thing.

Can you?

"I can't," I said softly. "I can't let go of it. I can't forget what happened. And everything that became of it."

"Of course you can," my mom soothed. "If I can, you can."

I shook my head and felt the tidal waves of impossibility start to crash over me. I was overwhelmed by their salty taste and frightened by their threatening determination to knock me over. "I can't forgive something I've spent my whole life trying to make up for," I said softly to myself. But she heard it, anyway. I kind of hoped she would. And I kind of hoped she would tell me what to do.

And she did.

"But you have to if you want to find true happiness," she stated simply. As if it were the only truth in the world. And everything else around it was just there to purposefully cloud your vision. Distract you from it. Steal away your attention and refocus it on far more destructive thoughts. "You have to let go of your anger and resentment. You have to learn how to release it. Because if you continue to hold on to it, it will eat away at you until there's nothing left."

My mom may still have been referring to my father, but I knew there was someone else I had been struggling to make amends with – for years. And it would be far more difficult to do.

The doorbell rang and I jerked upright, snapping myself back into reality. Halloween, doorbell, trick-or-treaters, candy. I sniffled and wiped my nose with the back of my hand, chuckling slightly at my state of disarray.

"I'll get it," my mom said gently, placing her hand on top of mine and then reaching for the candy bowl.

"No," I insisted, standing up and taking it from her hands. "I want to do it."

I straightened my clothes and smoothed my hair back into my ponytail as I walked the ten paces to the front door, the door that once had offered me a daily escape from a prison I thought would never fully release me.

Telling my mother all the countless secrets of my past wasn't going to solve a thing. It would only generate more pain. And forgiving my father for creating those secrets in the first place might have allowed me to walk away and move forward, but it was a forgiveness much more profound, much harder to obtain, and much closer than I ever imagined that would eventually set me free.

I opened the front door to a group of three little girls. All roughly around the age of seven or eight. I smiled brightly, the mouthwatering bowl of chocolate sitting in my arms.

"Trick-or-treat!" the three of them recited in unison.

"Don't you all look great!" I exclaimed as I dropped a variety of chocolate pieces into their awaiting bags. "What are you dressed up as?"

The first little girl, wearing a gold, winged helmet on her head and a white-and-gold fitted dress on her body, proudly pointed to her cape and said, "I'm She-Ra, Princess of Power." And then motioned to her less articulate neighbor, who wore a gold headband and a red-and-blue leotard, and said, "She's Wonder Woman. Sometimes people get us confused. But we're totally different."

"I know," I said seriously.

"Wonder Woman can fly but She-Ra has superhuman strength," she continued knowledgeably.