PART 9: THE PARKING LOT RECKONING
As I walked out of the courthouse toward my car, breathing in the crisp, cold air, I heard rapid footsteps splashing through the wet gravel behind me.
“Sarah! Sarah, wait! Please!”
I stopped by the driver’s side door and turned around. Mark stood ten feet away, panting, clutching his coat collar around his neck against the biting wind.
“What is it, Mark?”
“Is this really how it ends?” he asked, tears streaming down his cheeks. “After ten years together? You’re just going to erase me? I won’t even be able to see Ben and Lily without a court supervisor watching me like a criminal!”
“You are a criminal, Mark. The federal grand jury indicts you next month.”
“I loved you,” he choked out, taking a trembling step forward. “In my own twisted way, Sarah, I did love you. Can’t you find it in your heart to forgive me? Even just a little bit?”
I looked at him—really looked at him. For months, I had wondered what I would feel at this moment. Would I feel vengeance? Triumph? Pity?
Instead, I felt an astonishing, liberating nothingness. The ghost of the man I had loved was dead, and the stranger standing in front of me had no power over my life anymore.
“Forgiveness is for people who made an honest mistake, Mark,” I said, my voice steady and quiet against the wind. “What you did was a lifestyle. I don’t hate you. Hating you would mean I still care. I just feel sorry that you chose to trade a real family for a house of smoke.”
I got into the car, locked the door, and drove away without looking in the rearview mirror.
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