Chapter 14 - THE APOLOGY WITHOUT AN AUDIENCE
Nine months after the wedding, Madison asked Emily to meet.
No Diane.
No Blake.
No social media.
Coffee shop.
Madison arrived in jeans.
Emily noticed how absurdly meaningful that seemed.
Madison said:
“I hit you because I wanted everyone to see you as less powerful than me.”
Emily stared.
Madison continued.
“I knew you paid.”
“Yes.”
“And every time someone praised the wedding, I knew it belonged partly to you.”
“Not belonged.”
“Fine. Existed partly because of you.”
Better.
Madison swallowed.
“I hated that.”
“Why?”
“Because I wanted one day where nobody compared us.”
Emily almost laughed.
“So you humiliated me.”
“Yes.”
“That made us less comparable?”
“No.”
Silence.
Madison apologized.
Emily accepted the apology.
Not the relationship.
They did not become close.
Accuracy came before intimacy.
Diane’s apology took longer.
She resisted the word manipulation.
“I reminded you what your father valued.”
Emily answered:
“You told me what he would want whenever you wanted me to say yes.”
“That’s cruel.”
“Is it false?”
Diane looked away.
The pattern reached beyond money.
Christmas.
Vacations.
Madison’s college graduation.
Even Emily’s decision not to have children had once been met with:
“Your father would have loved grandchildren.”
Emily remembered leaving that dinner feeling guilty about a private reproductive choice because a dead man had been recruited into it.
Diane eventually said:
“I missed him, and I used certainty about him because uncertainty hurt.”
May you like
That was more honest than:
I was only honoring his memory.
