a phone call from her husband.
Susan turned toward me.
“I know I don’t deserve your forgiveness.”
I shook my head.
“Don’t say that.”
“Claire—”
“I am angry with you.”
She nodded.
“I know.”
“I’m hurt that you kept something so important from me.”
A tear slipped down her cheek.
“But I also understand that you were a frightened seventeen-year-old girl who never learned how to stop being afraid.”
Susan looked at me.
I reached across the table.
“You should have told me. I would have loved you through it.”
She began crying.
“I know that now.”
I squeezed her hand.
“I’m not ready to pretend everything is fine.”
“I don’t expect you to.”
“But I don’t want forty-two years
of friendship to end because you couldn’t find the courage to tell me something painful.”
Susan covered my hand with hers.
“Thank you.”
The following morning, I returned to the
