She had believed it enough to come into a bank four times in my name.
With my grandmother’s ring on her finger.
The ring she had told me I must have lost at work.
I do not know what to do with this.
With someone who can love her child enough to do that and who can look at me and say: I’m sorry, dear.
As if the sorry addresses it.
As if the sorry is the same size as what was done.
It is not the same size.
But it is what is available.
And I am a nurse.
I have spent fourteen years watching people offer what is available and knowing that available is not the same as adequate and accepting the available anyway because it is what there is.
After the hearing, I sat in my car in the courthouse parking lot.
Mrs. Wilkes found me.
