PART 12
“I’m not asking to be his mother again, in the way I would have been if none of this had happened,” Vivian told me, near the end of that first visit, once Jasper had stepped away to the counter for a refill. “I understand that role, at this point, genuinely belongs to you, and to Odile, in whatever shape the two of you built it into over eighteen years. I’m asking for whatever smaller, more honest version of a relationship with him is actually possible now, starting from exactly where we all are, instead of where we might have been.”
“I spent eighteen years hating you,” I told her honestly. “I need you to understand that clearly, before we go any further than this conversation. I don’t know yet how much of that hatred survives learning the truth. I know it’s already considerably less than it was three weeks ago.”
“That’s more than I let myself hope for,” Vivian said. “For a long time, honestly, more than I believed I deserved to hope for at all.”
