I was standing.
For the first time since I was four years old, I could feel the floor beneath me.
I started sobbing.
And inside my head, I heard Gus as clearly as if he were standing beside me.
“You’re going to live, kiddo. You hear me?”
Do I forgive him?
Some days, no.
Some days I think about an empty bottle, a set of car keys he should have taken, and one decision that changed every day of my life.
Other days, I remember the man who woke every two hours because a little girl needed him. The man who turned a bedroom into a world, practiced braiding hair on furniture, and spent twenty-two years making sure I never believed a wheelchair made me less worthy of a life.
Maybe forgiveness isn’t one decision.
Maybe it happens in pieces.
Gus could never undo what happened on that road. He could never give me my parents back or return the body I had before the crash.
