“All he wants is to explain he was a boy. That he did not know what he was doing. That he was a stupid boy. And that he is sorry. So sorry. It’s all he wants, all he thinks he wants through those long years. Because he knows when she does come, which he no longer quite believes will happen, it will be enough. Because he thinks that would be what she is looking for. And more—he thinks it’s all he’s looking for. The chance to say how sorry he is. But what he does not know, what he cannot know until he looks up and there she is, is neither of them are the same people. She is not that young girl. As important, he is not that young boy. He would be if he could. He thinks he will be. But he is not. He is a man grown into himself.

“So then there is that afternoon. Weather aside, one like any other. Except he looks up and there she is. Standing down at the end of the walk. Looking at him up on the porch. Her face revealing in one look that everything he’d thought this would be will be something else. Because what he sees there is only just a little fear of him but the rest a mask of pure loathing, a disgust of him so true as if she sees down into that empty soul of his and knows it better than he even can. And he feels shabby, feels caught out, found out. And he sits thinking perhaps she will just look at him and walk on, that her purpose will be satisfied. But she pauses only long enough for him to hope she’ll go on and then comes up the walk. Lifting the front edge of her dress each time she steps up the bricks. It was all still tended then. Until she is at the bottom of the porch steps, in the shade of the house where she can look him right in the eye.

“She tells him she’d thought he was dead. Nothing in her voice to show she wished it was otherwise.

“He told her she’d tried but not hard enough.

“And she just stood looking up at him. As if measuring him. She already knew him. So it was something else she was studying and he looked away from her gaze, knowing it was pity of him she felt. And he was still looking away when she asked him what had become of her mother.

“And there you see. He had her then. All the pretense of those years fell away just like that. He was revealed to himself as purely and cleanly as a tooth. So when he looked back at her he smiled. And he raised up his hand, his one hand, and ran it over this scar right here upside his temple, still smiling at her. And she looked serious at that smile and watched him stroke himself like that and he saw her fall away just a little bit. Not too much. Just what he was hoping for.