Even Jill smiled. “Then we wouldn’t let Belinda or Stefan eat them? And we just watched all the other kids scarfing them down? I wanted to throw up.” She said then, “I need to ask you a favor.”

“What is it?”

“In recent months SAY has gotten involved with the forgiveness movement, not quite like your... Stefan’s thing that you’re doing, I mean the one that’s been around for years. And while I’m not at that point, I have learned a few things and one of them is that you’re supposed to ask for what you need, if that is possible.”

“You know Stefan would do anything to take your pain away. But that’s impossible. How could he and I help...?”

“I don’t really know,” Jill admitted. She had recently heard from an old friend, a pastor who had been at seminary with her late husband and was now, like our Merry Betancourt, a part-time prison chaplain. He encouraged her to come to one of the meetings he was brokering with a family in the process of forgiving a man who’d shot a grandfather of five in a home invasion. She did, and left both moved and confused. “It really didn’t have that much to do with the person who did it and everything to do with the victims. It really gives the victims a feeling of power over their own lives. And, Thea, I need that. I really feel like a pebble that’s getting kicked around on the ground.”

I was surprised. I said so. “You founded an organization, Jill, a good one. It’s changing young women’s lives. I don’t agree with it in the case of my own family, but its intentions are really good, Jill.”

“But me, personally. I still feel lost in the world.” Which made heartbreaking sense, but which was something I would never have suspected. There was nothing I could say, so I just waited and listened. “Now as for the perpetrators. A lot of them feel new hope when they’re forgiven. But other ones, they apparently actually feel pretty awful when they’re forgiven, worse than before. I guess they’re the sensitive ones, right? I guess even some of them feel better after some time passes, like they’re more able to go on, like a burden is off their shoulders.”

“Stefan told us all about that. There was a guy he knew who, well, he killed himself. And for Stefan, his regret just got worse for him when he was free. That’s why he wanted to try to do something like what he’s doing.”

“Do you think I should explore forgiveness more?”