The wind stirred the leaves above us.
“But eventually I realized something.”
“What?”
She looked toward the horizon.
“If I spent the rest of my life hating him, he’d still be controlling it.”
I swallowed hard.
Because forgiveness was never something I understood.
Not after everything.
Not after seeing her led toward an execution chamber for a crime she never committed.
But maybe forgiveness wasn’t about excusing someone.
Maybe it was about refusing to let them keep taking from you.
Even after they were gone.
A few weeks later, Ethan came home from college.
He was eighteen now.
Tall.
Confident.
Nothing like the frightened little boy who had once whispered a secret into our mother’s ear.
Most people didn’t know his story.
He rarely talked about it.
The attention embarrassed him.
The interviews.
The documentaries.
The reporters who still called every anniversary.
To the world, he was the child who stopped an execution.
