He sent me a picture of a fern once and never explained it. That was also him making something matter, in the way he could.
Both things are true. I’m trying to hold both things.
## The Conversation I Had with Myself
There’s a version of this story I could tell where I am the wronged party, pure and simple. Where Vanessa’s actions were straightforwardly predatory, where the family’s initial silence was a betrayal, where the resolution was justice delivered.
I don’t think that version is true.
Vanessa’s actions were not okay. The evidence points toward her knowing more than she admitted and doing something with that knowledge that benefited her and harmed me. The waiver was a document designed to close a door before I could look through it. The explanation that shifted from ‘formatting issue’ to ‘old copy I didn’t know was incomplete’ was the kind of explanation that changes shape under pressure.
None of that is okay. I’m not going to sand it down into something more comfortable.
But the version where I am the pure wronged party requires me to leave some things out, and I don’t want to do that.
I was not present for the last three years. I called on Sundays. Vanessa stocked the refrigerator and took him to the doctor and answered the calls he made when he was scared at two in the morning. I know my calls mattered to him — the text tells me so, the will tells me so. I also know that what Vanessa did during those three years was real and was meaningful and was more than I did.