Chapter 16
Jessamine built another life.
I knew only fragments.
She never married me.
Obviously.
Later she married no one for several years.
Then maybe dated someone.
Not my concern.
She worked in cultural fundraising.
Apparently good at it.
Less manipulation, I hoped.
Margaret claimed she had become annoyingly direct.
Progress.
At one event, Jessamine approached me.
Tobin was ten and elsewhere.
She said:
“I used to think the worst thing about that night was losing you.”
I waited.
“It wasn’t.”
Good.
“What was?”
“Realizing I had finally become Clarice.”
Her adoptive mother.
I understood.
Not literally.
Clarice had not staged coin jokes.
But both used belonging as leverage.
Both believed insecurity produced good behavior.
Both confused gratitude with love.
Jessamine continued:
“I spent years proving I deserved to be chosen and then punished a child because nobody asked him to prove it.”
There.
No request for forgiveness.
Good.
I said:
“Keep knowing that.”
She nodded.
May you like
Then left.
That was enough.
