"Ms. Wakefield," Monica said, "I want to be honest with you, the way you were honest in the letter. I'm not calling to forgive you."
"I didn't expect you to."
"Good, because I'm not there. What you did on that plane — I've replayed it, and every time I replay it, I get angry again. Not just at the hand. At the look. You looked at me like I was furniture, Cynthia. Can I call you Cynthia?"
"Please."
"You looked at me like I was furniture. And I have spent nine years teaching my daughters that they are not furniture, that no one gets to move them, and then a woman reached across my babies on an airplane and moved them like they were nothing. Do you understand that the cake was the smallest part of it?"
"I do." Cynthia's voice was steady, but Monica could hear the effort in it. "The letter — I tried to say that. That it wasn't about the cake. It was about the decision. I decided you didn't count, and everything after that was just physics."
Monica closed her eyes. "Yes. That's what it was."
They were quiet together for a moment, two women on a phone line, with nine years and nine hundred miles and one airplane cabin between them.
"Why did you write to me first?" Monica asked. "And not the girls?"
"Because I owed it to you first. The girls — what I did to them was cruel, but what I did to you was the root. You were the one I erased. And besides — " Cynthia laughed, a short, wet sound. "Besides, I figured nine-year-olds have better things to do than read apology letters from strange women. And I figured you'd decide if they ever needed to."
"That's right. I decide." Monica opened her eyes. "Here's where I am, Cynthia. I'm not going to tell my daughters to forgive you. I'm not going to tell them not to. I'm going to tell them you wrote, and what you said, in words they can understand, and then they get to decide if they want to meet you. That's it. That's the whole offer."
"That's more than I deserve."
"Probably." Monica's voice didn't soften, but it didn't harden either. "And Cynthia — if you bring a camera crew, or a publicist, or a single reporter, we walk away and you never hear from us again."
"I wouldn't. This isn't — there’s nothing in this for me to show anyone. There’s nothing to show." "One more thing. If they say yes, it happens on my terms. Public place. I'm there. Vivian's there. You bring nothing — no gifts, no cake, no books, no checks. You bring yourself, and you answer whatever they ask, and if Sanaa makes you cry, that's between you and Sanaa."
"I understand."
"Do you? Because Sanaa will ask you why. Not the polite why. The real one. She'll look right at you and say, 'Why did you do it?' And 'I don't know' isn't an answer she'll accept."
There was a long pause. Then Cynthia said, "I've been practicing the answer. I don't know if it's good enough, but it's true. I'll tell her the truth."
"That's all any of us can do." Monica looked at Zola, who had stopped writing and was watching her now, dark eyes steady. "I'll call you back by Sunday."
She hung up, and the kitchen was very quiet, and then Sanaa said, "Is she crying?"
"I don't know, baby."
"She should have to answer the question," Sanaa said firmly. "The why question."
"She said she would."
Zola closed her notebook. She looked at her mother for a long moment, and then she said, in the clear, certain voice she used for verdicts, "She can say sorry to us if she means it."
Sanaa turned. "How do we know if she means it?"
"We'll know," Zola said, and picked up her pencil again, and that was the end of the discussion, because when Zola issued a verdict, the court was adjourned.
Vivian appeared in the doorway, arms crossed. "Well?"
"They want to meet her," Monica said.
Vivian's eyebrows went up. "Both of them?"
"Zola says she can say sorry if she means it. Sanaa wants to ask the why question." Monica rubbed her face. "I told Cynthia Sunday. Park. Supervised. She brings nothing."
Vivian was quiet for a moment. Then she said, "You're a better woman than me, Monica Ellis."
"I'm a mother," Monica said. "It's not the same thing."
---
The park was Freedom Park in Atlanta, on a Sunday afternoon in late October, the kind of afternoon the city saves for its best behavior — gold light, a breeze with somewhere to be, children everywhere like the world had been restocked.
Cynthia arrived twenty minutes early and sat on a bench, empty-handed as instructed — no flowers, no gift bag, no envelope. Ashley had offered to come; Cynthia had said no. This was hers to do alone.