Chapter 10 - Camille Tried To Come Back Through Sympathy
Three weeks later, Camille requested a supervised meeting.
My attorney advised against it unless Lily wanted one.
Lily did not.
So Camille changed tactics.
She sent me a letter.
It was full of grief language and self-pity.
She said she had “snapped under pressure,” that she had only ever wanted “a real family,” that Lily “constantly challenged” her, and that my mother had “influenced her judgment.”
There was exactly one line in the entire letter about Lily herself:
I regret that Lily was frightened.
Not hurt.
Not struck.
Frightened.
She still could not fully name what she had done.
That mattered.
People who cannot tell the truth about harm will always repeat it under a new justification.
I did not respond.
Instead, I forwarded the letter to my attorney and the evaluator.
Then I sat with Lily at the hotel desk while she did her math worksheet.
She glanced at the printed pages and asked, “Is that from Camille?”
“Yes.”
“Is she saying sorry?”
“Sort of.”
“Is it a real sorry?”
I looked at her.
That question deserved respect.
“No,” I said. “A real sorry says what you did and doesn’t make it someone else’s fault.”
Lily nodded, satisfied.
May you like
Then she went back to her worksheet like she had just summarized half the failures of the adult world.
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