“I like to think it wouldn't have changed anything, that I understood then all the shortcomings of remorse and how impotent it is against the past. I like to think I recognized that you don't have to tell yourself things are fine to make it easier on another person, and that you don't have to turn your heart toward men who are suffering when they've brought it on themselves.

But probably that isn't true of me. After all, I would, at that point, have forgiven my own father everything on exchange for something as small as a phone call.”