“Anna…”
“I know what you’re thinking. I should have told someone. I should have left.”
“No,” I said firmly.
She looked at me in surprise.
“You don’t get to judge yourself for surviving something you should never have had to endure.”
Her lips trembled.
“But I stayed.”
“You did what you believed you had to do with the choices you thought you had. I wasn’t there. I don’t know every fear you faced, every risk you weighed, or every reason you decided to stay.”
I squeezed her hand gently.
“But I know this. What he did was his responsibility. Not yours.”
For the first time since she had begun speaking, Anna looked directly at me.
I could see years of disbelief in her eyes, as though she had heard the words but could not yet allow herself to trust them.
Then she began to cry.
Not the quiet tears she had shed during our wedding ceremony.
