Page 83 of Forgive Not Forget
“Well, being in prison gave my wife the ammunition she needed to divorce me finally,” Jeremy said. “She couldn’t get past what I’d done and decided she was going to move on with her life.”
Did he mean for her to feel sorry for him? It wasn’t working.
“Our daughter, she’s twelve now,” he continued, a smile pulling at his lips. “I don’t get to see her very often. I haven’t seen her for a few years. After all the arguments about my ex taking her away, ultimately it was me that left her to grow up without a dad.” Jeremy bowed his head, his smile washing away with his thoughts.
Katherine clenched her fists under the table. He’d had a child, and although he rarely got to see her, she was alive. It clearly saddened him not to see her, but why should he be able to when she hadn’t been able to see her child grow? Wasn’t this justice? She pondered what was worse, losing your child before you could meet them or having one you could never see? The thought of the latter pained her as much as her own loss.
She noticed his eyes were pinched tightly together, something she herself did when she tried to prevent herself crying.
“Jeremy, are you okay to continue?”
Jeremy nodded. He took a deep breath and sniffed.
“Perhaps you can tell us what you’ve been doing to improve yourself since you’ve been in here,” Sheila asked.
“I’ve retrained as a psychologist.” He tried to contain a proud smile as he spoke. “I’ve started to help people in here. They connect better with one of their own, you see.”
Katherine nodded. She could understand that.
“When I get out of here, I hope I can continue coming back. Help people turn their lives around, make a difference somehow.” He looked directly at her before continuing. “Then it doesn’t all feel so senseless.”
Katherine didn’t react. It would never stop feeling senseless to her, regardless of what he thought he was doing to make it less so.
“Now, Katherine,” Sheila said, “I hope you don’t mind me sharing that when we spoke, you mentioned feelings of guilt that were preventing you from moving forward with your life?”
Katherine nodded. “I do feel guilty. As much as I’ve tried, I can’t get past the guilt. It was my fault she was there at the time. It was me in a hospital bed that she was rushing to get to in the middle of the night. If I’d just slowed down, looked after myself like she kept telling me to do, she’d never have had to leave the house. Sometimes I wish I’d just died and never responded to the first aid treatment. If I were dead, would she have still come to the hospital or would she have stayed at home? Even a few minutes later would have spared them from you.”
She allowed her eyes to fix on Jeremy as he looked up and intensely met her gaze.
He shook his head. Voice raised; he finally spoke. “Seriously? You feel guilty? You didn’t kill her. I did. It should be safe for someone to drive to a hospital in the middle of the night without fear of being killed. I know we’ll both have to live with this the rest of our lives, but we can’t both feel guilty. I was guilty, which is why I’m in here locked up. You’re free. You need to allow yourself that freedom.”
Katherine pushed herself into the back of her chair as Sheila put her hand out to calm Jeremy.
He grasped his hands together on the table, his fingernails turning from pink to red. Exhaling a long breath, he continued more calmly. “Live your life because I can’t, and she can’t, and your child can’t. It’s up to you.” He shook his head. “Don’t feel bad because you’re living and they aren’t. Feel bad because you’re not living when they can’t.”
Katherine’s gaze dropped to the table. She closed her eyes tightly, as Jeremy had done. He was right; as much as she didn’t want him to be, the bastard was right.
“This is my guilt to bear, Katherine, not yours,” he added, looking directly at her. “You must be exhausted carrying it.”
“I am.” She wiped a tear away.
Jeremy reached out across the table but, thinking better of it, immediately withdrew his hand.
“Do either of you have any further questions?” Sheila looked between Katherine and Jeremy, both of whom had lowered their heads.
“Katherine, have you got out of this what you wanted to?”
Katherine paused before speaking. “He’s apologised and shown remorse for his actions. I know he didn’t set out with the intention to kill Helena and our baby, so we have common ground in that we both wish it didn’t happen. I understand what led him to do what he did. It doesn’t make it any better, but I understand why you were in that state.”
“Jeremy, is there anything you’d like to say before we finish?”
“I am sorry for what I did to you. If I could take it all back, I would in a heartbeat.”
Katherine nodded. He did appear to be genuinely remorseful for what he had done, and she couldn’t imagine living in his shoes, but it was time to think beyond him now. “I’m ready to accept that, and I’m going to forgive you, not because you deserve my forgiveness but because I deserve it. I need to heal. I can’t hold all this in me anymore, or it will destroy me.”
“Thank you,” Jeremy responded blankly.
“Don’t thank me. Thank the person you killed,” Katherine replied firmly. “It’s her that’s asking me to give it to you. To be honest, I feel she would have asked me to give it to you a long time ago because that was the type of woman she was. I just haven’t wanted to. Now I have a chance at a future with another amazing woman, and I’m sure as hell not going to allow you to rob me of that chance, so yes, you have my forgiveness. I willnotforget what you did to her, to us.”
