A week later, I sat across from Tristan in a plain visiting room. His expensive suits and gold pen were gone. He looked like his father around the jaw, but the resemblance ended there. His face was unshaven, his eyes uncertain, and for once he seemed unable to hide behind confidence.

He admitted that he had convinced himself I was losing my judgment because believing that was easier than facing his own fear of being ordinary. He brought up the hundred dollars he had offered me on the porch, but the words failed him before he could finish.

I told him the money itself had never been the deepest wound. What stayed with me was the cashier’s careful smile as I abandoned my shopping cart, humiliated by a situation my own son had helped create. I did not tell him everything was forgiven. Instead, I reminded him that I had loved him before he could speak, and that my love would never again require my signature on a blank promise.