“Learn.”
“How?”
“Not from me.”
That surprised him.
“You need professionals.”
“Accountability.”
“Whatever treatment the court orders.”
“But I am not going to become your recovery program.”
His tears fell.
I continued.
“I spent thirty years solving your discomfort.”
“Forgot homework?”
“I drove it.”
“Needed money?”
“I sent it.”
“Bad job?”
“I found a better contact.”
“Marriage trouble?”
“I paid for a vacation because I thought you needed time together.”
I laughed sadly.
“Apparently I financed strategy meetings.”
He looked ashamed.
“I made it too easy for you to believe consequences were things other people absorbed.”
“That is my responsibility.”
“Your violence is yours.”
“Your fraud is yours.”
Both.
He whispered:
“Do you hate me?”
“No.”
His face changed.
“I love you.”
He cried harder.
Then I said:
“And I will never again use love to protect you from what you choose.”
That was our last conversation before court.
Kristen eventually accepted a negotiated resolution after the evidence became overwhelming.
