"You didn't deserve the way she handled this," she said. "I hope you don't let it make you hard."
I promised her I'd try. I meant it, though I wasn't sure what trying would look like. At the door, she turned back and said that success would probably bother Minerva more than any argument. I thought about that on the drive home. Then I decided I didn't want to define the next part of my life by what might bother my ex-girlfriend.
I deposited the gift through my bank, keeping a record of its source and purpose, and used part of it to cover the attorney consultation, locksmith, towing charges, and camera repairs. I put the remainder into savings. The practical relief was real, but the gesture mattered more. For the first time, someone who had every reason to defend Minerva had looked at the same facts I was looking at and acknowledged them without trying to make me apologize for noticing.
That evening, Jonah came over with pizza. We checked the camera angles, replaced a faulty porch light, and moved the backup recording storage to a better location. Then we sat at the kitchen table eating directly out of the box. He asked whether I regretted meeting Minerva. I thought for longer than he expected before answering.
"I regret ignoring things I knew were wrong," I said. "I don't know if I regret every good day. Those were real days, too. But I wish I'd stopped trying to prove I was supportive by accepting things that hurt me."
Jonah nodded. "That's more useful than deciding all women are terrible."
"I wasn't planning to decide that."
"Good. Because I'm getting married in June and I need you to make polite conversation with my wife's friends."
I laughed so hard I almost choked on the pizza. It was the first uncontrollable laugh I'd had since the dinner. No audience, no clever comeback, no social media caption. Just my oldest friend making a bad joke at a kitchen table. I went to bed that night with the taste of pepperoni still in my mouth and the unfamiliar feeling that my future might eventually contain things unrelated to Minerva Martin.
Three weeks passed without anyone pounding on my door. It sounds like a small thing until you've lived in a house where every phone vibration means the beginning of a new argument. I went to work, came home, made dinner, and sometimes spent an entire evening reading without being asked why I wasn't paying attention to somebody else. I started running again, badly at first, following the bike path behind the subdivision until my lungs reminded me that two years of irregular exercise had consequences.