Above them was a giant heart.
Children can make guilt look like construction paper.
I started individual therapy the following week.
Not because I believed I needed insight.
Because Dana suggested it and I wanted to look cooperative.
That motive lasted approximately twenty minutes.
My therapist was Dr. Miriam Cole.
Gray hair.
Plain office.
No patience for dramatic framing.
I told her everything.
The dare.
Simon.
Liam.
Margaret.
The Facebook post.
The canceled counseling appointment.
The separation.
When I finished, she said:
"What would you like from me?"
"I want to understand why everyone thinks I'm some terrible person."
"Do you think you're a terrible person?"
"No."
"Neither do I."
That surprised me.
"Then you agree Simon is overreacting."
"No."
I frowned.
"Both of those can be true."
I stared at her.
She continued.
"You can be a fundamentally decent person who behaved selfishly."
"That isn't a contradiction."
"It is adulthood."
I hated her for about thirty seconds.
Then she asked the question that eventually changed everything.
"If it truly meant nothing, why have you spent so much energy proving that everyone else is wrong to care about it?"
I opened my mouth.
Nothing.
She waited.
I finally said:
"Because if it mattered, then I did something bad."
"Yes."
"And what would that mean?"
"That maybe Simon is right."
"About everything?"
"No."
"Then why are you treating responsibility like total surrender?"
I looked down.
That question followed me home.
The next breakthrough did not happen in therapy.
It happened with June.
She was coloring at the dining table.
I was washing dishes.
She asked:
"Mom?"
"Yeah?"
"Did Daddy leave because you're bad?"
The plate slipped slightly in my hands.
I turned off the water.
"Who told you that?"
"Nobody."
"Then why would you think that?"
"Because Grandma said grown-ups make mistakes."
"Then Daddy said not to worry about whose mistake."
"And you say Daddy's dramatic."
Her small forehead wrinkled.
"So one of you has to be bad."
I sat beside her.
For weeks, I had been protecting my image.
Now I could see the cost.
"No."
I said it firmly.
"Neither of us is bad."
"Daddy and I are both people."
"People make mistakes."
"Did Daddy make the mistake?"
There it was.
The invitation.
I could put responsibility back on Simon.
Instead, something stopped me.
"I made one."
June looked worried.
"What?"
"A grown-up mistake."
"It is not something you need details about."
"But it hurt Daddy."