“What are you doing here?” Mom asked the morning she was going to visit Todd. She shook her head back and forth. “Now, Eli, I love you, but if you’re here to talk me out of this…”

“I’m not.”

“Then why are you here?”

I stuffed my hands into my pockets and swayed back and forth. “It’s a two-and-a-half drive to the Louisiana State Penitentiary. I thought you might enjoy some company.”

Her eyes widened. “What?”

“You didn’t really think I’d let you do this alone, did you?” Tears fell down her cheeks and she covered her mouth with the palm of her hand, overtaken by emotion. I smiled. “Come on, Ma. Don’t cry.”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry…it’s just…” She took a deep breath. “I really need you today, Eli. I didn’t want to ask, but I need you so much. For so long, I’d thought I lost you. For so long I thought you were gone.”

“I’m back,” I promised her. “I’m back, and I’m sorry it t-took me so long, because I’ve missed you. You’re the most amazing human I’ve ever known,” I told her.

“Eli…” Her eyes watered over, but I continued speaking.

“I spent years trying to get strong. I thought strength came from the physical aspects of life. I thought strength came from weightlifting, boxing, being able to fight back with my fists, but all this time, I was wrong.” I cleared my throat, trying to hold in my own emotions as Mom’s poured out. “I’ve learned that being strong is getting out of bed each day when your world’s falling apart. I’ve learned that being strong is showing up on your son’s birthday, even when he’s distant.

“Being strong is loving the broken pieces of your loved ones. Being strong is crying yourself to sleep at night and waking each morning still believing in beauty. Being strong is forgiveness. What you’re doing today—that is strength. You are all of t-this, Ma. You are my rock, my hero. Without you, I’d be nothing. When we lost Katie, you lost me, too, and I’m so so-sorry about that. I’m so sorry for all I’ve put you through.”

“It’s okay, Elliott. I’d do it again in a heartbeat if it meant you’d come back to us all. I’d walk through it all again for you…always for you.”

I smiled. “I know you would, because you are the definition of strength.” I walked over to her and pulled her into a hug, and she held on tight, as if she’d been terrified she’d never be able to hold me close again. “You have her smile,” I whispered. “You have her smile, Mom.”

“And you have her eyes.”

I held her as long as she needed me to, and then I continued to hold her some more.

We drove to the prison, and when we arrived, a team was waiting to search us, making sure we didn’t have any kind of weapons or illegal items. That was a wake-up call. I’d never been to a prison, and the moment we arrived, it felt terrifying.

Todd’s mom was waiting for us inside. She was skinny, sickly looking, and I’d never seen a pair of blue eyes that looked so sad.

“Um, hi, I…um.” She stuttered over her words and her body shook. Every part of her was broken; she was nothing like the woman I remembered. “I…thank you. Thank you for coming,” she finally pushed out.

Mom didn’t say anything, but she offered Marie a small smile.

My heart was racing as they signed us in for our visit. We walked through a set of metal detectors, and we were led down a hallway then placed in front of a glass partition. There were two seats in front of the window, and Marie waved for us to sit down as she stood behind us.

A staff member walked through the door, and Todd was with him. His hands were handcuffed together, and his feet were shackled, too.

I wanted to vomit, seeing him. I wanted to run away and never face the past again, but Mom needed this closure. She needed to let go, and maybe I didn’t understand her way of healing, but I loved her enough to stay by her side.

Todd looked worse than his mom. His face was covered in facial hair, his skin was pale, and he was almost a skeletal. As he sat down, he cleared his throat. He lifted the telephone on his side, and Mom did the same. As he spoke to her, tears began to fall down her cheeks, and I could only hear her replies.

“Yes. Thank you. I know.” At one point, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath. I took her hand and linked it with mine, giving it a squeeze. Once they finished talking, they both glanced over to me. Mom pulled the phone from her ear. “He wants to speak with you.”

With hesitation, I took the phone in my hand, and placed it against my ear.

“Hello?”

“Hey, man…” Todd said nervously. He kept shifting around in his seat, unable to stay still. “Wow, you really be-beefed up, huh?” he stuttered, his nerves swallowing him whole. He laughed. “I mean, I doubt anyone’s bullying you anymore.”

I didn’t say a word.

“Look, I know…there’s nothing I c-can say to…” He tripped over his words, couldn’t connect his thoughts, and it was a feeling I knew all too well. When he was finally able to grasp a few words, he looked up at me with glassy eyes and said, “I’m so sorry, Elliott.”

Then he looked back down at his hands.

“I forgive you,” I said, making him shoot his stare back up. Tears swam in his eyes. “What?”

“I forgive you. Not for me”—I nodded toward my mom—“but for her. I forgive you for her.”

He broke down into uncontrollable sobbing, and I watched as he struggled to breathe. “Thank you, Elliott. Thank you.”

I remained still as I spoke the last words. “I never want to hear from you again,” I told him. “This is it. This is the end.”

He nodded and continued to fall apart. As we stood up, Marie shook behind us, as she stared down at Mom’s hand still in mine. Then she looked to her own son, who was trapped behind that glass. She was unable to hold him, unable to reach out and comfort him as he fell apart. So, she did all she could do: she fell apart too.

She covered her mouth as she sobbed heavily into the palm of her hand. Her tiny figure shook nonstop, and she was seconds away from falling to the ground with the heaviness of her heart. I watched it in her; I watched her soul burn.

She kept apologizing over and over again. She kept saying words I was more than familiar with. She kept blaming herself for what had happened six years before. She probably blamed herself for her husband taking his own life, too.

Her son sat behind bars, but the truth was, Mrs. Clause was living in true imprisonment. She was completely alone. She had nothing and nobody, not even one hand to hold for comfort during the hardest days of her life. As her legs were about to give out, as her breaths were dissolving, I rushed in and held her close. I held her close and she cried into me, falling apart while my arms did their best to keep her together.

I didn’t know why I said it.

I didn’t know why the words left my mouth.

I wasn’t even certain I believed it, but I told her what she needed to hear.

I held her close, and whispered that it wasn’t her fault.

The way she howled in sorrow afterward was enough to break my own heart.

We stayed with Marie until she was able to gather herself, and then we left as she sat down to speak with her son. I watched her place her hand against the glass partition, watched him place his opposite hers, and I released a breath.

I wrapped my arm around my mom’s shoulder and kissed the top of her head as we walked away. “Thank you, Mom.”

“For what?”

“For never letting me go.”

* * *

That night she prepared dinner for the two of us, cooking all of Katie’s favorite side dishes. We talked all night long, real conversation with laughter. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d heard my mother laugh.

“I’ve missed this,” she told me, making two cups of coffee as we sat at the table. “Some of my favorite memories were spent around this table.

“Same with me,” I agreed.

“Is it hard for you? Without your sister here?”

“I actually think it was harder for me to be alone, than it was for me to be here.”

She nodded. “You thought you deserved to be alone. You don’t think that anymore, right?”

“Yeah, not at all. You all really helped me.” Her eyes watered over, and I laughed. “Come on, Ma. Don’t cry.”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. It’s just… I’ve missed you so much.”

“I’ve missed you, too. You have the greatest heart in this world. You see things in the way that most wouldn’t. What you did for Marie today…most people would’ve let her suffer.”

“I know what it feels like to suffer. Plus, I couldn’t help but think, what if it were you who committed the act of hate? What if my child made that level of mistake? How would I deal with it? I’d know I’d blame myself. It’s the mother instinct. You overthink everything from day one. You live in guilt for everything from missing a school concert to forgetting to put the juice box in their lunch bag. If it were you behind bars… If I were never able to hold you again, I’d feel more imprisoned than anyone else. Marie is trapped in a world of loneliness and guilt for the remainder of her life. So, she needed today. I needed today.”

“We all needed today, I think,” I agreed.

“How you helped her, how you held her… That was good. That was so, so good. Eli, you’re the best man I’ve ever known.”

“Well, ya know. Every good part of me exists because of you.”

After that night we started up our dinners together each week, growing closer each time. The more I learned about my mother, the more reasons she gave me to love her. One Sunday night as we sat at the dining room table, she looked up at me with that smile that matched my sister’s.

“I think we should expand our dinner nights,” she told me. “Invite others. Our family is big—we might as well all eat together.”

I grinned. “We’re going to need a bigger table,” I joked.

“Let’s just host it at TJ’s house. He’ll love it.”