In the sixth week, Jamal agreed to dinner at Angela's house on the condition that it would be the two of them only, that the gray sectional would not hold any ghosts in towels, that they would eat and he would leave by nine. Rhea drove him over and waited in the car for the first twenty minutes like a soft-spoken security detail.
Angela had cooked his favorites: smothered pork chops, collards, cornbread, sweet potatoes with the marshmallows he had loved as a child and pretended to outgrow. The table was set for two. The family photographs were still on the wall. Jamal noticed that the championship photo with Daryl had been moved to a less central place — not removed, not hidden, just demoted, as if geography could negotiate guilt.
They ate. They talked about safe things: Rhea's garden, a cousin's baby, the weather. Then Angela set down her fork and said, "I'm still seeing him."
Jamal's appetite left the room.
"I told you I wouldn't lie," she continued, voice steady in the way of someone who had rehearsed honesty until it stopped shaking. "He moved into his own place across town. He does not stay here overnight. We are — careful. Quiet. I know careful and quiet don't fix what we broke. But I also know I am forty-eight years old and I spent too many years confusing solitude with virtue. I love you. I am your mother. And I am also a woman who does not want to die lonely in this house while pretending that wanting companionship is a crime against your childhood."
Jamal stared at his plate. The pork chop looked like food from another life. "You want my blessing."
"I want your honesty. Even if your honesty is that you can't forgive me yet."
"I can't forgive you yet."
"All right."
"And I may never forgive him."