Chapter 8 - JACE’S APOLOGY
Jace wrote to me six months later.
The first page explained.
The second apologized.
He said he had grown up inside Cutler’s and believed knowing products made him an expert on people. He admitted he enjoyed making customers laugh because it gave him authority in a store where older men often treated him like a child.
Then I entered with one arm.
Mocking me allowed him to feel experienced before he had to prove anything.
He wrote:
I thought your skill was the reason I was wrong. It took me months to understand I was wrong before you touched the rifle.
That sentence was the only reason I finished reading.
Jace had completed restitution work arranged through the grant review and enrolled in a firearms-safety and adaptive-access certification course. Nora had not promised him another job.
He asked whether I would tell Walter he was sorry.
I wrote back once.
Tell him yourself. Do not ask the person you mocked to carry your apology to the next person you harmed.
Walter later told me Jace visited his nephew.
The nephew listened.
He did not forgive him that day.
Jace accepted the answer.
May you like
Accountability is not proven by receiving forgiveness.
Sometimes it is proven by behaving differently after forgiveness is withheld.
