He hired another contractor.
That contractor gave him a demolition estimate.
For weeks, Jason avoided looking at us.
Then one evening, he came to our porch without the swagger he had carried the morning he tore out the ramp.
He stood at the bottom step.
He did not use the ramp.
“I was wrong,” he said.
The words were flat and incomplete, but they were words he had not been able to say before.
Emma was beside me.
She asked him one question.
“Were you wrong about the line, or were you wrong to trap me outside my own house?”
Jason looked at the boards beneath her wheels.
He looked at the front door he had blocked.
For several seconds, he said nothing.
“Both,” he finally answered.
