My witness text is four sentences long and takes me longer to write than the whole label did. I keep the basement out of it except to say we were held there, no detail about the cold or the sound of Leon's breathing beside me. That part isn't for a gallery wall. It's mine, or it's his, and I won't spend either of our worst moments to make a room feel more serious than it already is.
Leon's text is three sentences, shorter than mine. Side by side, they put the first doubt in different places. Mine says I accepted the uniforms until the men seized us. His says he suspected something before the coffee hit the floor and said nothing because he didn't want to be wrong in front of me.
"You never told me that," I say.
"I know," he says. "I'm telling you now because Celia asked me to write down what I remember, not what matches your version."
It stings more than I expect, hearing it cold across a conference table instead of however he might have told me four years ago if either of us had been able to talk about it. But I don't correct his sentence and he doesn't ask me to soften mine. Celia doesn't ask us to reconcile them either, which I notice, and which I think is the actual point of asking for two separate texts instead of one.
"I owe you both something more specific than I've said this week," Celia says, once the texts are approved and the proofs are gone to print. "I've been treating your presence here as a problem to manage so the opening goes smoothly. That's not fair to either of you, and it's not what I'd want done to me if our positions were reversed."
"That's a decent start," Leon says, not unkindly, but not letting it go further than it's earned either.
"It is a start," Celia agrees. "I'm not asking it to be the end of it."
I think about the four years between the basement and this table, the resignation letter, the repair counter, the way Celia's name used to make something tighten in my chest before I could stop it. The apology doesn't erase any of that. It doesn't need to. It just sits next to it, a separate true thing.
"I accept that," I tell her, "without pretending it costs less than it did."
Celia nods like that's the only version of acceptance she expected or deserved.
Leon looks at me once the room's quieter, Celia gone to check on the printer proofs. "You going Friday?" he asks.
I hadn't said yes to anyone yet, not even myself, but hearing him ask it plainly makes the answer easier to find than I expected. "Yeah," I say. "I think I am."
"Good," he says, and doesn't make it bigger than that, which is exactly the size I can carry it in right now.