Pops—Ariana Nasbro

Pops’s relationship with Ariana Nasbro takes shape through a letter, several meetings, and a decision that sharply differs from Wendy Tynes’s response to the same loss. After Ariana killed Pops’s husband, John, while driving drunk, Pops chooses to forgive her—not because the harm is undone, but because he no longer wants to hold on to it. His request to Wendy is correspondingly limited: she need not follow his example, but he wants her to respect it.

The Letter and the Return

Pops tells Wendy that he did not return to New Jersey only to visit her and Charlie. The reason is a letter from Ariana, which led him to meet with her more than once during that week. The sequence matters: Ariana initiates contact in writing, and Pops responds not with a single reported encounter but with repeated meetings. The evidence does not detail what they discussed or what Ariana wrote; it establishes that her letter brought them into renewed contact and that Pops’s decision followed those encounters.

The news catches Wendy off guard. For her, Ariana is not an abstract figure seeking forgiveness: she is the repeat drunk driver who killed John. Pops does not deny that distinction or minimize the consequence. He presents his forgiveness as a choice about what he himself will continue to carry, saying that he does not want to hold on to the grievance and believes John would not want him to. Compassion, in his view, remains possible even where the injury is grave and irreversible.

Forgiveness Without Erasing the Harm

Pops’s forgiveness is not depicted as absolution in any legal or factual sense. Ariana remains responsible for having killed John, and the narrative gives no indication that forgiveness changes what happened or removes its consequences. Instead, it marks a change in Pops’s stance toward the person who caused the loss: after receiving her letter and meeting with her, he decides not to remain bound to anger. His appeal to what John would have wanted connects that decision to his marriage, while his question about compassion makes it an ethical choice he must make for himself.

The story places this choice beside other responses to wrongdoing without treating them as interchangeable. Wendy thinks of Christa Stockwell forgiving the college boys who had wronged her, and of Phil Turnball learning the cost of holding too tightly to revenge and hate. Those recollections make forgiveness legible as a way of protecting what remains valuable. Yet Wendy also recognizes the difference between those circumstances and Ariana’s repeated drunk driving and the death of John. The comparison does not settle the question for her; it exposes why Pops’s decision cannot simply be applied to someone else.

Pops and Wendy’s Different Responses

Wendy tells Pops that she cannot forgive Ariana. Her refusal is direct, but it does not become a demand that he withdraw his own forgiveness. Pops answers that he is not asking her to forgive Ariana and that he respects her position. What he asks in return is respect for what he is doing. The exchange establishes a boundary between them: each may respond to John’s death differently without turning that difference into a contest over who grieves correctly.

Wendy agrees that she thinks she can respect his choice. The agreement is narrower than forgiveness and does not suggest that she has changed her judgment of Ariana. It allows Pops’s decision to stand while preserving Wendy’s own inability to make it. Their comfortable silence afterward gives the disagreement a settled, intimate ending rather than resolving it through persuasion: the two remain together even though they have not arrived at the same moral response.

The Relationship’s Significance

The relationship between Pops and Ariana is shown indirectly through the steps Pops takes after her letter and through the meaning he gives those steps. The meetings demonstrate contact; his declaration makes clear that he intends to forgive; his appeal to compassion explains why he chooses that course. Beyond this, the narrative leaves the terms of their encounters unspecified. It does not establish what Ariana asked of him, whether she responded to his decision, or what their relationship becomes afterward.

The scene also places Pops and Wendy together over wine on an evening when both know that alcohol has been connected to devastating losses: it killed John and Haley McWaid. Wendy notices the contradiction but postpones searching for its deeper meaning. That unresolved detail sits alongside the more explicit difference between her and Pops. His forgiveness is not presented as a universal answer to loss, and her refusal does not cancel the closeness between them; their bond makes room for a choice each cannot make on the other’s behalf.