beta
I'm not making excuses to the FL but as a person who was terrible abused by my own mother, If she one day wake up and began to apologize to me from nowhere I would have freak out and I would have thought "what is she trying to do now? " The distrust was too big.
Also we abused children sometimes thought that apologizing is worthless because you are going to be hit or abused anyways, so in the end we said nothing and became desensitized towards the correct situations where to apologize and why. I fixed this with 6 years of therapy and I'm still with lots of issues.
Actually I liked that she first wait a bit and did good stuff for him before apologizing. I also like who the kid it's portrayed because even now with the apology, he is still wary of her.
Trust, when it's broken in that way, take years to be able to put it back again. And the fear with always be there. The anxiety, the intrusive thoughts. So be a bit kind to FL in that sense. She is an abused child too. And yes, child. She can be a grown up physically but you are always going to be an abused child in your head because you can't develop properly in the middle of abuse. You need to heal the hurt inner child to be able to properly react and take good judgment decisions as an adult.