“I know.”
“Do you?”
Arden’s eyes filled again.
“I’m starting to.”
Those words mattered because they were not dramatic. They were not a perfect apology wrapped in music and tears. They were small, unfinished, uncomfortable.
Real.
Avery took the necklace, but she did not put it on.
“Why did you smile that day?” she asked.
Arden looked confused.
“What day?”
“When Mom said we’d be famous if we stayed together. I was terrified. You smiled.”
Arden’s face changed.
Avery had carried that memory for four years like evidence that her sister had betrayed her from the beginning.
But Arden’s answer came slowly.
“Because Mom was looking at me like she was proud,” Arden said. “And I didn’t know how to make her look at me that way unless I smiled.”
Avery felt the old memory shift.
Not disappear.
Not heal.
Just shift.
Two little girls in matching dresses.
One afraid of losing herself.
One afraid she had no self worth losing.
Avery leaned against the doorframe.
“We were kids,” she said.
Arden nodded.
“Then we grew up and still hurt each other,” Avery added.
Arden wiped her cheek. “I know.”
Avery looked at the necklace in her palm.
“I’m leaving tomorrow.”
“For Vermont?”
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