“It is ugly.”
My mother suddenly burst into tears.
Not quiet tears. Not guilty tears. Big, trembling, attention-hungry tears that had saved Melissa from consequences for most of her life.
“I only wanted my girls to stop fighting,” she sobbed.
I looked at her in disbelief. “You created this.”
“I tried to keep the family together.”
“You helped my sister steal from me.”
She flinched. “Don’t say that.”
“Why? Because it’s true?”
Her crying hardened into something colder. “You have always been selfish with success, Amanda. You never understood how it felt for Melissa to watch you win.”
The sentence struck me harder than I expected.
Not because it was new.
Because it was honest.
There it was, buried beneath years of birthday excuses and borrowed money and overlooked insults. My success had not made my mother proud. It had made her resentful on Melissa’s behalf.
I nodded slowly.
“Thank you,” I said.
My mother blinked through her tears. “For what?”
