“I said you’re banned,” Victoria replied, delighted by the opportunity to repeat herself. “From the beach house. Permanently. I changed the locks this afternoon, and I’ve already told the local police you’re no longer welcome on the property. Don’t embarrass yourself by trying to show up there.”
Alexandra’s grip tightened around the phone, not because she was surprised, but because a part of her had always known this day would come. It was not the shape of it that shocked her. It was the nerve.
“The beach house,” Alexandra said slowly, “that you told everyone I ruined by not attending Lily’s graduation party?”
Victoria gave a brittle little laugh. “Don’t start with that.”
“The party I wasn’t invited to?”
“Oh, please.”
“The party where you apparently told Dad and half the family I was too busy with work to celebrate Lily?”
Victoria exhaled hard into the phone, the sound of a woman already tired of facts. “You always do this. Always. You twist everything so you can make yourself the victim.”
Alexandra turned slightly, watching the sunset slide down the glass until it painted her cheek in orange light. She had learned, over the years, not to give Victoria the satisfaction of an immediate wound. When Alexandra was seventeen, she had cried during an argument and watched something hungry brighten in Victoria’s eyes. She had never forgotten it.
“I’m not twisting anything,” Alexandra said. “I’m repeating what happened.”
