“No,” Victoria snapped. “What happened is that you chose to humiliate Lily during one of the most important weekends of her life because you can’t stand not being the center of attention. You couldn’t bear that your stepsister graduated with honors, had a party, had people proud of her. So you stayed away and made everyone talk about you.”
Alexandra almost laughed, but it came out as a quiet breath.
There were so many versions of history in Victoria’s house, and nearly all of them had Alexandra cast as the problem. If Alexandra showed up, she was trying to steal attention. If she stayed home, she was sulking. If she spoke, she was dramatic. If she remained silent, she was cold. The rules changed because the point was never the rules. The point was control.
“I didn’t even know about the party until I saw the pictures online,” Alexandra said.
Victoria scoffed. “Convenient.”
“Was the invitation sent by carrier pigeon?”
“That sarcasm is exactly why people don’t like being around you.”
There it was. The smooth little knife.
Alexandra looked at her reflection again. She saw the woman she had spent years becoming: careful, hardworking, competent, independent. But behind that reflection was another image, ghosted onto the glass by memory. A gray-shingled beach house on the Massachusetts coast. A wraparound porch. White railings worn smooth by generations of hands. A crooked blue garden gate her grandfather had built himself. A line of deep crimson roses nodding in salt wind. Her mother standing barefoot on the porch in cut-off jeans and an old Red Sox sweatshirt, laughing as she called Alexandra in from the sand.
The house was not a vacation property to Alexandra. It was not a status symbol. It was not an asset to be leveraged, redecorated, photographed, or used as proof of belonging. It was the only place in her childhood that had felt completely honest.
