I’m not calling her again.
At a gas station in December, a woman I didn’t recognize walked up while I was pumping gas and told me my sister used to buy her kid’s Girl Scout cookies every year, and did I know what I’d done to this town. I said nothing. I got in my car and drove home, and I did not apologize, not to her, not to anyone, because the version of this story where I stayed quiet to keep people comfortable is the version that already almost cost me my daughter.
Lucy recovered fully. Her cardiologist confirmed the conduction issue is minor, manageable, nothing that changes how she gets to live her life. She knows she got sick at her party. She knows Aunt Vanessa did something wrong and isn’t allowed near her anymore. She does not know the rest, and I have decided she doesn’t need to, not at eight years old, maybe not for a long time.
