“Enough.”

“No!” Linda shouted. “She deserves the truth.”

She stared directly at me.

“I was twenty-one. I had plans. Then Caroline died, and suddenly there was a newborn baby everybody expected me to love because it was her dying wish.”

My chest tightened.

“I did love you,” she said, tears pouring down her face. “At first.”

At first.

Two words capable of destroying an entire childhood.

“But every time Dad looked at you,” she continued, “he saw Caroline. Every time Mom held you, she cried. Everything became about the daughter they lost and the baby she left behind.”

“So you punished me.”

“I was angry.”

“I was a baby.”

“I know!”

Ava was silently crying now.

I looked at her.

For years, I’d believed she was simply the favored daughter.

Now I understood something much uglier.

**Linda had used both of us to punish a dead sister.**

She spoiled Ava because Ava belonged to her.

She diminished me because I didn’t.

And she turned us against each other because our rivalry gave her resentment somewhere to go.

Grandpa moved toward me.

I stepped back.

Not because I blamed him equally.

I simply couldn’t bear anyone touching me.

Then Ava stood.

She walked to the desk.

Picked up the SUV keys.

And placed them in front of me.

“I’m sorry.”

I looked at her.

She trembled.

“I knew it was yours,” she said. “I knew taking it was wrong. I told myself Mom was right because… because believing you were spoiled made me feel better about being jealous.”

She swallowed.