She nudged me.
“So… can I borrow your car?”
I slowly turned toward her.
She held a straight face for two seconds before bursting out laughing.
I threw a porch cushion at her.
And for the first time in our lives, **neither of us was competing.**
Linda eventually pleaded guilty to financial exploitation, forgery, and theft-related charges. Part of her sentence was suspended, but restitution was ordered.
I visited her once.
Only once.
She looked older.
She asked whether I hated her.
I thought about the stolen inheritance.
The SUV.
The years of favoritism.
The truth she’d hidden.
Then I thought about Caroline.
The seventeen-year-old girl who never had the chance to raise me.
“I don’t hate you,” I said.
Linda began crying.
But I wasn’t finished.
“I also don’t forgive you yet.”
Her face fell.
Old Amelia would have hurried to soften those words.
New Amelia let them remain.
