I turned to her, surprised.
She shrugged. “Everyone else was dressed for a fantasy.”
“And me?”
“You came dressed like you didn’t need one.”
For a second I didn’t know what to say.
Then I nodded once.
Below us, traffic moved like blood through veins of light. Somewhere in the distance a siren cut through the dark and faded. The city kept going, as cities do, carrying ambition and heartbreak and ordinary dinners and terrible dates and impossible rent and beautiful chances in the same restless breath.
“I’m still angry sometimes,” Ivy said quietly.
“At him?”
“At myself.”
“That’ll pass slower.”
“I know.” She hesitated. “Thank you for not destroying me when you could have.”
I let out a small breath. “You weren’t the one I wanted to destroy.”
She looked at me. “Did you ever want revenge?”
I thought about Logan’s face at the brunch. About my father’s spreadsheet. My mother’s texts. Table 17. The folder of notes. Geneva. The raid. The silence after.
Then I answered truthfully.
“No,” I said. “I wanted reality.”
She nodded as if that was the only answer that made sense.
Eventually she went downstairs.
I stayed a little longer.
There is a version of this story where I end by telling you my family changed completely and we all became close and honest and healed in some glowing montage of dinners and confessions.
That is not this story.
My parents still care too much about appearances, though less arrogantly now. Ivy still struggles with how much of herself she once outsourced to admiration. I still keep pieces of my life private. We are all, in our different ways, works in progress with nicer furniture than wisdom probably deserves.
