“No. You don’t.” Her voice was shaking. “I’m not sorry because I got caught. I didn’t even do anything to get caught for. I’m sorry because I believed them.
Because it was easy. Because they said you didn’t care about me, and part of me wanted it to be true, because then I didn’t have to feel bad about being in your room.”
I didn’t say anything.
“I was always so jealous of you,” she said. “Did you know that? You were the smart one. The brave one. Grandpa’s favorite. West Point. Captain. I was just Chloe.” She
laughed a little, wetly. “And Mom always said it was my turn. That you’d gotten everything. That it was only fair.”
“I didn’t get everything, Chlo.”
“I know that now.” She looked around the kitchen. At the BLESSED sign. At the big TV. “I don’t even like this stuff. Mom picked it all out. She said it would make it feel like ours.”
We stood there for a moment.
“Do you know where Grandpa’s chair is?” I asked.
Chloe winced. “The garage. Mom wanted to get rid of it. Vance put it in the workshop instead.” She glanced at her husband. “He said it felt wrong to throw it out.”
I looked at Vance.
He shrugged, not meeting my eyes. “It’s a good chair. Real leather. They don’t make them like that.”
It wasn’t much. But it was something.
The next few weeks were hard.
I won’t pretend they weren’t.
Chloe and Vance moved out at the end of the month. I didn’t give them a deadline. Dalton told me I could, legally, and I thought about it. But in the end, Chloe was the one who said they’d go.
