over the water. The day was starting, indifferent to our history.
“I’m not pretending one gesture fixes anything,” Celeste said.
“I know.”
“I don’t know if we’re sisters the way other people are sisters anymore.”
I looked at her then, really looked. The old instinct to measure who had won, who had lost, who was more loved, more admired, more securely placed, seemed tired suddenly. Smaller than the morning.
“Maybe not,” I said. “But we can stop being enemies for an audience.”
Her mouth shook into something that wasn’t a smile and wasn’t grief, but lived close to both.
She nodded.
Then the front bell rang, and I turned toward the foyer as sunlight moved across the floorboards Rose had chosen with her own hands. Staff lifted their heads. The scent of coffee drifted in from the kitchen. For the first time in my life, I was not waiting to be chosen by the family I came from.
I was opening the doors to the one I had built.
