I swallow hard.
“No,” I whisper. “They ruined everything.”
“Sweetheart,” Irene says, brushing a thumb over my knuckles, “if they ruined you, you wouldn’t be sitting here.”
The fire pops.
Aunt Susan sniffles behind her mask.
Even the house feels like it’s listening.
“You survived something most grown women wouldn’t,” Irene says. “Twice. And you’re still standing. Still fighting. Still trying to figure out how to move forward.”
Her voice softens.
“And that scares the hell out of people who’ve never had to survive anything.”
A hot tear slips down my cheek.
Irene wipes it away like she’s done it a thousand times for a thousand broken girls.
“You’re not done,” she says. “You’re just starting.”
I stare down at my cocoa.
I’m not sure I believe her.
But right now, sitting here with their hands in warm wax, the fire cracking, my fingers wrapped around something sweet and hot…
I want to.
I really, really want to.
Irene finishes wiping the last bit of paraffin off my hands and tosses the towel aside.
“Well,” she says, “it’s almost movie time.”
She reaches for the remote, then pauses.
Her eyes flick to me, then to the fire.
“But before we watch anything, I want to tell you a story.”
Aunt Susan groans immediately.
“Oh Lordy. Is this going to be one of your metaphors?”
“It’s not a metaphor,” Irene says. “It’s a memory.”
Something in her voice makes me straighten.
She settles back on the couch, tucks one leg under her, and wraps both hands around her cocoa like it’s part of a ritual.
“There was a girl,” she begins.
Of course there was.
“There was a girl in my school. This was the seventies and eighties, mind you—no smartphones, no social media, no viral videos. If someone humiliated you, it didn’t go global. It just… stuck to the walls of your town forever.”
