I swallow once.
Controlled.
“She never looked at me like that.”
Logan’s voice is quiet.
“Why?”
“Because I learned early.”
A beat.
“How to be quiet. How to not take up space. How to not give her anything to react to.”
The room feels smaller for a second.
Not physically.
Memory.
“She tried to teach Tessa the same way,” I say.
My hands tighten slightly on the edge of the table.
“But Tessa couldn’t do it.”
A faint breath leaves me.
“She wasn’t built for that.”
And thank God she wasn’t.
“She would cry,” I continue. “Or laugh too loud. Or ask too many questions.”
A pause.
“And every time—my mother would look at her like she was… wrong.”
The word sits there.
Heavy.
Real.
“So I stepped in.”
Logan’s eyes sharpen slightly.
“How?”
“I redirected,” I say. “Changed the focus. Took the attention.”
A small, humorless exhale.
“I learned how to be just enough of a problem that she’d stop looking at Tessa.”
That’s the truth.
