She rolls her eyes. "Please. If you'd put your mind to it, I'm sure you could have found a way to get rid of me." She points to the cat I’m holding. "You let Marley stay inside because it made me happy. You invited me to swim with you even though it meant you couldn't be alone with Ivy. You protected your siblings by taking the blame for something that wasn't your fault."
"So I'm not as big a bastard as our dad. But I still am one. I made the deal with Williams behind everyone's back. I did the same to Ivy."
"Yeah, but the reasons were different."
Marley jumps from my arms and I lean against the door frame. "Oh, wise teenager, how is it different?"
Madison rolls her eyes at me again. "Dad would have done it to control the outcome for his own benefit. You did it to protect. To help. That's the difference."
"The result is the same. I betrayed their trust."
"Okay, yeah. You screwed up." She moves back to her suitcase, forgoing her precise packing to shoving the last of her clothes inside. "But Dad? He would have thrown everyone under thebus if it served him. He'd have let the whole thing explode and walked away clean. You took the hit."
I don't answer. What can I say?
Madison zips the suitcase with a sharp pull. “Honestly, you suck at being Louis Blackstone.”
I choke on a laugh. “What?”
She faces me fully, hands on her hips. "You feel guilty about everything. Our dad never felt bad about anything. Not once. Not about Mom, not about lying to your family, not about any of it. You? You're burying your mistakes in more mistakes and bottom-shelf bourbon.”
“Excuse me, Blackstone doesn’t even sell bottom-shelf bourbon.”
She shakes her head, but she’s smiling.
I look at her closed suitcases and my humor falls away. “And none of that makes me better,” I tell her. “It makes me pathetic."
"No, it makes you human. Our dad wasn't."
The words burrow under my skin, finding cracks I didn't know existed. The doorframe digs into my shoulder as I shift my weight. Every muscle in my body screams to end this conversation before she strips me down any further.
But that's exactly what Dad would do. Walk away when it gets complicated.
So I stay.
Madison picks up one of her bags and Marley. A flash of humor lights her eyes. "Sorry, he's leaving too."
I almost smile despite myself.
At the door, she stops and turns toward me. "Ivy's staying in Kentucky. Did she tell you that?"
My hand freezes on the doorframe. Relief hits so hard I blow out a breath. She's staying. She's not leaving Kentucky.
“That’s… she shouldn’t give up her career for—”
"She's not giving up anything. She's building something new. She's going to start her own practice here. Environmental law. She's already been making calls, looking at office space. And before you spiral into guilt about it, she told me it's not about you. It's about her. About what she wants to build. About me. About how she loves Kentucky."
I need to hear it again. “You and Ivy aren’t moving to New York?”
“Nope,” she says, popping the p.
She's staying. In Kentucky. It hits like bourbon on an empty stomach, burning all the way down. But the weight settles back in. She's rebuilding her career because of the choices I made. She’s rebuilding her life without me in it.
"But I do think part of it is about you. Not because she's trying to save you or fix you or whatever,” Madison says, waving a hand. “But because she sees something in you worth sticking around for. Something our dad never had."
"And what's that?"
"Figure it out yourself. I'm your little sister, not your therapist." She adjusts her grip on the cat. "You're smart. You'll get there."
