Angelica is crying openly now.
The tears she used on me aren't working on her daughter, and she doesn't know what to do without them.
Her hands are shaking on the table. Her mouth opens and closes. She looks at me for help.
She's not going to find it.
Sadie Jo appears in the doorway behind Wrenleigh.
My dark-haired girl. My mirror.
She's pressed against the wall, partially hidden behind her sister, her blue-gray eyes moving between me and the blonde woman at the table with the kind of careful assessment that makes her seem so much older than thirteen.
She doesn't say anything. Doesn't move. Just watches—the way she watches everything, with those quiet eyes that see more than they should.
Angelica sees her and makes a sound. She gets up from the chair.
Something raw and wounded that comes from the part of a mother that never fully dies, no matter how badly she's failed. She stands from the chair.
"Sadie Jo. Oh, honey, look at you. You look just like your?—"
Sadie Jo takes a step back.
One step, but it says everything.
She presses closer to Wrenleigh, and Wrenleigh—fierce, angry, combustible Wrenleigh—shifts her body between her sister and their mother without thinking.
Protecting. The way I've protected them. The way Leah stepped between them and the danger she didn't even know about that first night at the hospital.
My girls. Wrenleigh the shield. Sadie Jo the quiet heart behind it.
"That's enough," I say. "Angelica, sit down."
She sits. She doesn't have a choice—my voice doesn't leave room for one.
"Girls. This is your mother. She's in Morgantown for a while. She's going to be around, but she's not living here and she's not part of our daily life." I look at Wrenleigh, then Sadie Jo. "If and when you want to talk to her, spend time with her, ask questions—that's your call. Not hers. Not mine. Yours. But nobody is going to force you."
Wrenleigh's jaw is so tight I'm afraid she's going to crack a tooth. "I don't want to talk to her."
"Okay. That's your right."
"I don't want her in this house."
"She won't be. Not after tonight."
Wrenleigh nods once—sharp, like Ruger. Then she turns to Sadie Jo. "Come on," she says quietly. "Let's go upstairs."
Sadie Jo doesn't move right away.
She's still looking at Angelica with that quiet, searching gaze—not angry like Wrenleigh, not cold like me.
Something else. Something that looks like trying to connect a face to a hole she's carried her whole life and finding that they don't quite match.
Then she looks at me. Asking permission. Asking what to feel.
I nod. "Go ahead, baby."
She goes. Following Wrenleigh up the stairs, her hand trailing along the wall the way it has since she was small enough that the wall was the only thing keeping her upright.
