My fingers trembled as I took the stack, the paper soft and thinned from being handled. The first envelope had my name written on the front, the ink slightly smudged from what looked like a tear.
And inside—inside was Mom’s voice, captured in loops and lines.
I blinked rapidly, fighting the burn of tears. “Why are you giving them to me now?”
Lily stared out at the water. “Because I’m starting to realize that maybe everything I thought I knew about our family isn’t exactly true.”
A gull cried overhead, wheeling in a lazy arc.
“Dad’s talking about divorce,” she said, barely above a whisper. “He and Victoria… they’ve been fighting. A lot. About the house. About you. About… everything. I heard things I wasn’t supposed to hear. And I started thinking about… all the times Mom said stuff about you. About how you were selfish, or jealous, or dramatic.”
She swallowed. “And then I watched you that day with the cops. You weren’t dramatic. You were… calm. That lawyer said Mom—I mean, your mom—put the house in your name years ago. Victoria knew that. She pretended she didn’t.”