Halfway through dinner, Kate blurted, “I found your old diary.”
I froze. “What?”
“From high school,” she said, cheeks flushing. “I was helping pack your old room and… Olivia, the way you described it. The pain, the fear. The way you tried to tell us and then stopped because we made you feel crazy.”
My fork paused halfway to my mouth.
“I didn’t want to read it,” Kate continued quickly. “But it was open. And I saw a page where you wrote, ‘Maybe I am making it up. Maybe I just hate dinner.’”
Her voice cracked. “How can you even stand to be around us?”
Silence fell heavy. Dad’s eyes shut briefly like he couldn’t take it. Mom stared at her hands.
I set my fork down and let myself answer honestly.
“I was angry,” I said. “I still am, sometimes. Because I didn’t just need you to believe me. I needed you to stop forcing me to prove it.”
Kate nodded, tears dropping onto her plate.
“But,” I continued, “I can be around you now because you finally listened. And once you listened, you changed. That matters.”
Dad cleared his throat. “We visited an allergist ourselves,” he said, like he needed to confess. “To learn. She explained the symptoms, the fear, the… trauma of not being believed.”