I read it twice. Then I put it in a drawer—not because it didn’t matter, but because I wasn’t ready to decide what it meant.
Months later, Paige asked if she could meet me for coffee.
I agreed.
She looked smaller without Victoria beside her. Less glossy. More real. She wore no designer logos, no perfect hair. She looked like someone who’d been forced to reckon with the fact that privilege can be built on someone else’s pain.
“I’m in therapy,” she told me, voice quiet. “I didn’t even know how messed up my normal was until it collapsed.”
I nodded. “That happens,” I said.
She swallowed. “I’m trying to pay back the foundation,” she said. “Not because I owe them legally—I don’t. But because I owe…something.”
I studied her, trying to reconcile this woman with the girl who’d watched my room get emptied and chewed gum like my grief was boring.
“Why?” I asked.
She looked down. “Because I don’t want my life to be built on theft,” she whispered. “And because…you didn’t deserve it.”
It wasn’t a magic fix. But it was a start.
Meanwhile, Beckett Advisory Group took off faster than I expected.