Lily blinked in surprise. She had expected a fight.
It was obvious she came ready for drama, and my calm response left her with nothing to feed on.
“Don’t try anything, Ava,” my mother added, her tone sharpening.
“You have twenty-four hours.”
After they left, I stood in the hallway for a long time, listening to the quiet.
The old furnace clicked on.
A car passed outside.
The refrigerator hummed faintly in the kitchen.
Those sounds had been my life for three years.
Everything had narrowed down to that after my father got sick.
My dad, Henry Carter, had bought the house long before he married my mother.
It had belonged to his parents—a modest two-story place in Worthington, Ohio, just outside Columbus. It had creaky stairs, real wood trim, and a backyard that turned golden every October.
As a child, it felt ordinary.
Later, I realized how much of our family lived inside those walls.
Holidays. Arguments. Homework spread across the dining table.
Dad sanding window frames on summer weekends.
My mother criticizing everything without ever really fixing anything herself.
Lily had always been the favorite.
Beautiful, dramatic, always caught in some crisis that needed saving.