“She chose her career. Her reputation. Her image.” June heard the bitterness in her own voice and hated it. “I was never going to compete with that.”
“Maybe not. But that doesn’t mean what you felt wasn’t real.”
June closed her eyes. She could still see Melissa’s face that last morning—pale, desperate, reaching for her. Could still hear her voice:I’m trying to protect you.
But who’s protecting me from you?
“I should have known better,” June said quietly. “Dad warned me. You both did.”
“That’s not what I said.” Laura’s voice was gentle but firm. “I said to be careful. I never said she couldn’t love you.”
“She didn’t love me. If she did, she would have—” June stopped.
“Would have what?”
June stared at the covered dough. “She would have chosen me. Even once. Even just once, in public, she would have chosen me instead of the other thing.”
Laura was quiet for a moment. “I’m not defending what she did. But I’m also not going to pretend it’s simple. Nothing about this is simple.”
June didn’t have an answer for that. She just stood there, flour on her hands, aching in ways she didn’t know how to name.
She went to the Brandt house on Tuesday.
It was stupid. She knew it was stupid even as she pulled into the driveway, even as she walked up the front path, even as she rang the doorbell and waited with her heart pounding.
Melissa’s car wasn’t there, but that was expected, and wanted. This wasn’t about Melissa.
This was about Lila.
She waited on the porch while the new nanny went to find her, and she looked at the sunflowers she and Lila had planted together along the back fence, now visible around the side of the house. They’d grown taller than June had expected, taller than Lila, almost as tall as her—fat green stems with heads just beginning to tip toward yellow. They’d planted them thinking they might not bloom before summer ended. They were going to bloom. June had no idea if she’d be here to see it.
Footsteps inside. Then Lila appeared in the doorway.
She looked different. Smaller, somehow. Closed off. Her face, when she saw June, didn’t light up the way it used to.
“Hi, sweetheart,” June said softly. “I wanted to see how you were doing.”
Lila didn’t move from the doorway. “I’m fine.”
“I miss you. I’ve been thinking about you every day.”
“Then why did you leave?”
The question was expected, but it still hit hard. “I—things got complicated, and—”
“You promised.” Lila’s voice was flat, but her eyes were bright with unshed tears. “You promised you’d always tell me the truth. You promised you weren’t going to leave like everyone else.”
“Lila—”
“But you did. You left, just like Daddy, just like everyone.” Lila’s small hands were clenched at her sides. “I don’t want to talk to you.”
“Please, sweetheart. If you’d just let me explain—”
“I don’t want you to explain. I want you to go away.”
The door closed in June’s face.
June stood there for a long moment, staring at the wood, listening to the sound of small footsteps retreating inside. She’dthought—she didn’t know what she’d thought. That Lila would soften when she saw her. That being there in person would count for something. She’d known it might go like this and she’d come anyway, and now she was standing on the porch of a house that wasn’t hers anymore, next to sunflowers she’d planted with a child who had just told her to go away, feeling every bit as stupid as she’d known she might feel.
