Page 35 of The Moment I Knew

“She’s good at English,” Dad said. I looked up from my plate to find him smiling proudly at me. My lips tilted up in a small smile too at the compliment. “Always has been.”

Hilary nodded. “That makes sense. You seem like a reader.”

And just like that, the smile was gone. I slowly twirled my fork into the pasta. “Not really.”

She watched me take my first bite. “Careful, it’s hot.”

I swallowed. It was good. I hated that it was good. But I certainly wasn’t going to tell her that it was.

“What do you think? Hilary is a great cook, isn’t she?”

Hilary laughed and nudged his knee under the table. I looked down at my plate, pushing noodles into a neat pile. My appetite dulled.

“You need more vegetables,” she said, scooping some onto my plate without waiting. “Teenagers think they’re invincible.”

“I eat vegetables,” I said.

“I’m sure it feels like you have a lot, but you need more than you think.”

My dad cleared his throat. “She’s fine, Hil.”

Hilary smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “I know. I’m just looking out for her.”

The words sat there, smug, like she hadn’t helped blow my entire life apart. Like she hadn’t looked my dad in the eye and decided that whatever she wanted mattered more than my mum, more than us, more than the way things had been before she showed up.

I was fifteen, not five. I remembered appointments, deadlines, which nights my mum worked late and which mornings my dad forgot to set his alarm. I packed my own bag. I made my own excuses. I managed two households that refused to speak to each other. And somehow this woman—this woman who was barely old enough to have gone to my high school at the same time as my babysitters—thought she got to supervise me.

I stabbed a noodle and chewed it hard. Hilary reached across the table and nudged my plate, angling it toward me. “You should eat a little more.”

I looked at my dad. He didn’t meet my eyes.

“I’m full,” I said, pushing the plate back toward her.

Hilary’s smile tightened, like she didn’t love being told no. “You barely touched it.”

“I ate enough.”

There was a beat of silence as she stared at me, her face frozen in a smile. Clearly, she wasn’t interested in talking to a teenager who had her own mind and thoughts.

“If she’s full, she’s full,” Dad said.

Hilary let out a small laugh like she’d been joking the whole time. “Okay, okay. I just worry.”

You don’t get to worry about me. Not after you ruined my family.

The conversation lurched forward again, awkward and forced. My dad asked about school, and I answered him, deliberately not looking at Hilary. When she jumped in anyway to correct, I felt something cold and steady settle in my chest. She talked like she’d earned a place at this table. Like she hadn’t crawled into it through the wreckage of someone else’s marriage.

When I reached for my water, she slid a coaster under my glass before I could stop her.

“Careful,” she said. “It’ll leave a ring.”

I stared at the coaster. “So?”

She blinked. “So it’s rude to not use a coaster at someone else’s table.”

My dad frowned. “It’s an old table that we’re going to swap out soon, Hil.”

Hilary laughed again, too quick. “I just like to take care of things.”