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“Well,” she says, finally. “That’s — quite a lot to take in, Margo.”

That’s the whole reaction. No gasp, no rush across the room, none of the specific overwhelming joy she poured all over Maddison the moment her engagement and pregnancy were announced — the champagne that appeared within the hour, the calls to relatives, the specific performance of delight that filled this same room for an entire weekend when Maddison came home with a ring on her finger and news of a baby on the way. Just *that’s quite a lot to take in,* delivered with the careful neutrality of a woman managing her own composure in front of guests, even though the only guests are her own family.

I feel it land exactly the way it’s landed my whole life — the specific, familiar cold of being received instead of celebrated. I think about every school play Maddison starred in and I understudied, every cheer competition Maddison’s more dramatic performances got remembered over my steadier ones, every single time my mother’s attention found its way to whichever daughter needed managing more urgently, which was never me, because I learned early that needing things loudly wasn’t a strategy that worked in this house.

“Are congratulations in order?” Theo asks. Careful. Direct. I can hear the edge underneath the politeness.

“Of course,” my mother says, too quickly. “Of course, congratulations. I’m just — processing.” She smooths her skirt, a small automatic gesture I recognize from a lifetime of watching her manage her own face in difficult moments. “Twins, you said?”

“Identical. Due in November.”

“Well.” Another pause, another careful recalibration. “That’s certainly a lot happening at once for both my girls.”

The word both sits there, doing exactly the work I think she intends it to do — collapsing two entirely different receptions into one polite, equal-sounding sentence, as though the champagne and the careful silence were somehow the same size. That word is still hanging in the air when Maddison finally finds her voice.

Maddison doesn’t process quietly.

“Are you serious right now?” She’s on her feet, hand pressed to her own stomach, the specific fury of someone who’s decided an entirely different story is happening than the one actually unfolding. “I announce my engagement. I tell everyone I’m pregnant. And now, months later, the second everyone’s finally used to my news, you show up with the exact same thing? Come on, Margo.”

“This isn’t about you, Maddison.”

“Isn’t it, though?” Her voice climbs. “You’ve spent your whole life playing the easy one, the good one, and now suddenly you’re pregnant too, right when everyone’s paying attention to me for once? I don’t buy it. I think you couldn’t stand watching me get something and decided you needed the same thing to steal the spotlight back.”

“That is not what happened.” My voice comes out steadier than I feel. “I found out months ago. This has nothing to do with you.”

“Sure.” Maddison’s laugh is sharp, disbelieving. “Convenient timing regardless. You couldn’t just be happy for me. You had to make sure it wasn’t just my moment.”

“I didn’t come here to take anything from you.” I hold my ground, though my hands are shaking at my sides. “I came here because I’m scared and pregnant and I wanted my family to know, the same way you wanted us to know when it happened to you. That’s the entire reason I’m standing in this room.”

“You’ve never once been happy for me about anything.” Maddison’s voice cracks, something rawer surfacing underneath the accusation. “Not the engagement, not the wedding planning, nothing. You just show up looking wounded and let everyone feel sorry for you instead.”

“That’s not fair.”

“None of this is fair!” Her voice breaks fully now, tears standing in her eyes, and for a second I catch something underneath the anger that might actually be real — not jealousy of my pregnancy specifically, but something older, some lifelong conviction that Margo-the-easy-one has always secretly been winning some contest Maddison’s been fighting alone. “I have spent my entire life trying to get anyone in this family to actually look at me the way they look at you, and now you’re standing here pregnant too, and somehow that’s still going to be about how brave and composed you are about it, isn’t it? It always is.”

That’s when Theo’s voice cuts across the room.

“That’s enough.”

Low and controlled, but with something underneath it I’ve genuinely never heard from him before — not the wall, not the careful restraint, something closer to a dam finally giving out.

“You don’t get to stand there and accuse her of jealousy,” he says, stepping forward, “when she’s been carrying two babies alone for weeks, scared out of her mind about how it would affect everyone else’s lives before her own, and the first thing you do when she finally tells you is make it about you. Again.”

“Excuse me —“

“No, actually, I’m not finished.” His voice rises, sharp enough that Michael flinches by the window. “I’ve watched Margo run herself into the ground trying not to inconvenience anyone with this. She withdrew from a national championship to protect these babies. She told her own coach before she told half her friends because she was more worried about everyone else’s timeline than her own safety. And you’re standing here calling her jealous of your goddamn engagement ring like she’s been sitting around waiting for a reason to compete with you.”

“You don’t know anything about our family —“

“I know enough.” His jaw is tight, his hands flexing at his sides. “I know she’s spent her whole life being the one nobody worries about because she’s too busy worrying about everyone else. I know that’s not an accident. I know somebody in this room taught her that.” He looks at my mother, briefly, before turning back to Maddison. “And I am not going to stand here and let you dress up your own insecurity as some kind of righteous accusation against the one person in this family who’s actually been honest with you. She didn’t do this to hurt you. Fuck, Maddison, she barely had room to think about you at all, she was too busy surviving her own version of this without a single one of you making it easier.”

The room is completely silent.

I let it stay silent for a second before I decide I’m not finished either.

“Since we’re doing this,” I say, into the quiet, my own voice shaking but steady enough to keep going, “let’s actually do this.”

Maddison’s face shifts, wary. “Margo —“