“She isolated us both.”
That was the truth I least wanted and most needed.
Because it would have been easier to believe I had simply been absent.
But I had been present sometimes.
And still manipulated.
I had loved Sophie through a fog Penelope pumped into the house one whisper at a time.
“What were the pills?” I asked.
Sophie swallowed.
“I don’t know. She said they were vitamins at first. Then something for sleep. Then she told me if I didn’t take them, she’d tell you I was refusing treatment.”
“Did you take them?”
Her silence answered before her mouth did.
“Sometimes,” she said. “When she threatened to call social services. When she said she’d have Julian taken away.”
A coldness passed through me.
Not rage this time.
Something sharper.
A decision.
“She will never enter our home again,” I said.
Sophie looked away.
“You say that now.”
“I mean it.”
“You used to say she was complicated.”
“I was wrong.”
“You used to say she loved intensely.”
“I was wrong.”
“You used to say she only wanted what was best.”
“I was wrong.”
She closed her eyes, and tears slipped out sideways into her hair.
“I needed you to be wrong sooner.”
There was nothing to defend.
