I walked to the front door and opened it before Karen could knock. We stood looking at each other through the screen.
“You went to mom and dad,” she said.
Her voice was almost unrecognizable.
“I did.”
“You have no idea what you’ve just started.”
I looked at my sister, at the woman who had mocked my daughter, plotted against my parents, and called me unstable for protecting my family.
And I felt something I hadn’t expected. Not triumph, not anger, pity, actual pity, because I could see in the fear behind her eyes that she had never once believed I was capable of this.
She had spent our whole lives underestimating me.
“Karen,” I said quietly. “I’ve already finished it.”
I closed the door.
Karen didn’t leave my driveway for 11 minutes. I know because I watched from the living room window, keeping myself just far enough back that she couldn’t see me.
She stood beside her car with her phone pressed to her ear, pacing in short, tight circles the way she always had when something wasn’t going according to plan. I had watched her do it as a teenager before lying to our parents. Some gestures survive decades unchanged.
Sophia came and stood beside me.
“She’s still there,” she said.
“I know.”
“Are you scared?”
I looked down at her, 11 years old, cereal spoon still in hand, watching the scene with those steady, dark eyes that had always seen more than people expected.
“No,” I said honestly. “Are you?”
She thought about it seriously. The way she thought about everything.
“A little, but you don’t seem scared, so I think it’s okay.”