Vanessa’s face crumpled then, not dramatically, not in a way that asked for an audience. Just one small surrender around the eyes.
“I thought you were jealous,” she whispered.
“I know.”
“I thought you were trying to make me feel stupid when you mentioned inspections.”
“I know that too.”
My mother looked down at her tea.
Rain moved softly against the windows.
For years, my family had turned my patience into smallness. My research into fear. My practicality into evidence that I lacked ambition. Vanessa’s choices were praised because they looked expensive. Mine were mocked because they looked like work.
Now the room was sitting inside my work.
Dry.
Safe.
Standing.
Dad cleared his throat. “Maybe we underestimated your profession.”
I looked at him.
It was the closest he had ever come to admitting anything.
But close is not arrival.
“You underestimated me,” I said.
The room held its breath.
My mother lifted her eyes.
I expected her to defend herself. To say I was being sensitive. To remind me Vanessa was in crisis and this was not the time. I had rehearsed those lines in my head so often I could have spoken them for her.
Instead, she looked at the folder.
Then around the kitchen.
“You did this yourself?”
“Most of it.”
“The floors?”
“Still doing them.”
“The cabinets?”
“One at a time.”
Her face shifted through something complicated. Discomfort. Surprise. Shame, maybe, though I did not trust it yet.