Her eyes filled.
“I was the messy one before I even made a mess.”
I did not know what to say.
“I’m not saying that excuses anything,” she added quickly. “It doesn’t. I let Mom rescue me because it felt good to be chosen, even if it was wrong. And Sylas made it easy to stay helpless because then nothing was ever fully my fault.”
A breeze moved through the chain-link fence.
Somewhere behind us, a child laughed.
Elowen looked at me.
“I’m sorry.”
It was the second apology in two weeks.
Apparently life had decided to become unreasonable.
“I don’t know what to do with yours either,” I said.
She nodded.
“Fair.”
That word again.
Maybe it was spreading.
“I’m not asking for money,” she said.
“Good.”
She smiled a little.
“I’m asking if you would come to Wren’s reading night next month. At the center.”
