“That,” I said, unable to keep a small, humorless smile from tugging at my lips, “is the most rebellious thing I’ve ever heard you say.”
She huffed out a laugh, surprised. “Yeah, well. Guess you’re a bad influence.”
We fell silent again.
“I owe you an apology,” she said suddenly. “For… everything.”
I opened my mouth to brush it off, to say something about how it didn’t matter, but the words felt wrong. It did matter. It all mattered.
“For all those years I believed everything Mom said about you being jealous and vindictive,” she continued. “She always told me you’d try to steal attention from me, that you thought you were better. Whenever you didn’t come to something, she said it was because you were sulking. I never… I never questioned it.”