Clare let out a breath that sounded like relief. “Thank you,” she whispered.
Ethan looked at me then, finally meeting my eyes. “I’m sorry,” he said simply. “For the kitchen thing. For the back row thing. For acting like you were… inconvenient.”
I held his gaze. “Apology accepted,” I said. “If it matches your behavior from here on out.”
Ethan nodded once. “It will,” he promised.
After dinner, Clare walked me to my car. The night air was cold enough to sting.
“I can’t believe how different everything feels,” she said quietly.
“It’s because you changed,” I replied.
Clare smiled faintly. “You changed too.”
I thought about that as I drove home. About how I’d spent years being the quiet daughter, the practical one, the one who didn’t make demands. I’d told myself it was maturity. Sometimes it had just been fear.
In December, Daniel took me to a holiday event at the White House—not a public one, but a staff and friends gathering that felt oddly normal despite the setting. There was hot chocolate. There were ugly sweaters. There was someone’s toddler running down a hallway like the building belonged to her.
Daniel slipped away with me for a moment into a quieter corridor lined with portraits.