He stopped defending our parents reflexively.
He began asking better questions.
He admitted, once, over whiskey in his office after a dreadful charity event, “I think I built my identity on being the one they chose to fund, and I told myself that meant I must have been the most serious.”
I looked at him.
“And now?”
He gave a humorless smile.
“Now I think I was just expensive in a way they found flattering.”
That was honest enough to matter.
Olivia, by contrast, remained emotionally ornamental for longer.
She liked the language of healing.
Boundaries.
Growth.
Generational patterns.
She posted things.
Read books.
Went to one therapist twice and then decided she “wasn’t connecting with the energy.”
But real self-examination remained elusive, because self-examination hurts most when it threatens pleasure, and Olivia has always arranged her life to avoid psychic discomfort wherever possible.
Still, even she changed a little.
The first time she told our mother, in my presence, “That’s not what Victoria is saying, and you know it,” I nearly dropped my fork.