We talked until nearly three. Not about everything. A family cannot excavate fourteen years in one night without collapsing from the weight. But enough. My mother. The years after she died. The way Vanessa entered, all grace and structure and management, exactly when our house was most vulnerable to anyone willing to act like certainty. The ways I had disappeared and he had let it happen because conflict felt exhausting and Vanessa always had a cleaner story ready than the messy truth in front of him.
“I thought you two just didn’t fit,” he said at one point.
“We didn’t fit because she needed me smaller than I was.”
He bowed his head. “Yes.”
By dawn, we had not repaired anything. But repair had begun.
The legal aftermath moved faster than the emotional one because institutions, once embarrassed, become remarkably efficient.