Clara gave a small laugh, though tears filled her eyes.
“He did.”
Ariel traced the tiny sun.
No one said anything.
Those three words seemed to settle across every year separating us.
The sketch.
The scar.
The life that came afterward.
For the first time, I saw Clara differently.
Not merely as the woman beside my father.
Not as the person who entered our home after my mother died.
But as someone who had once sat frightened inside a community center, unable to face her own reflection, asking strangers to draw her a reason to keep looking.
The realization should have softened me immediately.
Instead, another question surfaced.
“Then why have you always hated me?”
Clara recoiled.
My father started to say my name, but she raised one hand.
“I never hated you, Helen,” Clara choked out.
“You barely spoke to me for 15 years.”
“I know.”
“You missed birthdays,” I argued. “You left dinners early. You acted like being around me was work.”
Clara looked toward the patio.
The other guests had begun steering the children toward the pool, offering privacy by pretending they were not listening.
She sat on the edge of a lounge chair.
“I was afraid of you.”
I nearly laughed.
She nodded. “Of what loving you might look like.”
Her fingers moved across the lighthouse.
“Your mother had been gone two years when I married your father. Her photographs were everywhere. Her recipes were still taped inside the cabinets. You wore one of her sweaters even when it was too hot.”
I remembered the sweater.
Green wool.
Sleeves hanging beyond my hands.
Clara went on. “I thought if I tried too hard, you would believe I wanted to replace her. If I did too little, you would think I did not care.”
“So you did nothing.”
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