Home Entertainment Game Technology Advertisement Part 2: For eight years, my parents made me leave the house every time my brother brought his fiance over; Mom said, “She comes from a good family, don’t embarrass us”; Dad added, “Just disappear for the weekend”; I did; then one weekend, I never came back; it took them four years to find out where I went.

“You're apologizing to me?”

“I know what it's like when someone else's lie rearranges your whole past.”

Her face broke.

We sat together.

Not sisters.

Not yet friends.

Two women who had been made supporting characters in the same family's fiction.

Then Avery told me something else.

Her parents had not rejected me.

They never would have.

“Mom is furious.”

I almost smiled.

“Suzanne?”

“Yes.”

The woman who prayed outside my locked bedroom.

Avery's mother.

Suzanne had believed she was praying for a dead girl.

When she learned I had been alive inside that room—

she became incandescent.

“She wants to meet you.”

“No.”

“That's what I told her.”

“Thank you.”

“She made casseroles anyway.”

I laughed.

“Of course.”

Then Avery's voice changed.

“She also found something.”

“What?”

“Remember the memorial fund?”

“Yes.”

“My parents donated.”

“How much?”

“Twenty thousand.”

I stared.

The Lockhearts had given twenty thousand dollars.

They thought it supported my grieving family and youth cardiac outreach.