“I was ready to hear you out.”
She went still.
What else did she have to do to earn her place back?
“Dori told me who you were before you came in, and she talked about you with affection. For years, I’ve wondered whether I cut you off so completely that you never had a way to prove you’d changed.”
Her eyes filled. For one moment I almost saw my girl.
“When Laura told me you helped her, I thought maybe this was the road back.”
“So what changed?” she whispered.
“Laura did.”
I almost saw my girl.
I looked at my younger daughter.
“She kept saying you’d changed while she flinched every time you opened your mouth. I realized she wasn’t bringing her sister home. She was bringing home a problem she didn’t know how to handle.”
“She took my money and then turned on me,” Vanessa said, her voice sharpening.
