Not dramatically. Not angrily.
Just enough distance to show that something had finally broken.
Then he looked at me.
“Mom,” he said, his voice cracking. “I’m sorry.”
I had waited a long time for those words.
They did not feel like victory.
They felt like setting down a heavy thing I had carried alone for years.
Tiffany gave a bitter laugh.
“So that’s it? One folder and suddenly I’m the villain?”
I looked at the papers on my kitchen table.
“One folder didn’t make you anything,” I said. “It only stopped you from pretending.”
Kevin picked up the email with Marco’s name and folded it carefully.
“Christmas is canceled here,” he said.
Tiffany stared at him.
“No,” he repeated.
It was the first real no I had heard him say to her in five years.
She turned to me one last time.
“You’re going to regret this.”
