“You knew enough to smile,” I said.
Her face crumpled.
My father came down one step.
“We can talk privately.”
That almost made me laugh.
“You invited two hundred people to witness a lie,” I said. “You lost the right to privacy.”
The next slide appeared behind them.
A simple total.
Three years of transfers.
A gasp moved through the room.
My mother pressed a hand to her stomach as if truth had struck her physically.
I felt no satisfaction watching her suffer.
That surprised me.
Revenge, in my imagination, had always felt hot. This felt clean, like opening a window in a room full of smoke.
I looked at the crowd.
“I am not here to ask for applause or repayment tonight. I am here because they used my sacrifice as costume jewelry. They turned my service into my sister’s halo. I wanted everyone who heard the lie to see the records.”
