Page 78 of Branded By Shadow
Something.
Not guilt.
Anger.
“You smothered me.”
I jerk back as much as the chair allows. “I raised you.”
“You loved saying that, didn’t you?” Her voice sharpens. “Poor Talia. Always stuck taking care of Brianna. Always giving Brianna her clothes, her makeup, her leftovers of a life. You made me feel like a charity case in my own house.”
“That’s not what I was doing.”
“No. You were being noble.” She spits the word like it tastes bad. “Dad and Mom left, and you got to be the saint. You got to be the good one. The responsible one. The one everyone would pity if they bothered to look.”
Nobody looked.
That’s the thing that almost breaks me.
Nobody looked then.
Nobody except me.
“I was eighteen,” I whisper. “I didn’t know what I was doing.”
“You knew enough to keep the best parts for yourself.”
I blink.
“What?”
Her gaze drops over me, ugly and assessing. “You always were the better sister. The good girl. Teachers liked you. Customers liked you. Even when you were working yourself to death at that diner, people looked at you like you were sunshine in an apron.”
A laugh bursts out of me, broken and disbelieving. “Are you kidding?”
“No.”
“I gave you everything.”
“You gave me what you wanted me to have.”
The cabin feels smaller.
The air thinner.
She steps closer, and I see it now. The sweater. The hoops. The shade of lipstick she used to steal from my bathroom drawer. So many little things I thought I misplaced. So many moments I blamed myself for being careless.
“But I took what I wanted. Your blue dress included.”
“My blue dress,” I say slowly.
Brianna smiles.
The memory opens like a wound.
Senior winter dance. The blue dress I saved for, altered myself, kept hanging on my closet door for three weeks because it was the first thing I’d bought that felt beautiful. The morning of the dance, it vanished. Brianna cried, swore she didn’t know. I stayed home because I had nothing to wear.
“You took it.”
