“Wasn’t really mine to keep,” I told her. “Long story.”
She didn’t push, the same way Dev hadn’t pushed at my locker months earlier, and I found myself grateful for strangers who knew when a short answer was actually the whole answer.
I watched them drive away from the curb, the daughter already adjusting the mirrors, already making the car hers in a way it had never quite managed to become mine.
I put half the money into the same college account Marcus and Mom had started years earlier, the one he’d never once mentioned to me, the one I only found out about because Mom couldn’t keep a secret that good forever.
I used the other half to take the whole family, minus one, to the county fair the following summer, funnel cakes and a Ferris wheel Lily was too short to ride until Marcus argued with the operator on her behalf for a solid five minutes.
