“Well, Maren,” she called brightly. “Looks like life turned out exactly the way you deserved.”

I flinched. The cruelty in her voice startled even me.

Maren did not answer. She did not defend herself. She did not fire back at Tessa. She did not even acknowledge her.

Instead, she looked straight at me. Only me.

And what I saw in her eyes shook me more deeply than rage ever could have.

Sadness. Heavy, exhausted sadness. The kind that comes after a person has stopped believing justice will ever come.

“Drive,” Tessa snapped.

But I couldn’t.

A memory suddenly rose inside me. One year earlier. The day everything collapsed.

The bank records. The suspicious transactions. The grainy hotel photos. The family necklace that had somehow appeared inside Maren’s closet.

Every piece of evidence had pointed directly to her. At least, that was what I had believed.

Maren had stood crying in our foyer. “Rowan, please listen to me,” she begged. “Someone is framing me.”

I refused. I was furious. Humiliated. Too proud to accept that I might be wrong.

So I threw her out.

The memory made me feel sick.

Beside me, Tessa reached into her purse and pulled out a folded twenty-dollar bill. Then she tossed it through the window.

“Here,” she called. “Buy some milk.”

The bill drifted down into the dirt beside Maren’s feet.

For a second, no one moved.

Then Maren looked down at the money. Slowly, she lifted her eyes back to me.

And there it was again. That unbearable pity.

As if she was not the one who had lost everything. As if I was.

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