Chapter 3

"Thank you, Mom and Dad, for bringing me home and paying for my education.

"Thank you, Cameron and Evan, for helping me with my schoolwork."

When I stopped there, everyone froze.

Next to Tessa's speech, mine was so thin it sounded like a brush-off.

But I'd dug through my memory for a long time, and those were the only gracious things I could honestly come up with.

Even the tutoring only happened because Cameron and Evan were already bringing Tessa's grades up and let me sit in.

The room went cold again.

Mom wouldn't look at me.

Cameron and Evan wore complicated expressions.

Tessa sat quietly with a faint smile on her lips.

Only Dad cleared his throat and lifted his head to look at me.

"Willa, are you blaming your mother and me for overlooking you?

"We're both so busy with work. You've got a right to be upset.

"I'll send you three hundred dollars. Buy whatever you like."

That was how he did it.

The moment it finally registered that he'd hurt me, he'd play the good father for a few minutes and wire me money.

But it never came close to what Tessa got.

He pulled out his phone. He was entering his passcode when Tessa cried out and dropped to the floor.

Her juice glass shattered beside her.

Everyone panicked.

Evan got to her first and gathered her up.

"Get her inhaler. She's having an attack."

The dining room dissolved into chaos, everyone crowding around her.

When her face went red, Evan carried her toward the door.

"This is bad. She needs the ER."

He was frantic, and he slammed into me as he passed.

I wasn't braced for it. My slipper slid off, and my bare foot came down on the broken glass.

I cried out.

Every mind in that room was on Tessa. Not one person looked at me.

I watched them disappear through the doorway.

And I finally understood the version of myself from seven days out.

Abandoned with rescue that close, watching everyone run off to save Tessa. I understood exactly how hopeless that must have felt.

I forced down the grief rising in my chest.

I limped to my room, picked the glass out of my foot, and bandaged it myself.

I didn't go to the hospital. Nobody came home all night, and I didn't call.

The next morning at breakfast, Evan came to find me. He looked wrecked.

He didn't seem to have slept at all, and his voice was hoarse.

"Tessa ate peanut butter by accident. That's what set it off.

"Willa, she's fragile and she's careless. The two of you are going to be roommates, so you have to watch her closely."

He hadn't noticed the bandage on my foot. Every thought in his head belonged to Tessa.

I looked at him and answered evenly.

"I can't room with her, and I'm not going to be responsible for her."

The air went dead.

Two seconds later, he sat up straight and stared at me, accusing.

"You won't even room with her, just so you don't have to take care of her?

"You know how bad her attacks get. How can you be that cold?"

When the Carvers first brought me home, Cameron said growing up on a farm had made me mature for my age.

He told me to watch Tessa and keep her away from anything she might react to.

Evan walked in on the tail end of that and took my side immediately.

"Cameron, your own sister is skin and bones. She's obviously undernourished. Shouldn't somebody be taking care of her?"

No one had ever stood up for me before, and that one sentence was all it took.

At my first birthday in the Carver house, my family gave Tessa expensive, beautifully chosen gifts.

Mine was clearly grabbed off a shelf.

Evan was the only one who gave me exactly what he gave Tessa.

I thought he was different.

Later I found out he was the same as the rest of them. Tessa came first.

Just like now. He never asked me why I couldn't room with her.

He just called me heartless.

His impatience got under my skin.

"Fine. I'm heartless.

"If you're so worried about Tessa, why don't you rent a place off campus with her?"