Chương 7
Silence.
A long one.
The kind where a person searches for a response and finds only uncomfortable truth.
"She is fine now."
My grip tightened around the phone.
"That is not the same thing."
"She is fourteen, not dying."
The sentence came out sharper than she probably intended.
But it was enough.
Enough to remind me why I had called.
"Mom, do you hear yourself?"
"I am just saying we are making this bigger than it needs to be."
"No."
I stood up from the table.
"The house is not the biggest thing."
"Then what is?"
"Juny."
My mother's voice softened slightly.
"I love Juny."
"I believe you do."
"Then why are you acting like I don't?"
Because love was not always enough.
I had learned that the hard way.
"You love her," I said.
"But you have spent years expecting her to prove she deserves patience."
My mother did not answer.
The silence felt heavier than yelling.
"That is not fair."
"Maybe not."
I walked toward the window.
"But it is true."
She started crying.
Quietly.
Not dramatically.
That almost made it harder.
"I did everything for this family."
I looked outside at the parking lot below.
"I know."
"No, you don't."
"I do."
I thought about all the holidays she organized.
The meals she cooked.
The birthdays she remembered.
The ways she showed love.
All of it was real.
That was what made everything complicated.
People could love you and still hurt you.
People could sacrifice for you and still expect obedience in return.
"I am not saying you did nothing for us," I told her.
"I am saying doing things for people does not mean they owe you silence."
She did not respond.
Eventually, she whispered, "Your grandmother always thought she knew better."
I almost interrupted.
Then I stopped.
Because this was not about Augusta.
Not really.
It was about my mother losing the person who had always challenged her.
"Maybe she did."
My mother's breathing changed.
"You agree with her?"
"I agree that Juny deserved better."
Another silence.
Then she said the thing I knew she would eventually say.
"If you take that house away from us, things will never be the same."
I looked at the letter on the table.
The strange thing was that I had spent my whole life afraid of those words.
I had believed the end of a relationship was the worst possible outcome.
Now I wondered if some relationships only survived because one person kept disappearing.
"I know," I said.
And I meant it.
The call ended without forgiveness.
But it also ended without me apologizing.
That was new.
When I told Juny about the conversation, I expected her to ask if Grandma would have been upset.
Instead, she asked something else.
"Are you sad?"
I looked at her.
She was sitting on the floor painting her nails.
A normal teenage thing.
A normal moment.
I realized how many normal moments I had almost lost because our family drama took up so much space.
"Yes."
She nodded.
"Me too."
I sat beside her.
"About what?"
She looked at the polish bottle.
"That they are not who I thought they were."
I did not try to fix it.
There was nothing I could say that would make that feeling disappear.
A few days later, we went to Vermont.
Not to move in.
Not yet.
Miss Castellano suggested that Juny visit the property before making any decisions.
She said ownership was not only paperwork.
It was understanding what the responsibility meant.
The drive took almost five hours.
Juny slept for part of it.
I listened to old songs on the radio and tried not to think about how different this trip felt from the one that started everything.
The first time we went there, Juny was trying not to ruin everyone else's vacation.
This time, she was going to a place that legally belonged to her.
But I could tell she was still afraid.
When we turned onto the road leading to the lake house, she sat up.
"Is it weird that I feel like I am trespassing?"
I glanced at her.
"No."
"Really?"
"Really."
She smiled faintly.
"Because I do."
The house looked exactly the way I remembered.
The white paint.
The old porch.
The wooden railing my grandfather had repaired himself.
But it also looked different.
Maybe because I was seeing it without pretending.
We walked inside slowly.
Dust covered the furniture.
The air smelled like wood and closed windows.
Juny moved from room to room quietly.
She touched nothing at first.
Then she stopped in front of the fireplace.
There was a small scratch in the wood near the bottom.
She ran her finger over it.
"What's that?"
I smiled.
"Your grandmother did that."
"How?"
"She moved furniture by herself because she refused to wait for help."
Juny laughed softly.
"That sounds like her."
It was the first time we had smiled about Augusta in days.
Not because we missed her less.
Because we remembered more than her absence.
In the kitchen, we found an old notebook inside a drawer.
At first, I thought it was a maintenance log.
It was not.
It was Augusta's handwriting.
Notes about repairs.
Expenses.
Things she wanted fixed.
But between practical details were small observations.
The kind only she would write.
"Juny hates mushrooms but pretends not to because she thinks refusing food is rude."
"She asks thoughtful questions when adults tell her she asks too many."
"She laughs harder when she thinks nobody is watching."
I had to put the notebook down.
Because I suddenly understood something.
Augusta had not chosen Juny because she was weak.
She had chosen her because she had been paying attention.
A car door closed outside.
We both froze.
I looked through the window.
My father was standing in the driveway.
He had not called.
He had not warned us.
Juny stepped closer to me.
"Why is he here?"
May you like
I did not know.
And that scared me more than if I had.
