When I got home six days later, tanned and lighter than I had felt in years, my father was waiting in his car outside my apartment. He looked older than I remembered, and nervous in a way I had never seen from him. We sat at my kitchen table, and for a long moment he said nothing. Then he told me the truth I had spent thirty-six years never quite hearing out loud. Rosalind had called them in a panic that same week, needing eleven thousand dollars to cover a debt, and my mother had wanted the “small” Easter so they could quietly hand it to her without me seeing, because they knew what I would say.<\/p>\n
I set down my coffee. Everything clicked into place at once, every quiet exclusion, every dinner where I brought the food and my sister brought her problems. They had not uninvited me because they needed space. They had uninvited me because I had become the only person in the family who noticed the pattern, and my presence made it harder to keep rescuing Rosalind in secret. My father looked at me and said the sentence that undid the whole careful machine. “I’m tired, Delia. I’ve been tired for a long time. And I think we owe you an apology none of us knew how to say.”<\/p>\n
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