“Tell her what?” Olivia stood up too. Her voice was shaking, but it was the kind that comes from rage, not fear. “Tell her that you’ve been jealous of the bond between siblings for months? That every time I hugged my sister, you pouted like a child?”
“I am your FIANCÉ—”
“You broke into my private things, Greg.”
“I didn’t BREAK INTO anything—”
“You broke into my life,” she said. “You went looking for a wound, and when you found one, you sharpened it.”
“Tell her what?”
Greg looked at me in one last desperate appeal.
“Maya. Come on. You deserved to know.”
I stared at him, the man who’d sat across from my older sister for months, watching her and calculating.
“You don’t get to decide what I deserve,” I said. “She does. She earned that. You didn’t.”
Olivia walked to the front door and opened it. The hallway light spilled across the floor like a verdict.
“Get out, Greg.”
“You deserved to know.”
“Liv, come on. I had too much to drink; I—”
“Get. Out!”
“We’re getting married, Olivia!”
“No,” she said. “We’re not.”
She slid the engagement ring off her finger and held it out to him. Her hand was shaking, but her voice wasn’t.
“I gave up everything for her, including telling my own daughter who I really was, because I thought silence would protect her.”
Olivia took a breath that seemed to come from somewhere very deep.
“But I will NOT give up my daughter for a man who would use her against me. Take the ring. Take your things tomorrow.”
She slid the engagement ring off her finger.
Greg swayed, waiting for her to soften. She didn’t. So, he grabbed his jacket and walked out.
The door clicked shut, and then it was just us.
Olivia turned to me, and years of held breath finally broke loose. She started sobbing.
“I’m so sorry, Maya. I was going to tell you. I had it all planned—”
I crossed the room and wrapped my arms around her.
She started sobbing.
“Liv. Stop.”
“You must hate me—”
“You were a teenager! And you chose me. Every single day for all these years. You think a piece of paper changes that?”
She laughed through her tears, a wet, broken sound.
“I don’t know what to call you now,” I admitted.
“Call me whatever feels right. You always have.”
“Liv works,” I whispered. “Liv has always worked.”
But sometimes I slip and call her Mom. She never corrects me. She just smiles, as if she’s been waiting for years to hear it.