Page 46 of What Goes Around

A façade.

I barely stepped onto the driveway before the front door swung open.

My mother filled the doorway, arms crossed, jaw tight, the picture of controlled disappointment.

“Ashley. Do you have any idea what time it is?”

“I’m aware of the time,” I said.

Her eyes flashed. “Apple came home at two in the morning. Alone. Do you realize how dangerous that is? How worried I was?”

“I’m fine.”

“You think saying you’re fine makes it true?” she asked sharply. “You disappear all night, you come home at sunrise, and I am supposed to pretend that is normal?”

“It was one night,” I said.

“One night is all it takes for something to go wrong.”

There it was.

Not concern. Not relief.

Accusation.

“Apple is still asleep,” she continued. “She cried when she came home. She said she didn’t know where you were.”

I’m sure she did.

“I told you, I’m fine.”

“That isn’t the point.” She snapped. “You’re seventeen. You don’t get to stay out the entire night. You left your sister alone at that party and disappeared to God knows where.”

“I didn’t leave her,” I said flatly. “She disappeared first.”

That made her pause.

Not because of what I said.

Because of how I said it.

The old Ashley would have folded by now. Apologizing. Explaining. Trying to smooth things over. Trying to earn something that was never going to be given.

That version of me was dead.

“Don’t take that tone with me,” she warned.

I stepped past her and into the house, bending to slip off my shoes.

She followed, still bristling.

“I waited up for you,” she said behind me. “Do you understand how that feels?”

I did.

More than she ever would.

But empathy was a currency I no longer spent here.