Mary arrived just after lunch, when the ward was hushed and still.
No one had told her not to come. Ethan hadn't forbidden it - he hadn't needed to. His indifference had said enough. For weeks, that had been her excuse. But lately, the line she'd drawn between loyalty and complicity had begun to tremble.
Andee was sleeping when she walked in. One hand curled beneath her chin, her breathing steady, but shallow in a way that unsettled Mary. This wasn't just fatigue. It was retreat. Something deeper. Something that looked like surrender.
Mary sat quietly beside her. She didn't speak. She just... watched. And in the watching, the shape of her sister returned - not the figure her family had come to mistrust, not the scapegoat of Ethan's silence, but the girl who braided her hair, who held her hand during thunderstorms. And for the first time, shame arrived - quiet but complete.
She remembered how easy it had been to follow Ethan's momentum. He had offered her recognition, a seat at the table. And she, hungry to matter, had taken it. It had felt like becoming. But sitting beside Andee now, she wondered if that self had come at too steep a cost.
Andee stirred. Her eyes opened slowly. When they settled on Mary, they didn't widen in welcome. They simply held.
"I didn't know you were awake," Mary said softly.
Andee didn't reply. Her expression didn't shift.
"I just wanted to see how you were doing. That's all."
Still, no answer.
Mary looked down at her hands. "I know I didn't stand up for you. I thought staying out of it would help somehow… I didn't want to make things worse."
Andee's voice was low, husky. "And did it?"
Mary looked up.
Her sister's eyes weren't angry. Just... tired.
Mary didn't answer. She stood after a moment, murmured a goodbye, and walked away - followed by a silence that didn't leave her.
Ethan told himself it wasn't personal.
Even when it was.
He'd never said Andee had helped him. Never claimed she'd backed him. He had just... let the others wonder. Let them fill in the blanks. And that, he thought at the time, was elegant revenge.
She had always seen him. That was the problem.
Even when they were kids - even when she was just the quiet one with a gentle touch and a small, fierce kindness - Andee had made him feel exposed. As if she knew how much of his strength was armor, how little of it came from truth.
So he let her take the fall.
At first, it felt clean. Watching Ruby's walls go up, Matthew's confidence dim, the hush around Andee grow heavier. Ethan had redrawn all the lines. And she had disappeared behind them.
But now…
The silence weighed more than it soothed.
And then the call came.
His mother had collapsed.
Heart failure.
Not fatal. But serious. One of those words that lingered too long in a sentence, daring you to believe it wasn't.
He arrived at the hospital late, his suit still sharp, his jaw set. But he didn't go in.
From the hallway, he saw through the doorway: Ruby, close and tender. Matthew, ever the anchor. Mary, off to the side, uncertain again. And there, in the corner - fragile, pale, but present - was Andee.
Her eyes met his.
No accusation. No tears.
Just knowing.
And that look - quiet, unwavering - split something inside him.
He turned and walked away.
The reckoning wasn't looming.
It was already happening.