She shrugged.

“But me?”

“Who would I tell?”

The words were casual.

The wound underneath them wasn’t.

She had become trustworthy partly because everyone had already decided she was socially invisible.

I hated that.

Madeline did too.

PART 17 — MY JOB WAS NOT TO WORSHIP HER KINDNESS

That night, after she fell asleep, I sat beside the window.