No champagne towers.

No carefully arranged family portrait with the damaged twin positioned to hide the damage.

There was just a small house, and the sea, and me, in a sleeveless summer dress, with my scars fully visible, because I had stopped covering them, and I was never going to cover them again.

For twelve years, my family had worked, patiently and deliberately, to convince me that these scars were proof of something shameful, evidence that I was the broken twin, the damaged one, the one who had to be kept covered so as not to spoil the picture.

And I had believed them, mostly, for a long time, the way you come to believe anything the people who raised you insist upon daily.