“You were twelve, Helen.

You needed protecting yourself.”

I had never heard anyone put it like that.

During all the years I imagined a sister lost in the flood, I’d felt guilty for growing older while she did not.

Now there was a different guilt waiting for me, just as unreasonable but harder to release.

Evelyn reached across the table.

“We don’t have to punish ourselves for what adults failed to do.”

I thought about my own daughter, Anna, and the countless small mistakes I’d made while raising her.