“Dad expected me to be perfect. Every grade, every achievement, every award was never enough. It was just the baseline for whatever came next,” she said.

She stared at the fountain. “And the way they treated you… I told myself it was just how things were. That you were different. That I was protecting you by not challenging them,” she said.

“You weren’t protecting me,” I said.

“No,” she said. “I was protecting myself. Because if I defended you, I became a target too,” she said.

She finally looked at me. “That’s not an excuse. It’s just the truth,” she said.

“What do you want from me, Josephine?” I asked.