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“Help with what?” I scoffed. “Is there a time machine inside? Can you erase the last few years?”

Mom sat back down and gestured toward the empty chair beside her, discarding the wine glass. “No need for a time machine. Erasing the past doesn’t do us any favors. If everything had an easy way out, we’d be a brittle, complacent species.” She arched an eyebrow. “Sit.”

My hands uncurled.

Damn her.

Damn her and her motherly wisdom.

She’d always been the sensible one. Now she was almost forty, so she had time on her side—time and experience to weave into life lessons that she couldn’t wait to shove down my throat.

I didn’t appreciate it, but I would listen. I owed her that much.

Pulling out the chair, I plopped down like a petulant child and planted my chin in my hand. I stared at the wall. I wasn’t going to make this easy on her. Nope.

“I remember taking this picture,” she noted, grazing her index finger over the image on the front cover of Halley and I at the lake. “It was only a few months after Halley moved in. I knew in that moment she was going to have a better life. A good life.”

Softening, I looked over at the photograph. “You did an amazing job.”

“So did you. I commend you for standing by her side through all of that.”

“The transition?”

“The fallout.” Her eyes thinned, studying the picture. “Anyone else would have painted her the villain. The betrayer. Girls can be catty and self-absorbed. You were brave. A true friend.”

A true friend.

A resentful daughter.

I wasn’t perfect.

Mom opened the scrapbook, and my eyes fell away again. I wasn’t sure what I was afraid of.

The truth?

Yeah, that was it. I was content living with my anger, trapped between self-constructed walls. It felt safer than opening myself up to soul-crushing epiphanies. I wasn’t built for that sort of thing.

“Tara, please look.” Mom reached for my hand and clasped our palms together. “Halley gave this to you for a reason. This is her truth—her journey—through her eyes.”

My own eyes misted, bitten with talon-tipped tears. I slowly panned my gaze to the open book and peered at the pages. Ivory cardstock. Multicolored doodles. Stickers and notes.

Pictures.

So many vivid pictures. Some that I recall. Some I never knew about.

I drank in a cracked breath and moved in closer, skimming over each carefully assembled page. It was the story of us. Our lives in Technicolor brilliance. Beach days. Homework huddles. Game nights, holidays, parties, barbeques. Prom night.

I studied that one, honing in on the way Dad was squished in next to Halley, and her head was dipped toward his shoulder. An unsuspecting moment I never would have given a second glance to. But now, with context, I saw something there.

I kept going.

Flipping pages. Burning images into my mind.

There were a few taken at Dad’s apartment. Part of me wanted to spew hostility all over the secret, stolen moments, but I pushed my animosity aside. Dad was sitting on the couch with a video game controller in his hands. He was looking at the television screen with a smirk on his face, knowing Halley was sneaking memories in his periphery. It was playful. Sweet. An everyday moment I had soured with my wrath and misconstrued beliefs.

Mom continued to hold my hand. A steady presence, keeping my broken bits from unraveling.

More photos glimmered from sketched pages.