Katherine gripped the daisies tighter.
“Sadie survived until the next morning. The hospital called me in. She could barely speak, but she kept trying to explain what happened. I should have told you sooner. I was ashamed.”
“What truth?” I demanded. “Say it clearly. No riddles.”
Katherine looked at Lily’s name on the stone.
“The truth that I raised my daughter to believe winning mattered more than breathing.”
I didn’t want to understand her.
“What did Sadie say?”
“They weren’t racing.”
A bitter laugh escaped me.
“Convenient.”
“I know how it sounds,” Katherine said. “But Sadie asked Lily to meet near the bridge that night so she could apologize.”
“Apologize for what?”
“For spreading rumors about Lily’s portfolio. For trying to scare her out of applying for the art scholarship.”
My stomach tightened.
Lily’s art scholarship.
The one she had stopped talking about the week before she died.
Katherine wiped her face.
“Sadie knew Lily was better. She knew Lily was going to win. And she was tired of me pushing her to compete with a girl she actually admired.”
I looked away.
“Then why were they driving in that storm?”
“The rain got worse,” Katherine said. “They were both heading home. Then Lily’s phone rang.”
My chest tightened.
“Who called?”
Katherine looked at me with eyes full of pity.
“Your husband.”
“No.”
“Sadie said Lily answered and started crying. She kept saying, ‘Dad, please. Not tonight.’ Then she grabbed her things and ran to her car.”
I stepped back.
“Jordan loved her.”
“I’m sure he did,” Katherine whispered. “But my daughter had no reason to spend her last words lying about him.”
Then she reached into her coat and pulled out a black leather sketchbook.
My knees almost gave out.
Lily’s sketchbook.
“Where did you get that?”
“Sadie must have picked it up before they ran to their cars. The hospital gave it to me with her things by mistake. I’m sorry.”
“You should be.”
“I am.”
I took it from her with shaking hands.
The cover was swollen from water damage. Some pages were smudged beyond recognition.
But then I found a drawing of me at the kitchen sink, one hand pressed over my mouth.
At the bottom, Lily had written:
“Mom Trying Not to Cry.”
I remembered that night.
Jordan had told Lily art school was for fools with rich parents.
Lily had run upstairs.
And I had stood at the sink, pretending I was fine.
On the next page, she had written:
“Dad says artists become burdens. Mom says he just worries.”
Below that was one sentence that cut through me deeper than any knife.
“I wish she’d stop trying to make him kinder.”
I sat down hard on the wet grass.
For years, I had translated Jordan into someone gentler.
When he called Lily’s art a hobby, I said, “Your dad is just worried.”
When he mocked her scholarship, I said, “He’s scared for your future.”
When Lily cried, I told myself I was keeping peace.
But maybe all I had done was teach my daughter that my peace mattered more than her pain.
“I need to know everything,” I whispered.
Katherine knelt across from me.
“Then don’t stop with me,” she said. “Talk to Lily’s teacher. Sadie said everyone knew Lily’s portfolio was the strongest.”
That afternoon, I went to Lily’s school with her sketchbook pressed against my chest.
Ms. Alvarez met me in the art room.
Paint covered one cuff of her sweater, and the moment she saw the sketchbook, her face changed.
“That was always in Lily’s hands,” she said softly.
“Was she the front-runner for the scholarship?”
Ms. Alvarez looked away.
“By far. The board told me a week before the accident.”
“Was she going to reject it?”
She went still.
“Who told you that?”
“Lily did,” I said, opening the sketchbook to a folded draft tucked between two pages. “Not out loud. But she wrote it.”
Ms. Alvarez sat down slowly.
“She came to me the day before the accident. She was scared.”
“Of losing?”
“No, Rebecca. Of winning.”
My throat tightened.
“Why?”
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