“I’m not asking your mom.”
He corrected himself.
“I mean, legally I have to coordinate with her.”
“But I’m asking you.”
Nia looked at him.
“What would we do?”
“What we always do.”
“Argue about whether Marvel movies count as cinema.”
“Eat tacos.”
“Pretend I understand your sensor project.”
“You do not.”
“Exactly.”
Nia smiled.
“Yes.”
That relationship survived.
Rochelle’s did too.
Just differently.
Mother and daughter therapy began six weeks after the showcase.
The first sessions were terrible.
Nia barely spoke.
Rochelle spoke too much.
The therapist, Dr. Miriam Lane, eventually stopped Rochelle.
“Every explanation you give your daughter right now sounds like a request for acquittal.”
Rochelle stared.
“I’m trying to help her understand.”
“No.”
Dr. Lane shook her head.
“You’re trying to control what the facts mean.”
Silence.
Nia looked toward her mother.
Rochelle’s eyes filled.
“What do I do?”
“Let her decide what they mean for a while.”
That was the first session where Nia believed therapy might not be useless.
Weeks later Dr. Lane asked Nia:
“What are you most angry about?”
“The money.”
“Only?”
“No.”
“What else?”
Nia stared at the carpet.
“She didn't look at the packet.”
Rochelle started crying immediately.
Dr. Lane raised one hand.
Not yet.
Nia continued:
“I know ninety-six thousand dollars is worse.”
“But I keep thinking about the parking lot.”
“I ran outside.”
“I thought she was going to hug me.”
Rochelle covered her mouth.
Nia cried.
“She didn't even open it.”
The stolen money was enormous.
But children often attached pain to smaller scenes because small scenes fit inside memory more easily.
An unopened packet.
A mother turning toward another child.
A piece of paper tossed onto leather.
Rochelle whispered:
“I’m sorry.”
Nia looked at her.
This time she did not reject the apology.
She did not accept it either.
She simply heard it.
At thirteen, Nia spent six weeks at Georgia Tech’s summer engineering program.
The program her mother once said was too expensive now came through the scholarship.
Rochelle drove her to campus.
They sat outside the residence hall.
“You nervous?”
“No.”
“You’re lying.”
“Yes.”
Rochelle smiled.
“Want me to come in?”
Nia hesitated.
A year earlier, she would have wanted Camille.
Now:
“Yes.”
Rochelle carried one suitcase.
No speeches.
No photographs until Nia asked.
At goodbye, Rochelle said:
“I’m proud of you.”
Nia looked at her.
Her mother had said the phrase many times since the showcase.
At first it sounded like repair work.
This time it sounded ordinary.
“Thanks.”
Rochelle smiled.
Nia hugged her.
The first spontaneous hug in almost a year.
Rochelle cried in the elevator afterward.
Alone.
Good.
Some emotions belonged to the person feeling them rather than the child being asked to fix them.
Kayla stayed in cheer.
That decision surprised people who heard simplified versions of the family story.
Surely she should quit.
Surely the unfairly favored child needed to reject the activity.
Nia disagreed.
Kayla loved cheer.
The problem had never been cheer.
It was Rochelle treating one daughter’s interest as more worthy of attention and using Nia’s restricted money to subsidize it.
After the separation, Darren paid Kayla’s cheer expenses from his own income.
When something was too expensive, the answer became no.
Kayla hated that at thirteen.
“Everybody else is going to Dallas.”
Darren said:
“Then everybody else’s parents are paying.”
“But regionals—”