For a moment, I thought she was joking.
Then I realized she wasn’t.
I stepped closer to the window.
“I’ve driven Sophie to school every weekday for two years. I’m asking you for one ride.”
Vanessa’s smile disappeared.
“Don’t make this into some huge thing. I didn’t spend this much on a car to have someone else’s kid ruin it.”
Emma went completely still.
From the back seat, Sophie leaned forward.
“Mom—”
“Sophie, stay out of it.”
My daughter looked at the ground.
Her face turned red, and she quietly moved one foot behind the other, as though she could somehow hide her wet shoes.
That was the moment something inside me broke.
Not because Vanessa had refused to help.
People were allowed to say no.
It was the way she had made a ten-year-old child feel as if her existence was a threat to an expensive piece of leather.
