Outside, January h:it hard.

The air on Fifth Avenue was cold enough to slice straight into the lungs. Taxis hissed through wet intersections. Headlights smeared across black pavement. A woman hurried by in heels with one hand over her hair. A doorman held a hotel door open for a laughing couple who looked like they had never once checked a bank balance before ordering dessert.

I stood under the awning for a second, letting my body catch up to what had just happened.

My hands were shaking.

Not from regret.

From adrenaline.

From the collapse after holding still for too long.

“Emma!”

I turned.

Sarah pushed through the restaurant door, coat half-buttoned, mascara smeared. She looked younger outside somehow, stripped of our parents’ stage lighting.

“Wait.”

I stayed where I was.

She stopped in front of me, breath fogging in the air.

“Can we talk?”

I almost said no automatically.

Instead I asked, “About what?”

She gave a short, broken laugh.

“Everything?”

I looked through the restaurant window. My mother was still rigid in her chair. My father leaned toward her, already speaking with that clipped, angry intensity he used when things stopped obeying him.

Even through glass, they looked exactly the same.

Offended before sorry.