“Wait, you told me Bell was fine. After the accident, you said she was okay.” It was one of the things that had allowed me to stay in Seattle, to not look back. Now, all I could see was Bell in a hospital bed, alone and scared.

My parents shared another of their looks, but it was my father who spoke. “She was, and she is, but she had some injuries that required surgery, and her body was banged up. Her recovery took time.”

Nausea swept through me. “You should’ve told me.”

Dad’s face hardened. “Why? So you could blame yourself for one more thing? You were drowning, and I wasn’t going to throw one more weight your way. Bell is fine, she made a one-hundred-percent recovery, and she did it quickly.”

I swallowed against the dryness in my throat. “I get it.” I’d more than worried my parents that first year of college, merely going through the motions of life. It was my mom who had suggested looking at other schools, ones that didn’t hold the reminder of Violet and all the plans we had made. I’d ended up at UCLA the next year, and that had jumpstarted my life. Sunshine, classmates who had no idea of my grief…I’d reinvented myself, and it had worked.

Mom squeezed my knee. “I hope you two will find your way back to that friendship you shared. You’re different people now, but your hearts are the same.”

We were different people. And I was surprised by how much I hated that Bell was a stranger to me now. It felt wrong on every level. But I was the one who had turned her into an unknown entity. “I’ll try.”

“Good. She really only has our family, Caelyn, and Kenna. Those parents of hers are worthless.” My mom’s tone turned fierce, a mother bear protecting her cub.

“Are they still around?” They were two people I could definitely do without seeing.

Mom’s lips pressed together in a firm line. “They are. And after everything they put Bell through, I’d like to drop-kick them every time I run into them.”

My body tensed, muscles straining. “What did they put her through?”

She shook her head. “More of the same, but worse. Trying to turn her into a mirror image of Violet. The pressure they put on her to be perfect…it just makes me so mad.”

My body eased. I knew the Isabelle of yesterday, and the Bell of today could handle any pressure her parents put on her. She was strong, so fiercely and unapologetically unique. She’d never bow down and become what someone wanted her to be. But I knew that came at a cost, and the price was a close relationship with her parents. “I’m glad she had you through it all.”