Sophia
I changed my outfit three times before settling on something simple, a soft blue dress, nothing that looked like I was trying too hard to prove anything, nothing that looked careless either. Mark picked me up at five, and neither of us said much on the drive over, both of us clearly running through the same nervous calculations about how the evening might go.
"Whatever happens," he said, pulling into my mother's driveway, "we tell the truth. All the way through, this time. No softening it, no leaving anything out because we're afraid of how it sounds."
"Okay." I took a breath, steadying myself. "Together."
My mother opened the door before we'd even reached it, and for a moment we all just stood there, the three of us on the same porch where she'd told us to leave a week earlier,
