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I shook my head. “I can’t.”

“You can,” she said simply. “You’re safe here.” My jaw clenched. I wanted to believe her. God, Iwantedto believe her.

My voice came out small. “I don’t want to make things harder.”

“For who?” she asked gently. I didn’t answer. She snipped another leaf. “It’s okay if you’re not ready. But when you are, I’m here.” I stared at the floor. Dirt and scattered petals and the edge of a cracked ceramic pot. I could still hear his voice—“If you so much as breathe a word. I’ll make you regret it.”

“I don’t know what’s wrong with him,” I whispered, and even that felt like too much.

Dawn didn’t look surprised. Just still. “Joey?” I nodded. She finally turned toward me, one hand braced on the edge of her potting table. “Tell me.”

The dam cracked. Just a little. “He… he was awful at the range, but it wasn’t just that. He’s been like this since… since Rich—” My voice broke on his name. “He says things. Mean, cruel things. He says I’m pretending to grieve. That I didn’t evenloveRich. That I’m using them.”

“He called me a whore,” I said, and the word made me flinch as it left my mouth. “Said I jumped between brothers like it was a game. That I’m the reason Rich is dead. If I hadn’t put them in this situation, his brother wouldn’t be in a coffin. That the wrong person died that day...” There was a ringing in my ears. I couldn’t stop now. It all poured out, fast and messy. “He apologized in front of the guys. But that was for them, not for me. He didn’t mean it. And now… he waits until we’re alone. Acts normal in front of everyone else. But then it’s like he wants tobreakme. Like he’s punishing me just for being here.”

That’s when it started. Not a flood. Not yet. Just the first cracks in the dam. “I tried to talk to him in the car. He shut me down. Told me I didn’t know him anymore. Said the version of him who cared… that guy died with Rich.” I blinked hard. My voice got smaller. “He said I was a mistake.”

Dawn stopped what she was doing. Set the shears down very gently.

I laughed, but it was hollow. “He said I was to blame,” I whispered. “That I slept with all of them like it was some fucking game and that Rich died because of me. That people start dying when I show up.” Her breath caught, almost too soft to hear. I swallowed hard. “At the range he... he grabbed my wrist. Not hard, just enough to let me know he could. Told me I didn’t belong. Corrected my grip like he was training a stranger off the street, not like he cared if I shot myself by accident.”

I turned away. I couldn’t look at her when I said the next part. “Joey said if I told anyone how he treated me today, if I evenbreatheda word, he’d make me regret it.” The greenhouse went still. Even the air seemed to hold its breath. And then it all rushed out of me too fast, too raw to control.

“I’m trying to keep up. I tried to be what he needed. Whatanyof them needed. I thought if I learned fast enough, if I proved I could be useful, maybe I could... But nothing’s goodenough. I messed up the reassembly on the gun and he justrippedinto me. Said I’d get someone else killed. Said this isn’t Girl Scouts, this is blood and fire.” I blinked hard. The tears weren’t coming—too deep for that. What I felt wasworse. That hollow, bone-deep fatigue. Like the pain had burned out and left nothing but smoke behind.

“I keep thinking the old Joey’s in there somewhere. The one who stayed by my bedroom door when I was scared, talked to me softly and wanted to keep me safe, the one who called me ‘Sweetheart’. But I’m starting to think maybe he really did die with Rich. And this thing that’s left—” I shook my head. “It hates me.Hehates me.”

Silence. Then Dawn sank onto a nearby chair by the window, her hands folded in her lap like they were holding something precious or fragile.

“I lost Rich,” she said. “But with Joey... it feels like I’m still losing him. One piece at a time.” I looked at her then, and for the first time I saw it, not just the grief of a mother who buried her son. But the profound, slower grief of a mother watching her surviving son turn into someone unrecognizable. “I thought he was angry. Angry at the world. At you. At the loss. And maybe he is. But if he’s hurting you—if he’sthreateningyou—then that’s not just grief. That’s something else. It’s not the man we raised…"

Dawn’s words hung in the air, weighty and filled with that same quiet desperation that tugged at me, too. I didn’t know how to answer her or make sense of the growing distance between Joey and me.

But then, something in her posture softened, like she was pulling away from the sharp edges of grief. Dawn exhaled, slow and careful, like she was setting something heavy down between us. Her gaze drifted toward the glass panes, where condensation clung like ghosts.

“You know,” she said softly, “when Rich was about twelve, he used to stand in Joey’s doorway at night. Wouldn’t go to bed until his little brother was asleep. Said Joey had nightmares, and he wanted to be there in case he woke up scared.” A small, wistful smile tugged at her mouth. “He was just a kid himself, but he acted like it was his job to carry the weight of the whole house.” She looked back at me, her voice lowering. “Rich always needed to be the one holding it together. For Joey. For us. For everyone. If he could be in control of the mess, he believed it couldn’t swallow him.”

I swallowed hard. Dawn stood again, slow and steady, like she was reclaiming some piece of herself.

“Rich loved you, Victoria. Not the easy kind of love. The kind that roots deep and grows slow and painful. I saw it. Even when he tried to hide it behind all that responsibility he thought he had to carry.” She came closer, fingers brushing a curl back behind my ear with the kind of quiet tenderness that cracked something open in my chest. “Joey’s hurting. And grief makes monsters out of all of us, if we let it. But I won’t let him make one out of you. You hear me?”

I nodded, but barely. My throat felt too tight.

“If you were any of the things he said… Rich would have known. And he wouldn’t have let you within a hundred miles of this family, let alone his heart.” Her voice didn’t waver, not once. “My son may have been stubborn. May have been too careful with the pieces of himself he gave away. But he was not a fool.” I bit my lip, holding in the sob rising behind my teeth. “You loved him just the same. In that slow stubborn way that becomes part of your bones,” she said. “I think he knew it too.” Then she braced herself. “You need to tell the boys what Joey’s been doing. They deserve to know. And you deserve to be safe.”

“But he’s your son—”

“And I’ll handle him.” Her voice was soft but decisive like a gate swinging shut. “That’s my job. Not yours.”

“He’ll hate me,” I whispered. Silence settled between us, soft as dusk. Then Dawn reached out and took my hand in hers. It was warm, worn from soil and life and loss.

“He already thinks he does,” she replied, steady as bedrock. “But hating you won’t bring Rich back. It won’t fix what’s broken in him, and it sure as hell won’t break you. He doesn’t get to do that. Not here. Not in this house. Not under my roof.”

Her words settled around me like a blanket I couldn’t quite feel. They made sense. They even sounded like the truth. But the air still smelled likehim. Like earth, and water, and memory. Everything around me was growing. Breathing.

Healing.

And maybe that was the cruelest part. Because whatever part of me knew how to grow, how to breathe, how to be anything but a wound… I think it died with him.