Page 188 of Becoming Us

“Do you think I’m like her, Lan?”

She reached out, her fingertips brushing the back of my hand. When I met her eyes, her expression was open and warm with understanding.

“No. Not at all. You’ve got a temper, sure—but it’s not like hers. And I can prove it.”

“How?”

“Has she ever apologized? Actually said the wordsI’m sorryto you?”

I didn’t need to think it through. “No. She doesn’t do that.”

“Do you?”

Of course I did. Some days, it felt like I was made of apologies. I understood remorse—regret. The big five. Just like Dad. You could only feel it if you actually cared that you hurt someone. She never seemed to care. Not enough to admit she’d ever done something wrong.

“Yeah,” I said. “But…”

“I catch myself acting like her sometimes too,” she said. “Doing things I hate myself for later. Stuff that keeps me up at night. But that doesn’t mean we’re the same. Wefeel bad. That’s the difference.”

“I guess so…”

“I think we just picked it up? Like a bad habit.”

That made sense. It didn’t make it better, didn’t erase the damage—but it made it easier to understand.

“Anyway, this wasn’t supposed to just be about Mom. I think we both need to find a way to make peace with everything that happened. What I really wanted was to apologize—for disappearing on you. And to tell you that I mean it when I say I want to be here now. This isn’t some empty promise. I want to help you with her.”

My brows dipped. “With Mom?”

“This is a lot, Noh. I know you can handle it. But that doesn’t mean you should have to. You shouldn’t be the only onemanaging her spending and tantrums. It’s not fair. So here’s what I’m thinking—set up a trust for her, like you did for me, and I’ll take over. I’ll deal with her from now on. You keep handling everything else—do what you do best. It doesn’t even have to cover everything. Just for the foreseeable future. And if it gets to be too much, I’ll hand it back. We can take turns.”

I nodded slowly. “Like a tag team.”

She smiled. “Exactly. We carry it together.”

I exhaled a deep breath. One that felt like it’d been lodged in my chest since the beginning of time. “Honestly, Lan, that sounds amazing. But are you sure? Because shehateslimits. And when you say no, she gets really fucking mean, and she?—”

“She starts with the guilt trips?” she cut in. “I know. I can take it.”

I bit down on my lip, weighing it all. “Okay. How about you help me with something else too?”

Her smile brightened. “I’m all ears.”

“I need to figure out the properties—and that fucking boat. The upkeep and taxes are already insane. And it’s killing me knowing they’re just sitting there. It’s so fucking wasteful.” The lightness kept spreading, a little more confidence creeping in just from saying it out loud.

“Okay. Do we need to keep them?”

“Real estate investments are solid—especially in New York and Chicago. The others we can probably let go. But the boat,” I said, grimacing. “That fucking boat.”

She let out a quiet laugh, but it softened almost instantly as her gaze settled on me. Her smile faded into something gentler, her eyes warming with sympathy. Because she knew why this wasn’t so simple. It was Dad’s boat.

Her fingers drummed lightly against her knee, hesitating for a beat before stilling as an idea seemed to spark. “What if we turned it into a business? Charter it out. Keep the crew, keepit moving. I know there are companies that handle everything; we’d just need airtight insurance. It probably won’t turn a profit, but at least it won’t be rotting in a marina, draining money.”

I blinked at her. “That’s actually a really fucking good idea.”

And then a tiny flicker of hope ignited.

Maybe this could work. Maybe I didn’t have to drown in all the responsibility if we split it right. We didn’t have to follow Dad’s wishes to the letter—maybe there was room to adjust, to breathe.