Mom nodded.
“I will.”
I believed she meant it.
But this time, I didn’t promise anything.
I had spent years believing that being a good daughter meant saying yes.
Now I knew better.
Being a good mother meant showing my daughter that she never had to earn love by sacrificing herself.
And when I looked down at Clara sleeping peacefully beneath the pink blanket her grandmother had made, I realized something my father had understood long before I did.
Sometimes the most important inheritance isn’t money.
It’s the courage to stop repeating the same family story.
