Bernadette apologized without ceremony.
She did not blame the committee, nostalgia, wine, or misunderstanding. She admitted she had deliberately chosen an assignment she expected Wilma to find humiliating.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
Wilma had imagined hearing those words many times over the years. In those fantasies, she usually delivered a devastating reply.
Reality felt quieter.
“I accept your apology,” Wilma said. “But I don’t want either of us pretending tonight erases everything.”
Bernadette nodded. “Neither do I.”
That honesty made forgiveness possible in a way perfection never could.
Later, an old photograph album appeared near the bar. Its cracked leather cover attracted classmates who gathered around it with drinks and reading glasses.
Someone called Wilma over.
On one page she found a photograph of herself and Bernadette at a beach picnic, shoulders touching as they laughed at something outside the frame.
Another showed them on the debate team. Another captured both girls wearing matching science club sweatshirts.
“You two were friends?” someone asked.
Wilma and Bernadette exchanged a startled look.
The photographs revealed something their resentment had simplified. Before rivalry hardened, they had shared projects, jokes, arguments, and occasional acts of loyalty.
Marianne remembered them staying after school together when a science demonstration failed. Another classmate recalled the pair rescuing a stray dog.
Denny remembered Bernadette quietly helping him with a calculus problem when she believed nobody was watching.
Each memory complicated the villain Wilma had constructed in her mind.
Bernadette appeared equally unsettled. She touched the edge of the beach photograph. “I’d forgotten this.”
“So had I.”
They sat beside each other while the album traveled around the table, and for the first time that evening their silence felt companionable.
Then Bernadette leaned closer. “There’s something else I never told you,” she said. “I wasn’t only jealous of your success tonight. I was jealous of you long before either of us had anything worth envying.”
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