“You can return to Marta,” I said. “You have money. You are not my responsibility.”
Her face went pale.
“I never asked him to do this.”
“Neither did I.”
I told her that every time I looked at her, I would remember the years David had kept me blind. She picked up her bag and walked toward the stairs.
Before she reached the bottom, she collapsed onto a step.
Grace folded into herself and sobbed.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry I ruined him for you.”
Her words stopped me.
For the first time that night, I saw her not as David’s secret, but as a frightened sixteen-year-old girl. She had lost her mother, never been allowed to claim her father, and now lost the brother who had protected her from a distance.
“He did this,” I said. “Not you.”
Grace admitted David feared I would hate her. He had promised to carry the blame so she would no longer have to live in hiding.
Something inside me softened.
I sat beside her on the stairs.
“He was a coward,” I said. “But he loved you. He loved both of us in the wrong order.”
Grace wiped her face.
“I don’t want to replace anyone.”
“You couldn’t.”
Then I pulled her against my shoulder.
We cried for the same man from opposite sides of his lie. I mourned the husband I had loved and the honesty he denied me. Grace mourned the brother she had barely known and the family she feared she had lost.
My daughter appeared and asked whether Grace was leaving.
