I have no right to ask you to forgive me.
You gave me forty-eight years of loyalty, love, and friendship. I repaid you with a secret that grew larger every year.
I told myself I was protecting you.
That was not the whole truth.
I was protecting myself from the possibility that you would look at me differently.
My vision blurred.
Julian is my son in a way no piece of paper can fully explain.
His mother, Eleanor, was part of a terrible chapter in our family's history.
There are things I should have told you long ago, but I kept postponing them until the right moment.
There is no right moment for a truth you've hidden for forty-six years.
I stopped reading.
“Why does he keep speaking in riddles?”
Mr. Harrison swallowed.
“Because the story involves more than Thomas.”
I looked up.
“Who else?”
He hesitated.
“Raymond.”
My husband's cousin.
