“I know.”
“You stood beside me while they lowered her coffin into the ground.”
“I know, Claire.”
His voice cracked.
That nearly broke me.
Ben had been my best friend since we were six years old. He had seen me cry when my goldfish died, when I failed my driving test, when my first serious boyfriend cheated on me, and when my mother’s car was found at the bottom of a ravine.
He had never lied well.
But he had hidden this from me for half a year.
And Rosie had hidden it too.
Through the wall came a muffled announcement from the operating room. A cart rattled past the far entrance. Somewhere nearby, a machine began beeping with slow, indifferent regularity.
I pointed at the paper in Ben’s hand.
“Give it to me.”
“Rosie wanted me to explain first.”
“She may never wake up.”
The sentence left my mouth before I could stop it.
Ben flinched as though I had slapped him.
I instantly regretted it, but I did not take it back.
“Give me the letter.”
His fingers tightened around the page.
“It isn’t just a letter.”
“What is it?”
“A key.”
“To what?”
“To everything your father has spent seventeen years burying.”
I laughed once, a sharp and broken sound.
“My father?”
“Yes.”
“Our father.”
Ben’s eyes shifted toward the operating-room doors.
The movement was small, but I caught it.
“What does that mean?”
He said nothing.
“Ben.”
He looked back at me.
“Richard Hale is Rosie’s father,” he said. “But he may not be yours.”
The corridor tilted.
I pressed one hand against the wall.
