“And she still let me wonder where he was.”
“She thought knowing the truth would hurt you more.”
I stared at her.
“More than spending years wondering whether he’d vanished because of me?”
Tessa’s face tightened.
“I never said Mom got it right.”
That stopped me.
“You disagreed with her?”
“Eventually.”
“Eventually when?”
Tessa looked toward the box.
“How long did you know?”
“Before I moved in.”
My stomach dropped.
“How long did you know?”
That was the part I couldn’t get past: not who Dad was. I already knew that now.
It was everything that came after.
“When did you start thinking about telling me?”
“All the time.”
“Thinking isn’t telling.”
Tessa looked down. “At ten, I was scared you’d hate me. Later, I kept waiting for Mom to decide you were ready.”
“You were grown, Tessa.”
“I know.”
“You had chances. And you still let me believe I’d imagined the difference between us.”
Tessa shook her head.
“I never thought you imagined it.”
I stared at her.
“What?”
“Sometimes Mom did give me more.”
Tessa wiped her cheek.
“She worried about me constantly. She thought I was the fragile one and you were the one who’d be fine.”
I looked toward the box.
“So she knew.”
“I think she knew more than either of us wanted to admit.”
I returned to the table.
“Then I want to see everything she wrote.”
I spread the letters across the table and arranged them by date.
Tessa hovered beside me.
“Belle, some of those were never meant for us.”
“Neither was the truth, apparently.”
She went quiet.
Halfway through the stack, I found an unsent letter written in Mom’s handwriting.
One line stopped me.
“Belle thinks Tessa gets more of me because sometimes she does.”
I read on.
Mom had known I’d noticed. She’d mistaken my anger and stubbornness for strength. Then came the line that closed my throat.
“I keep telling myself Belle will understand when she’s older. I’m starting to fear that later is becoming another word for never.”
Tessa had gone pale.
“Did you know she wrote this?”
“No.”
A few minutes later, a drawer slammed in the guest room.
I followed the sound and found Tessa packing a bag.
“What are you doing?”
She continued folding.
