“I protected her.”
“No,” Rose said.
“You protected Harold.”
I looked between them.
“What is she talking about?”
Margaret said nothing.
Rose suddenly laughed.
A terrible, broken sound.
“You still haven’t told her.”
“Rose.”
“You still haven’t told her who Thomas Vale became.”
Margaret gripped the back of a chair.
My heart pounded.
“Who?”
Rose pointed at Margaret.
“Ask her husband.”
I froze.
“Harold?”
Rose’s eyes burned.
“Thomas Vale was
Harold Whitaker.”
The room exploded into silence.
I stared at Margaret.
She did not deny it.
My knees nearly gave out.
“No.”
Margaret began to cry.
I had seen her cry once over Harold’s wedding ring.
Nothing like this.
“His full name,” she whispered, “was Harold Thomas Vale Whitaker.”
I backed away.
“No.”
“Carly—”
“Your husband was my father?”
“Yes.”
The word destroyed everything.
Harold.
The smiling man in the photographs I had dusted every Thursday.
