My biological father grew old and lost his influence and finally died, some years back, and the fortress Clement built was no longer holding anything out — it was only, now, keeping my mother from me for no reason but habit and fear.

Clement understood that.

He understood it well enough that on his deathbed he was willing to do the hardest thing left to him: to shatter the beautiful, safe story he had spent his life protecting, to confess to a lie that might have made me hate him, all so that I would not have to bury one parent and go home to an empty house when a second parent was living ten minutes away, forbidden by an old fear to knock on my door.

He could have stayed the gentle widower to the very end and died beloved and uncomplicated.

He chose, instead, to hand me a truth that cost him his simple legacy, because the truth came with my mother attached to it, and he would not let me be alone.

No.