Ethan and Lauren are still working through the financial wreckage he built in secret — the debt is real, and it does not vanish because it has finally been spoken aloud.

They are managing the medical care that Grace needs, the surgery and the appointments and the careful watching, all of which is its own kind of exhausting even with the good prognosis.

And the trust between them — the thing my brother broke so thoroughly, month after month, in a hundred small pretenses — has turned out to be the hardest thing of all to repair.

Because trust does not come back the way it left.