“We… we didn’t know—”

“No,” Bram said.

“You never asked.”

There it was, the whole of it, in three words.

Adele watched them land on her mother, who had spent eight months not asking, who had built an entire cruelty on the foundation of not asking, and who was only now discovering the cost of never once being curious about her own daughter’s life.

Bram had not appeared by accident, and Adele had not summoned him in a panic.