Patricia sat down heavily on the velvet bench, as though her legs had stopped holding her.

“Three years,” she whispered.

“Why didn’t you tell us?

Why would you keep this from your own family?”

And I gave her the honest answer, the one I had never said out loud to anyone.

“Because I wanted one part of my life,” I said, “that wasn’t measured against Chloe.

Just one.

I did not want Dad asking how much Julian earned, or whether his family was the right kind of family, or whether — and he would have asked this, Mom, you know he would have — whether a man like that had settled for me.