She carried a mug of tea into her father’s fully restored study and sat down in his old reading chair while the cool evening air moved through the white curtains.

Her phone buzzed on the side table: a message from Dorian.

I used to think keeping the peace meant stopping Mom from becoming angry, it read. I understand now that I wasn’t keeping peace at all.

I was just transferring the conflict to you, because I trusted you to absorb it quietly without making a scene.

Marisol read it slowly, and felt something loosen in her chest, since it was the truest thing he had ever said, and because it named the crime she had spent five years unable to name for herself.

He had not been a peacemaker.