She said she used to lie awake in that house terrified that if the truth ever came out, everyone would say she had destroyed the family — that the Pembrooks’ fall would be her fault, her doing, her guilt to carry.

It was the last lie they’d left inside her, and it took her a long time to put it down.

And what finally freed her of it was understanding that she had not made the darkness in that house.

She had not embezzled the money, or forged the guarantees, or beaten anyone, or held an old man’s life hostage.

All the rot had been there, complete, long before she arrived; the Pembrooks had built it themselves, brick by greedy brick, over decades.

All Yvaine had done — all either of us had done — was refuse to keep it hidden.