Seraphina had simply poured her lie into the space I had refused to fill.

My silence had not only protected an operation.

It had also, quietly, for years, protected me from the vulnerability of being fully known — and it had nearly handed my marriage to the first person willing to invent a story to fit the shape of everything I would not say.

He nodded, ashamed of the month he had spent half-believing her, of the ten feet he had stood away.

“No more silence,” he said.

And I understood it was a promise I would have to make too.