The composure did not crack dramatically.

It simply drained out of her face and left something smaller and older behind, a woman looking at the one piece of paper in the world she had spent her whole life pretending did not exist.

“Lawrence kept your secret for forty years to spare you public shame,” I told her, looking her straight in the eye.

“And I will keep it too — provided you gather your things and leave my house now, and do not come back.

I did not raise my voice when I said it, and I did not gloat, though heaven knows a part of me wanted to.