There was still one question I needed answered, the one at the center of the whole ridiculous morning.

“But why,” I asked, resting my hands on my knees and looking at her, “why would you keep all of this hidden away in here for six whole months?

Jacqueline, you could have just told me.

I would have loved this.”

Jacqueline looked up at me, and her eyes filled with genuine tears, and the real answer, when it came, was so tender and so small and so human that it dissolved the very last of my morning’s fear.

“Because Theodore teases me about it,” she said quietly.