“It is entirely possible,” my mother said, with the tired patience of a woman who had lived with this fact for a very long time.

“Your father was not a faithful man, Bennett.

You knew that much, even if you never said it.

Juliet’s mother was someone he cared for, years ago, before you were old enough to notice anything.

And when Juliet was born, your father did what your father always did with inconvenient truths.

He hid her.

He paid for her, quietly, every month of her life, and he kept her at a distance, and he never spoke her name in this house.”

I looked at Juliet.