The Rest You Have to Earn

You talked to him.

You knew she had a brother.” “I wasn’t certain it was him,” Beatrice stammered.

“In the dark, I couldn’t be sure—” “You didn’t need to be certain,” Alex said.

“You just needed an excuse.

Any excuse.

Something to justify what you had already decided to do.” And at that, at last, Beatrice stopped arguing.

Chapter 13 — The Hidden Test

For the first time in her life, the formidable matriarch of the Vance family shrank down into her chair, and in a small voice Alex had never heard from her, she whispered, “I had no right.”