Or make everything worse.”

The fear sounded familiar.

It was not the same fear I had lived with, but I could understand how it had kept her accepting another promise.

“I won’t tell you what your relationship should be,” I said.

“But you can’t spend your life making silence easier for him.”

She nodded.

“I don’t want the girls to learn that you stop speaking to someone whenever you’ve hurt them.”

“Neither do I.”