“I don’t want to replace anyone.”
“You couldn’t.”
Then I pulled her against my shoulder.
We cried for the same man from opposite sides of his lie. I mourned the husband I had loved and the honesty he denied me. Grace mourned the brother she had barely known and the family she feared she had lost.
My daughter appeared and asked whether Grace was leaving.
I looked at the backpack beside the stairs, then at the girl shaking in my arms.
“No,” I said. “She is staying.”
Grace released a breath that sounded as though she had been holding it for years.
Forgiving David would not happen quickly. Love did not excuse what he had done, and death did not erase the way he had manipulated my compassion.
But Grace was not his crime.
She was a child forced to carry the consequences of choices made before she was born.
