He wrote that Jeremy’s silence had made every difficult truth seem dangerous and that he had waited far too long to separate one tragedy from another.
If Claire ever comes to you, he wrote, give her this.
I looked up. “When did he send this?”
“Six weeks ago,” Nora said. “After the company announced Dean would be honored at the founders’ dinner. Zane told me he was finally ready to stop protecting him.”
And then he still had not told me.
When I returned home, Zane was waiting on my porch.
He stood the moment he saw me.
I did not ask him inside.
“Did Janice hear you and Dean arguing before the lake trip?”
His expression shifted.
“Yes,” he said.
Jeremy stood behind me, just inside the screen door.
Zane saw him and stopped pretending.
“I didn’t know how much she understood,” he said. “I didn’t know Jeremy understood either.”
“Yes.”
I moved closer. “And you still let our son spend eight years believing his sister died because of some secret he was too scared to name.”
Zane looked shattered. “I thought if I told him the truth, he would think I caused her death.”
