He found out, I thought. Ron found out she wasn’t his.
And my mother. My mother, who had packed a bag that same week and brought that frightened little girl home and tucked her into bed right beside me, every night for three weeks.
My mother had known.
She’d known since we were seven years old.
I opened the laptop’s messages and searched Russell’s sent emails for Paige. There was one draft. Never sent. Dated two weeks before he died.
P — I’ve thought about it and I’m not backing down. I saw the match on Mer’s account a year ago. You’ve known since you were sixteen. Helen’s known since you were kids. Everyone in this has kept the secret to protect Mer, and all it’s doing is making her the only person in her own family who doesn’t know who she is. If you can’t tell her by the end of summer, I’ll do it myself. She deserves her sister. — R
