“About telling you.”
“When?”
“Many times.”
“How old were you?”
“Teenager the first time.”
“Adult the last several.”
My anger shifted.
“Then why didn’t you tell me?”
Rowan looked exhausted.
“At ten, I was terrified.”
“Of what?”
“You.”
I almost laughed.
“Me?”
“You hated me.”
“I was eight.”
“I was ten.”
She leaned forward.
“I had just lost my mother.”
“I moved into a house with a woman whose husband had fathered me before he married her.”
“And a little girl who looked at me like I had stolen her bedroom, her coat, and her mother.”
“I thought if you learned I was connected to Adrian too, you would hate me even more.”
That silenced me.
Rowan continued.
“When we got older, I wanted Helen to tell you.”
“She always said later.”
“After high school.”
“After college.”
“After your wedding.”
“After you had your first child.”
“Every time there was some reason the timing was wrong.”
“And you accepted that?”
“At first.”
“Then I became part of the lie.”
She did not hide from it.
That mattered.
“I should have told you.”
“Yes.”
“I know.”
“You were grown.”
“I know.”
“You were my sister.”
“I know.”
“I trusted you.”
Her face crumpled.
“I know.”
I looked away because I could not stand watching her cry and still stay angry.
That made me angrier.
We read more.
Not because I forgave her.
Because I wanted everything.
There was an unsent letter Helen had written to an attorney.
Then another to Rowan.
Then one addressed to me.
Never mailed.
Never given.
Helen had started it when I was seventeen.
Added paragraphs over the years.
One section read:
Claire believes Rowan receives more of me because sometimes she does. I keep telling myself Claire is strong enough to wait while Rowan needs more now. I fear I have made strength into a punishment.
I stopped.
Rowan had gone completely still.
“You knew she thought that?”
“No.”
I read again.
Helen wrote that Rowan’s grief was visible.
Nightmares.
Fear of abandonment.
Anxiety about being sent away.
