“Please don’t say that.”
“What else would you call it?”
Grace’s eyes filled.
“He said you were the only person good enough to give me a real home. He said you would understand once the shock passed.”
“He knew I would never refuse a dying man.”
“Then he was a coward and a fool.” I stood up, unable to sit still under the weight of it. “He decided what I could handle. He decided what my grief would look like. He decided everything, Grace, and left me holding the ashes.”
She began to cry in earnest then, small shoulders folding forward.
I should have felt something soft for her.
I could not.
“Then he was a coward and a fool.”
“He said you would forgive him,” Grace whispered.
“He was wrong.”
I walked to her room.
I started removing her clothes and placing them on the bed.
Grace watched me, frozen.
