Chapter 12: The Letter

Odette read it all.

She did not skip a line, and she did not stop for me.

"Six weeks after I left Valen, I found out I was pregnant," she read. "I did not tell him. I told Conrad."

I held on to the window ledge.

A long pause.

"He was the only person I trusted.

"He sat on the end of my bed for an hour and said nothing, and then he asked me to marry him.

"He said the baby would have his name, his house, and his protection, and that Valen need never know. I said that was cruel.

"He said it was kind. I let him convince me."

"Stop," I said.

"I'm nearly done."

"Stop reading it."

She went on, hard and bright.

"I told myself I was protecting everyone.

"I told myself that a child needs a father in the house.

"Now I am thirty-one years old, and I watch him watch her at Christmas.

"I think, one day she will draw with his hand and he will see it, and I will have to answer for this.

"Odette, if I die before that day, make it right. Tell him. Posy is his."

The room rang with the silence.

I was crying and had not noticed.

Odette folded the letter along its old creases.

"Two years," she said. "I have had that in my pocket for two years."

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