The discovery shattered the story we’d both been telling ourselves. She wasn’t the triumphant bride;
I wasn’t the abandoned daughter. We were just two women who had been expertly manipulated by
the same man, in different costumes and different rooms. That realization didn’t erase the betrayal
between us, but it changed its shape. The war we’d waged over him suddenly felt small
compared to the danger he’d quietly built around our lives.