“You what?” the words escaped before she could stop them.
“I was… I was mad with rage,” her father continued, his voice growing stronger. “At him, at myself, at the situation we’d created through our harsh judgment. So, I challenged him, and at dawn two days after Emmeline’s departure, I killed him.”
Killed him. Father killed the man who ruined Emmie.
Sybil stared at her parents, trying to process this revelation. “You killed Lord Hartwell?”
“The shot was clean through the heart. He died instantly.” Her father’s hands were steady now, as though confessing this terrible secret had given him strength. “And that, my dear, is why thetonbelieves Emmeline eloped with him.”
Because they thought she ran away with a man who was already dead.
“We never corrected the story,” her mother added quietly, “because the truth would have been far more damaging to her memory. Better for society to believe she’d made a romantic, if foolish, choice than to know she’d been seduced and abandoned.”
Better for her memory. They were trying to protect Emmie, even after death.
“But why didn’t Lord Hartwell’s family speak out?” Sybil had asked. “Why let people believe Emmie eloped with him when they knew he was dead?”
“Because,” her father had replied grimly, “admitting their son died in a duel would have revealed that he’d been caught compromising unmarried ladies. The Hartwells chose to let society believe he’d eloped rather than admit he’d beenkilled defending his honor after seducing innocent girls. Their reputation as a respectable family depended on the fiction that he was a romantic rather than a rake.”
“When we learned what you’d done with your dowry,” her father continued, “how you’d used every penny to establish an orphanage for children like the one Emmeline might have had, we realized how completely we’d misjudged your character.”
“We cut ties with the friends who’d encouraged our harsh stance,” her mother said. “Began supporting charities that help women in Emmeline’s situation. Tried to atone, in small ways, for our failures as parents.”
Atonement. They’ve been trying to make amends.
“But we never stopped loving you,” her father added, his voice thick with emotion. “Never stopped regretting the choice that drove you away. We simply didn’t know how to bridge the gap our pride had created.”
Sybil sat in stunned silence, absorbing these revelations. Her entire understanding of that terrible time, of her parents’ motivations, was shifting beneath her feet.
They weren’t just protecting their reputation. They were protecting Emmie’s memory and mine.
“I blamed you,” she said finally, her voice barely above a whisper. “For eight years, I blamed you for her death.”
“We blamed ourselves,” her mother replied simply. “Still do. If we’d been kinder, more understanding, perhaps she would have trusted us enough to stay. Perhaps we could have found a solution together.”
Perhaps. So many missed chances that can never be tested.
“She was afraid,” Sybil said, tears beginning to flow. “When she told me about the pregnancy, she was terrified of your reaction. She knew you’d be ashamed.”
“We were ashamed,” her father admitted. “But not of her. Of ourselves for creating a household where our daughter felt she couldn’t turn to us in her darkest hour.”
The weight of eight years’ worth of resentment and pain suddenly felt unbearable. All the anger she’d carried, all the bitterness and blame—it had been built on incomplete information, on assumptions about their motivations that were only partially true.
They made terrible choices, but they weren’t monsters.
“I’ve been so unfair,” she whispered, the words torn from her chest. “So angry, for so long.”
“You had every right to be angry,” her mother said, moving from her chair to kneel beside Sybil’s. “We failed you both. We let our fear of scandal override our love for our children.”
“But we never stopped loving you,” her father added, joining them. “Never stopped hoping that someday, you might forgive us enough to let us back into your life.”
Love. They still love me, after everything.
And suddenly, Sybil was crying in earnest—great, wrenching sobs that seemed to come from some place deep inside her chest that had been locked away for years. Her parents’ arms came around her, holding her between them the way they had when she was small and the world seemed manageable.
“She would have wanted this,” Sybil said through her tears, the certainty filling her with unexpected peace. “Emmie would have wanted us to find our way back to each other.”
“Yes,” her mother whispered against her hair. “She would have.”
