Maggie’s face folds with sympathy. “That’s what most people believed. Some still do. But James… he heard things. Rumors.”
I back up a step, trying to outrun what she’s about to say because if it’s not what I already know I don’t think I could take it. “What kind of rumors?”
Her voice drops, steady and low. “A society. Old money. Power that lives in shadows. We heard whispers that they make their members give up their daughters. Firstborn girls. A price for loyalty. But your mama vanished. Your dad fell apart. And you—” She looks at me with a grief that runs deep. “James kept you close for a reason.”
I stare at her, throat burning. “Then why didn’t you ever tell me?”
Maggie slowly exhales a heavy breath. “Because you were just a little girl. Already carrying more pain than you should’ve. If we were wrong, we would’ve shattered you for no reason.”
“You should’ve told me,” I say, voice low but steady. “Not everything. Not if you weren’t sure. But the rumors. The possibility.”
Her eyes flick down, then rise again, guilt shimmering behind them. “James said if the truth ever came out, it needed to come from you. When you were strong enough to hold it. So we waited. And we loved you. And we hoped we were wrong. Clearly we weren’t wrong.”
“I grieved her,” I whisper. “For years. And now I don’t even know if I was mourning the right thing.”
Maggie steps forward, eyes bright with unshed tears. “We didn’t want to take that from you if it wasn’t true. We hoped it wasn’t. We prayed it wasn’t.”
My breath catches. There’s a hollow ache in my chest where certainty used to be.
“I understand why you didn’t tell me,” I say finally, voice cracking. “I do. And I don’t hate you for it.”
Maggie exhales, the breath shaky and long, as if it’s been caged inside her for years.
“But it still hurts,” I add. “Knowing you were carrying something I didn’t even know.”
“I’m sorry,” she whispers.
My heart splinters; not from anger, but from the ache of knowing they were only trying to shield me. I see it now. Not malice. Not betrayal. Just two people clinging to hope. To the lie that maybe the truth would never come knocking.
I press a hand to the counter, grounding myself. “When my dad confirmed what Malachi told me, I thought that was the worst of it. But I didn’t think about it this way.”
Maggie stays silent.
“But this…” My throat tightens. “This is worse. Because what if she did care? What if she cared enough to keep me alive, but not enough to keep me safe?”
The silence stretches, brittle and sharp.
A memory surges, unbidden and violent; the one I still try not to replay too often. The night I ran. The night my father tried to trade me the way someone moves a pawn across a board.
“She’s asleep in the hallway.”
“We’ll give you twenty percent once she’s sold.”
Then that voice. That oily, foreign voice asking, “Will anyone miss her?” And another one, cold, commanding. “She wants the girl unharmed.”
My stomach churns. I used to think they meant him. That my father was calling the shots. Selling me off like scrap.
But what if they weren’t talking about him at all?
What if she was the one they answered to?
What if the woman I buried with bedtime prayers and stories of heaven wasn’t taken from me… but gave me away?
My breath catches, a jagged thing. My knees threaten to give.
“She didn’t die,” I whisper. “She was watching. She knew.”
Maggie steps closer, her voice thick. “We never knew for sure. But something was always off. Always wrong.”
