“Oh my god,” I whisper as I scan the rest of the letter.
Dane makes a noise.
I look up at him, then back at the letter.
If George Anderson is my great-great-grandfather ...
He’s also a dowry thief.
He started this.
He stole something from the Silvers. He betrayed them.
“It’s my family’s fault,” I whisper. “The feud is all my family’s fault.”
I know it’s notmyfault.
Logically.
But my family did this to Dane’s family. We started it. We started it, and then we passed down the lie from generation to generation thatwewere the better family. Thattheywere at fault.
And I didn’t realize until exactly this minute how ingrained it is in me thatwe, the Andersons, were the victims.
Even when I was friends with Lorelei in grade school, there was a part of me feeling like I was the bigger person for being able to forgive her family for what they did to mine.
And how dumb is that?
How ridiculously stupid is it that evenas a child, I’d been told so often just how bad Lorelei’s family was that I occasionally had a sense of superiority over my friend?
I adore her.
I meant it when I said I’d donate a kidney to her. She’s one of the kindest, most genuine people I know. And I know it’s not my fault that I was taught to believe the Silvers were bad, but on some level,I believed it.
While it was all a lie.
It wasourfault.
“This is one side of a story,” Dane says. “We need the other half. We need to know what the dowry was. We need to know if he gave it back. Or what his reason was if he didn’t.”
He’s trying to make me feel better, but I have this sick feeling in my stomach that the letters aren’t wrong.
That whatever happened, it’s on my ancestors.
Not his.
“The bigger point,” he adds quietly, “is that whatever happened, it wasn’t your fault.”
I hear him, but the same part of me that used to thinklook how special I am for being friends with a Silveris now sayingyou have asshole running through your blood. “Yours either.”
“Or Lorelei’s or Esme’s or your brother’s.” He tilts his head at me. “Is your brother a dick?”
I find a small laugh. “No. I’ve texted him since I got here and heard his news. He thinks the feud is dumb, too, and if he wasn’t living his best life with his new bride in Italy now, he’d be sighing and going behind Grandma’s back to be nice to Lorelei and Esme and you too. Of course, if he wasn’t living his best life with his new bride in Italy, wewouldn’t be doing this, because he’d be taking over for Grandma at the bakery and I wouldn’t have told Grandma that we were engaged ...”
Dane pulls me into a hug, putting his shirt in danger of my makeup. “It’s not your fault that any of our ancestors did anything to any of our other ancestors,” he repeats.
I set aside all my internal guilt at realizing I still have work to do to fully banish all thoughts, ever, forever, that the Silvers are evil on any level. “But I feel like it’s my job to tell my grandma.”
“Don’t tell her it’s her fault. Ask her what she knows about her own grandfather. Get her story. Gethisstory. We need the whole truth from all of our relatives so the whole damn town can move on.”
