He nods, and my world shatters like crystal.
“Of course I knew,” Mother responds, thinking I am talking to her. “I had been in a secret relationship with Don before your grandparents betrothed me to Gwyn. We were having fun and hadn’t been the most careful.”
“You speak as if you and Don broke a rule or two, not as if you were havingsexwith your husband’s brother!” The words explode from me. Mother cringes, but I can’t find it in myself to feel guilty. Not when every revelation is another knife in my back. Stellan will have a field day with this.
I came here expecting—needing—her to debunk Stellan’s lies. Instead, she’s confirming the unthinkable: she and Don had a relationship. My father knew. He helped her hide it.
My mother and Don.
The words are like poison in my mind. All those years I watched them trade barbs and cold shoulders across dinner tables and family gatherings. Was it all just an act?
“I was never unfaithful to your father, Leigh. I called things off with Don months before my first date with Gwyn. Three months before we were betrothed.”
I clutch at the hollowness in my chest. It’s like a chasm threatening to pull me and everything around me into a sunless void. So Stellan was right about Fynn, after all. But the question remains: how did he know?
“Who else knew about you and Don?” I ask.
Mother purses her lips and rises from her stool. “Sit down, you are upset?—”
“Of course, I am upset! I just learned that you had a relationship with my uncle! The man responsible for my fatherand Fynn’s deaths! Do you have any idea how this could ruin our country?” I exclaim. As my mother drifts past me, her perfume envelops me, tightening like handcuffs. This woman lied to me for my entire life. Even my father lied to me.
We thought we were doing the right thing, Father’s ghost says.
The right thing would have been telling me the truth years ago. Instead, I had to learn about my family’s secrets alongside millions of strangers, watching my life unravel in real-time on social media. The humiliation burns deep, horror clawing at my insides. And now, standing here in my childhood home, facing my mother’s guilty silence, I’ve never felt more utterly, completely alone.
My mother collapses on the pristine white sofa in her matching white dress. White is the color of purity, perfection, and honesty, but it no longer suits her.
“Sit with me, Leigh. We need to talk.” Mother’s voice cracks, a sound so unfamiliar I flinch. I perch on the edge of the couch beside her, my spine straight, muscles tense—ready to flee at a moment’s notice.
Father’s ghost sits close to Mother, his ethereal presence a mean reminder of all the secrets between us. She can’t see him, can’t feel the comfort he’s trying to offer her, but I can. And it burns. She’s had twenty-four years to live with this truth, while my world is shattering. My nails cut into my palms. Hot tears of rage blur my vision. Is this why my father came back? Not for me, but to keep watching over my mother and her secrets?
I swallow the golf ball of grief in my throat and say, “Start from the beginning.”
Mother nods, her eyes glassy. “Don and I were in the same year at Sussex, and every girl had a crush on him. Unlike your father, who preferred the company of books, Don was the life of the party. We should never have fallen for each other. There wasa rumor that I would marry Gwyn one day, but Gwyn was four years older than me, and we hardly had anything in common. He was already performing his princely duties and was not interested in me, so I wasn’t interested in him.”
“You sound naïve.” I cringe at the cruelty in my voice.
Mother’s eyes flash with a hint of the fire she keeps carefully hidden beneath her cool exterior. “Leigh, I was eighteen. You try to control a hormonal teenager. I couldn’t with you.”
“We aren’t talking about me.”
“No, we aren’t,” Mother agrees with a sigh.
“Anyway, Don and I had our first friendly conversation at a Yule party a year before my engagement to your father. Your father ignored me. He was too busy with his friends and appeasing his future councilors, who all wanted a word with the future king. But Don made time for me. I’d been a wallflower, dressed up like a doll to resemble everything my parents were told your father wanted, but it wasn’t your father who noticed me. Don and I spent the whole night talking about the impossible expectations of our parents. I had never felt soseen.”
Bile inches higher and higher. My uncle brought my mousy mother out of her shell.
“After the party, Don and I were inseparable,” she continues. “But, to avoid disturbing the fragile peace between our families, we carried on secretly. As the months ticked by, the more besotted we grew, the more risks we took to be together. Our meetings were often spur-of-the-moment and reckless.”
I groan. “I’m going to hurl.”
Leigh,Father chastises as Mother’s cheeks flush.
I ignore him. How he sits composed while Mother spills her heart out about her intimate relationship with his younger brother is beyond me.
“If you and Don were together, and you were pregnant, why did you not marryhim?” I ask.
Mother shakes her head. “Don never knew. Knowing the scandal would disrupt the realm, your father and I kept it between us. We raised Fynn as ours and promised each other that we would never speak of it to anyone again.”
