Your aunt.
The hallway tilted.
Tante.
My chest tightened so sharply it felt like something had snapped inside it.
“I didn’t know,” I whispered. I wasn’t even sure who I was speaking to. Him? Myself? Rose?
I didn’t know.
I didn’t know you existed.
The girl stepped forward a fraction, still holding onto Étienne but less tightly now. Her fingers were small. Warm. Real.
Real.
This wasn’t theory. This wasn’t some romantic European fling I could judge or dismiss or neatly categorize as “complicated.”
This was a child.
My niece.
Rose’s daughter.
My sister had had a daughter.
The thought hit again, bigger this time.
My sister had been pregnant. Had carried a baby. Had given birth. Had named her. Had built bedtime routines and favorite foods and small inside jokes and doctor appointments and school forms and scraped knees and lullabies.
And I had not known.
A wave of something surged up from my stomach to my throat.
Grief.
But not the grief I’d been drowning in for days.
This was sharper. Hotter. Messier.
Betrayal.
Shock.
Wonder.
Loss layered on top of loss.
I had lost Rose once when she died.
Now I was losing the version of her I thought I knew.
I became aware of Kane’s presence beside me—not touching, not interrupting—but close enough that I could feel him, solid and steady at my back.
An anchor.
Étienne crouched down, too, bringing himself level with his daughter. His hand stayed on her shoulder protectively.
