with Rose.”
“Involved?”
“He assaulted her.”
My stomach turned.
Rose covered her face.
And suddenly I understood why no one had ever used the word affair.
There had not been one.
Margaret kept speaking.
“Harold was twenty-eight.
Rose was sixteen.”
My entire body went cold.
“That’s impossible.
She was his sister.”
“Stepsister,” Margaret said.
I looked at Rose.
She nodded.
“My mother married his father.”
I couldn’t process it.
Every revelation opened another door behind it.
Harold had abused Rose.
Rose became pregnant.
Harold, terrified of exposure, tried to make the child disappear.
Me.
The hospital fire.
The false identity.
Helen taking me.
Margaret hiring me decades later.
My life rearranged itself in front of me like shattered glass.
“Why did you hire me?”
I asked.
Margaret’s voice broke.
“Because after Harold died, I found his papers.”
“What papers?”
“A private investigator’s reports.”
My blood ran cold.
“He had been
