My stepdad raised me after I lost my mother — just hours before he d*ed, he gripped my hand and whispered, “There’s something I’ve hidden from you your entire life.”

I read the nurse’s statement twice.

She had seen Gerald Marsh in the corridor outside Catherine’s room that night.

She had thought nothing of it at the time — he was family, he was there for the birth.

But she had seen him go in.

And she had seen the attending physician come out of that room looking shaken in a way she had never forgotten.

And she had heard Gerald’s voice through the door, low and steady, saying something she could not make out.

Catherine had d*ed forty minutes later.

The nurse had never reported it.

She had told herself she had misunderstood.

She had told herself it was grief making her suspicious.

She had told herself that for forty years, until Frank’s letter arrived and she finally wrote down what she had seen.

I set the pages on the table.

Miriam was watching me.