My uncle once asked me, ‘Are you a virgin?’ when I was already 27 years old. From that moment, I started to be afraid of him. And a few days later, when he took me to a hotel outside the city, he leaned close to my ear by the pool and whispered, ‘After the pool, come up to my room…’”

“Why not?”

“Because I was afraid it would make you hate him.”

I looked at the letter.

At the bottom of the first page, my father had written a sentence that made my hands go cold.

If Emily ever asks what happened to Claire, tell her the truth. But don’t let her believe that everything her mother told her was a lie.

I read the sentence twice.

Then I looked up.

“My mother knew?”

Richard nodded.

“She knew more than I did.”

I felt something inside me break.

My mother had died four years earlier. I had spent so many nights missing her, wishing I could ask her questions about my childhood, wishing I could hear her voice again.

And now my uncle was telling me that the woman I had trusted most in the world had taken a secret to her grave.

“Did my father hurt Claire?”

Richard looked down at his hands.