She pointed at the photographs.
“You have no right to expose private family matters in front of all these people!”
I looked at Chloe.
She had chosen this moment, and I would stand beside her.
“Our lives were private when you abandoned us, too,” I said quietly. “But you had no trouble explaining our family to other people when it suited you.”
Elena’s face turned red.
Then, suddenly, she did something unexpected.
She turned toward Julian.
“You told me he had been keeping the girls away from me!”
The room went completely still.
Julian’s expression changed.
It was subtle, but I saw it.
The tightening around his mouth.
The brief glance toward the exit.
The look of a man who had just realized that a conversation he had spent years avoiding was about to become public.
Elena grabbed his arm.
“You said David was bitter. You said he had blocked my emails and refused to tell me where the girls were!”
