I did not learn the truth until I was already dead.
They were the architects. Every whisper had originated from their lips or been sanctioned by their silence. Every door that closed in my face had been locked by their hands. In all those countless nights when I lay awake in the dark, tears soaking the pillow until the gray light of dawn crept through the shutters, they had been sitting with Rosalia. Laughing with Rosalia. Using the raw, bleeding wound of my suffering to make their beloved comfortable, to make her shine brighter against the shadow they had made of me.
My silence stretched too long. Rosalia filled it, her voice carrying that particular note of practiced fragility, sweet and slightly wounded, like a songbird with a clipped wing.