“She was worried you wouldn’t fight,” Mr. Harris said quietly. “She told me you were the kind of person who would walk away rather than make a scene.”
He looked at me over the rim of his glasses.
“So she made sure you wouldn’t have to.”
I thought about the living room.
Ryan’s certainty.
Lisa’s smile.
The confidence with which they had told me to leave.
How small I had felt.
How easily they had erased a decade of my life.
Sitting there now, surrounded by proof, I felt something loosen inside me.
Not rage.
Not triumph.
Something closer to release.
Margaret had seen everything.
She had named it.
And she had chosen me clearly—without apology.
I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand, embarrassed by the tears that finally slipped free.
Mr. Harris didn’t comment.
He simply waited, giving me space to absorb what I was seeing.
When I finally looked up, the room felt brighter somehow, though nothing had changed.
“What happens now?” I asked.
My voice sounded steadier than I felt.
He closed the folders carefully and stacked them again.
“Now,” he said, “you decide what to do with the truth.”
He met my gaze, his expression firm but reassuring.