Lauren opens her mouth.
I do not let her speak.
“And you,” I say, turning toward her, “sat in this room expecting to watch me fall apart so you could measure the furniture. Don’t insult me now by pretending this was about love.”
Her face hardens.
Maybe she had been waiting all morning to be attacked so she could respond like a heroine. Calm, dignified, unfairly maligned. But villains in their own stories are often most offended by the loss of flattering lighting, and the lights in this room have changed.
“I never pretended anything,” she says.
That, strangely, is one of the few honest statements anyone has made all year.
I nod once.
“No,” I say. “You didn’t.”
The baby whimpers. Lauren bounces him gently, and some piece of me, stubbornly human, aches for him. He is innocent. He will grow up under the shadow of choices he did not make, in stories that will reach him before he is old enough to defend himself. Margaret understood that, which is why she protected him even while stripping his parents of leverage.
I look at him for a beat too long.
Then I look back at Ethan.
It is over.