“Should what?” I demanded, sitting up, confused.

Advertisement

She looked at me with anguish in her eyes, tears streaming down her face. “Ollie, I love him so much it terrifies me. What if someone finds out about this and tries to take him away from us?”

The words gutted me completely. I grabbed the flash drive from her shaking hands and followed her downstairs to the kitchen.

“Leo’s been hiding something from you for years.”

Amelia opened her laptop with trembling fingers and I inserted the drive. There was only one file: a video.

When I pressed play, the screen flickered to life, and suddenly Nora was there.

Advertisement

My breath caught. She looked tired, her hair messily pulled back, dark circles under her eyes. But her smile was gentle, and when she spoke, I realized immediately she wasn’t talking to me. She was talking to Leo.

There was only one file: a video.

“Hi, my sweet boy,” Nora whispered. “If you’re watching this someday, I need you to know the truth. And I need you to forgive me. There’s something about your father I never had the courage to say out loud.