“I changed my mind.”
“Why?”
His voice softened.
“Because I realized the original agreement still gave you a reason to stay even if someday you wanted to leave.”
Clara stared.
“I don’t want that.”
He nodded toward Lily’s jar.
“You both spent too many years believing love has to be repaid.”
Then Arthur said quietly:
“You didn’t marry me because you needed my money, Clara.”
He looked around the once-empty house.
“I married you because I was the one who needed something you had.”
“What?”
“A family.”
Clara looked from Arthur to Lily.
And suddenly she understood.
For months, she had been watching Arthur, waiting for wealth to reveal a hidden price.
But Arthur had never been the person secretly carrying the greatest fear in that house.
Lily had.
A ten-year-old girl had spent nearly a year believing her own existence was the reason her mother had needed to marry a rich old man.
I HEARD MY 74-YEAR-OLD HUSBAND WHISPER TO MY DAUGHTER, “YOUR MOM CAN’T KNOW”—THEN I SAW WHAT THEY’D HIDDEN UNDER THE CHRISTMAS TREE
