That sentence was about to appear on the screen behind me.

I lifted the microphone.

“Vanessa.”

My voice shook now despite everything.

“You once asked me why Dad treated us differently.”

She stared at me.

“What are you talking about?”

“I didn’t know either.”

I looked toward our mother.

“But Mom did.”

The screen changed.

A scanned document appeared.

My father’s signature filled the bottom of the page.

My mother grabbed the back of the nearest chair.

Vanessa whispered, “No.”

Adrian turned toward them.

Then the sentence appeared.

“Vanessa Eleanor Monroe is not my biological daughter; she is the biological child of my wife, Eleanor Monroe, and my younger brother, Thomas Monroe.”

Chaos.

Actual chaos.

Someone screamed.

A champagne glass shattered.

Vanessa stumbled backward.

“No.”

Mother closed her eyes.

“No, no, no.”

Vanessa looked at her.

“Mom?”

Mother couldn’t speak.

Vanessa crossed the distance between them.

“Mom!”

“It isn’t—”

“Is that true?”

“Vanessa—”

“IS THAT TRUE?”

The sound echoed from the chandeliers.

Mother began crying.

That answered everything.

Vanessa backed away.

Her face collapsed.

For twenty-nine years, she had believed Richard Monroe was her father.

So had I.

Thomas Monroe—our father’s younger brother—had died in a boating accident when Vanessa was six months old.

I remembered photographs of him.

Dark hair.

Green eyes.

Vanessa’s eyes.

God.

How had I never noticed?

Mother sank into a chair.

“It happened once.”

Nobody believed her.

Not even Vanessa.

“One time,” Mother repeated desperately.

“Your father was traveling constantly.

Thomas was helping me with you, Claire, and I was lonely and angry and stupid.”

I stared at her.

“Did Dad know?”

Mother covered her mouth.

“Yes.”

The word came out broken.

Vanessa turned toward the screen.

“How long?”

“From the beginning.”

“And he stayed?”

“Yes.”

“He raised me?”

“Yes.”

“He paid for everything?”

“Vanessa—”

“He called me his daughter?”

Mother nodded.

Vanessa’s eyes filled.

“Then why did he write that?”

That question had haunted me too.

The affidavit continued beyond the single sentence.

I had read every page.

Dad had never intended to disown Vanessa.

Quite the opposite.

The document explicitly stated that although Vanessa wasn’t his biological daughter, he considered her his child “in every way that matters.”

So why preserve the secret?

Because there had been another secret underneath it.

I looked at my mother.

“You tell her.”

Mother’s head snapped toward me.

“Claire, don’t.”

“You should have told her years ago.”

“Not here.”

A bitter laugh escaped me.

“You helped her steal my wedding dress in front of three hundred people.”

I glanced around the ballroom.

“I think we passed private about twenty minutes ago.”

Vanessa grabbed Mother’s wrist.

“What else?”

Mother stared at me.

“Claire.”

“What else?”

Vanessa repeated.

Mother began shaking.

“Your father was going to leave.”

I froze.

That wasn’t in the affidavit.

“What?”

Mother looked at me.

“Richard was going to divorce me.”

My throat tightened.

“When?”

“The year before Thomas died.”

Vanessa released her.

“Why?”

Mother laughed weakly through her tears.

“Because he found out.”

“About the affair?”