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I blink. I don’t know what she’s saying.

Someone else?

“Who?”

“I can’t say.”

“Who, Jolie? Who was it?”

Jolie shakes her head. She’s exasperated. It’s as if we’re trying to solve a puzzle, and I’m ten steps behind.

“You can’t see it? Even now? Jesus, I’ve been silent for so long. I’ve tried to hide it all for years.”

“Jolie...”

“I can’t do this.”

She turns away.

I reach out for her. My hand nearly touches her shoulder, but then I pull back.

“What can’t you do, Jolie? What can’t you say? What aren’t you telling me?”

Jolie pauses. Her lips tighten.

She finally turns back to me, her teal eyes bright in the night.

“I can’t keep quiet anymore,” she says softly. “My father, Fabien. My father made me send that email.”

Oh.

The missing puzzle piece. The name that explains everything.

It finally clicks.

I’ve been too blind to see it. Too fucking stupid. Even after all these years.

Cromwell Auclair.

Of course it was Cromwell. Jesus, it was always Cromwell. Behind everything. Manipulating her and me at the same fucking time. He made her send that email. He did this. All of this. This hate. This distance between Jolie and me. It was him all along, sitting there on the sidelines, telling me to cut sentimentality out of my life. Trapping me with ideas of loyalty while he used his own daughter as a weapon against me.

I don’t know what to do with that information.

And then, right on cue, before I can say anything, the heavens open, and the rain finally pours down.

33

JOLIE

It was like yesterday.

My father sitting there across from me at the table. Saying those things about Fabien. Talking about us. Telling me what I had to do.

Reminding me of my duty to him, and of the duty to my future.

I simply had to let Fabien go.

And now in the rain years later, that boy whose heart I broke pulls me under a shop doorway as the deluge comes. I really wish he wouldn’t. I wouldn’t have cared about standing there on the sidewalk getting soaked. Cold and wet is all I deserve for what I’ve done.