No. You and Michael aren’t related by blood. I swear it on Evelyn’s name.”

I felt my breath return, shaky and uncertain.

Everything I’d believed about my life, my family—turned upside down in one night.

But the deepest fear—that I had unknowingly married someone I was related to—was eased.

Still, the pain of the secret stung deep.

For days, I wandered the house like a ghost. The walls I had painted, the kitchen where Michael and I danced barefoot—it all felt… unreal.

I stared at Evelyn’s letters again and again. I reread the last line.

“Even if she never knows.”

But now I did know. And I couldn’t carry the burden alone.