SIX YEARS AFTER MY DAUGHTER’S TWIN WAS DECLARED STILLBORN, A HOSPITAL BLOOD DRAW REVEALED SHE HAD A SISTER THE WHOLE FAMILY HAD BEEN LIED TO ABOUT
“I told myself I was protecting you from an impossible choice,” Desmond said. “Really I was protecting myself from admitting I’d let my mother make a decision I was too much of a coward to stop.”
“Where is she? Where is Della?”
“With Odalys. In Millbrook. She’s called Nell there. Nell Osei — Odalys’s husband’s surname.”
The name detonated something in my chest.
“Nell,” I said. “Marigold’s friend. From school.”
Desmond went very still. “I didn’t know they’d end up at the same school. Odalys moved to Millbrook two years ago for Trent’s job. I swear to you, I didn’t arrange that.”
“But you knew,” I said. “You’ve known where she was this entire time, and you let me raise Marigold thinking she’d lost a sister who was alive fifteen minutes away.”
He didn’t defend himself. I think, by then, even he understood there wasn’t a defense left worth attempting.
