“I know.”
“Did Lily know?”
“Not then.”
I gripped the railing beside the bench.
“How did a marriage contract become part of this?”
Noah exhaled slowly.
“Your parents believed if Lily had a husband willing to assume responsibility for her day-to-day life, they wouldn’t need to arrange residential placement. Your father wanted legal assurances. Then they offered me money.”
“To take her off their hands.”
Noah flinched.
“I think that’s how they saw it.”
My eyes burned.
“And you agreed.”
“I agreed to the document.”
“That’s the same thing.”
“No.”
He stood.
“It isn’t.”
“Tell me how.”
“Because I was already going to ask her to marry me.”
I froze.
Noah stepped closer.
“I loved her, Hannah.”
“Then why didn’t you refuse the money?”
“Because if I refused the whole arrangement, your father threatened to move forward with their plan before Lily and I could sort everything out.”
“You could’ve told me.”
“I wanted to.”
“You should have.”
“I know.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because Lily eventually asked me not to.”
I stared at him.
“Eventually?”
Noah nodded.
“I told her about the agreement during our first year of marriage.”
The anger inside me shifted direction.
“You told her?”
“I couldn’t keep pretending it didn’t exist. She deserved to know.”
“What did she do?”
For the first time that night, Noah smiled faintly.
“First she cried.”
His voice cracked.
“Then she yelled at me.”
“Good.”
“Very loudly.”
Despite everything, I nearly laughed.
“Then she made me show her every bank statement.”
“Also good.”
“And after that, she sat at the kitchen table for about twenty minutes without speaking.”
He looked toward the double doors at the far end of the corridor.
“Finally, she asked me one question.”
“What?”
“She asked whether I would have married her if your parents had offered me nothing.”
My chest tightened.
“I told her yes.”
“And she believed you?”
Noah nodded.
“She said, ‘Then I still choose you.’”
I pressed my fingers against my lips.
The tears came before I could stop them.
“Why did she hide it from me?”
“Because she knows you.”
“What does that mean?”
“She said you’d declare war on your parents.”
“She was right.”
“She also thought it would tear the family apart.”
“They did that themselves.”
“I told her the same thing.”
He wiped his eyes.
“But it was her story. She asked me to keep it private.”
“And tonight?”
“Before surgery, she grabbed my hand and said, ‘If I don’t wake up, Hannah has to know. Promise me.’”
There was that word again.
Promise.
The word that had followed the three of us since childhood.
I looked at the contract in my hand.
Minutes earlier, I had believed it proved that Noah was a fraud.
Now I understood something far worse.
He had signed the ugliest document I had ever seen because my parents had placed Lily in a position where someone who loved her believed cooperating was the safest way to protect her.
