“What part of this don’t you understand?” She kicked at the papers. “I didn’t send them. Miguel gave me all the grunt work to do . . . all the communication, letters, phone calls, filing, telegrams, all of it. He thought I sent them, thought I called her dorm and home. I was the one who told him I couldn’t find her. I thought by now you’d understand why, that you’d see it was for the best, that I gave you a life she never could have given you. Hell, I gave you a life, period. You would have rotted in that jail for who knows how long if I hadn’t.” She turned from him, sank to her knees in a puddle of silver fabric.

He leaned down and lifted the papers from the floor, stared at the words he’d written almost twenty-five years ago, words he still remembered . . . begging words.

“No . . .”

Eliza lifted her head. “Yes. You can’t stand it, can you? Now you have your reason to hate me. You’ve been looking for one for years. Now you have it.”

He should tell her he did not hate her, but he couldn’t. He could only ask the one question that bubbled its way to the surface of his disbelief. “Why?”

“Why?” she shrieked. He recoiled at the intensity. “Because I loved you. I saw that I was the one who really loved you, that what you had with Amy was . . . obsession and infatuation. I saw no other way to make you see that I was the best one for you. I spent the entire trip, that whole three months, trying to make you see . . . really see me. But you wouldn’t. Amy this, Amy that . . . go home to Amy. You couldn’t even enjoy the trip, what was right in front of you. When the accident happened, I saw it as a sign—a way to save you in more ways than one.”

“You decided . . . what was best for me?”

“I knew—I know what is best for you.”

“Why now? Why tell me now, after almost twenty-five years? Why now when I can’t do a thing about it?” He moved toward her.