And then she told him, told him about that day, about sneaking out of her room and into Matthew’s, the baby’s funny face, the crib and the blanket, and how she had known even then that you could not undo what you had done, that you could not make it right, even if you had not meant it, even if you had just been a little girl, even if you had just been playing.

“No,” her father said. “It’s not possible. You were a child.” He stared at his hands. “They said it had to be crib death. The doctors told us.”

“No,” she said.

He looked up. “Sometimes children think they’re responsible for things like this. Maybe you thought …”

“No.”

“You were little.”

“No.”

“You don’t remember.”

She was empty and spent, and if he did not believe her, if she had given him what she had spent her life protecting and still he could not see her, then perhaps she was invisible, perhaps she was not there at all. “I do remember,” she said. And then the sobs came—slow and small and tender.

“Oh, God,” he said. “Oh, Josie.” His hands went instinctively to his mouth, and she saw his face contort, a lifetime of heartache rippling through him. He began to cry, silent tears streaking his cheeks, and she thought if there was something keeping track of her karmic sins, it would keep her stuck here, looking at what she had done, for a very long time.

She saw everything she had stolen from him—his son, his wife, his family.

His family.

The word rang hollow in her heart. They had lived, the three of them, in this house her father had bought for four. Her mother. Her father. And her. Each alone, each orbiting the others’ grief like satellites.

She looked at him, saw the pain seep from him like sweat. “I can’t …” he said. “I can’t do this.” His shoulders shook and his hands flexed, and he grabbed his briefcase and fled, leaving her alone in the house.

She sat—in her old bedroom, in Matthew’s room, in her parents’ room—numb and waiting for him to come home. She could be patient, had waited twenty-four years for what was to come, and when she finally heard the key in the lock the next morning, she stood slowly and walked down the stairs.

He was wearing the same clothes—his shirt now wrinkled and untucked—and when he looked up at her, she stopped. She could see the sadness soaked through him. His skin and bones and muscle and blood now heavy with the weight of what she had done, and Josie thought, This is where it ends; this is what I’ve waited for, but she felt ready.