The breeze picked up as it drifted through the doors and ruffled Kelly’s hair. She leaned back into the couch as partners often did in his counseling sessions. Putting distance between them and whatever was about to be revealed.

Daniel took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and lifted a lid he’d thought was nailed down forever. “The original version of No Secrets wasn’t mine. It was Howard’s.”

Kelly blinked hard as her mouth dropped open.

“I found it in his desk when I was cleaning it out after the funeral. I had a big problem—the bank was going to shut down the practice—and I found what I thought was a solution. I told myself it would be okay because I edited most of it. But the lie grew larger every time someone asked me about my inspiration for the book.” His words tumbled out like boiling white-water, spilling over one another in a rush to be heard.

Kelly’s voice was thin. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Shame, pride, the fact I thought I could fix my problems myself. But it’s been impossible to come up with an idea for the second book because I didn’t come up with the idea for the first.”

Kelly flushed beet red. Then she hurried to the kitchen, and with the tap gushing, she filled, then overfilled, a water glass.

“Kelly?”

Kelly drained the glass, and then she filled and overfilled it once more before slamming the tap off. The glass trembled in her hands. “So you’re saying that even after working longer than I was supposed to at a job that was destroying me, we’ll lose the house?”

Daniel stood, his hands spread wide, his gaze down. A beaten man, but one whose beating left bruises on her as well. “I don’t know.”

Another gust of wind plucked at their curtains. Kelly’s eyes flicked around the room but landed nowhere near Daniel. The loss of respect he’d expected had started its erosion.

Daniel glanced at the photos in his hand. “I didn’t want to own up to this with you. More to the point, I didn’t want to own up to it with myself. Something in me didn’t want you to see me for what I’d done.”

“But you’ve done it, and now I have to pay for it too.”

“Fair enough. But it’s bigger than that. If that fact about No Secrets gets out, I’ll be destroyed professionally. If that ever came out in a counseling session in someone else’s practice—”

Kelly gestured to the photos. “So what do we do? This is our future if we don’t do something about it.”

“It’s also more than just the two of us. Milly isn’t in any of these photos.”

“I know.” Her tears welled again.