It was busy at the station, and for a while, I thought the detectives might have forgotten I was there. But then the door opened and Sofie Rhodes was standing there. She looked even worse than I felt—her eyes red rimmed, her face pale. When she walked, the robe she was wearing shifted, and I saw the dark, dried blood on her nightshirt.

I looked away, suddenly ashamed. I had only ever seen her as an enemy. Now I couldn’t pretend that I didn’t know she was once young and hopeful, the world at her feet.

“We are the same, you and me,” she said suddenly.

“We are nothing alike.”

“We are the kind of women who do whatever needs to be done—” she dropped her voice, and her gaze softened as she added “—especially when it comes to our family.”

My shoulders slumped. She immediately saw through my plan to protect Henry, just as I knew Calvin would. Would it matter? Could the police charge my brother for a crime I confessed to?

“I hope your husband is okay,” I whispered. She nodded to acknowledge she heard me, but her gaze was distant.

“We told ourselves that we were only protecting our family. In the end, we lost our son and our daughter anyway—and what’s almost as hard to live with now is that we lost ourselves in the process. It’s too late for us to make things right back home in Germany—that’s why it’s so important to Jürgen and me to build something good here.” She gave me a sad, searching look. “You only get one life, Mrs. Miller. If nothing else, you have to live it with integrity—true to yourself and your values, whatever the consequences.”

She closed the door behind her, leaving me alone again. The second hand on the clock seemed louder than ever. I stared up at it until my eyes watered.

You only get one life, Mrs. Miller.

But that wasn’t true. I’d lived many lives. I’d become someone entirely new, just to survive in El Paso. I’d done it again for Calvin’s sake, and I’d honed that new persona, desperate to make him happy the only way I seemed able. I’d shape-shifted again for the El Paso wives, just so I’d fit in.

And it seemed I’d been willing to do that all over again for Henry; to pretend I was the kind of woman who would shoot a man in his own backyard, to save my brother from himself.

Why had I thrown myself on the grenade of his mess, without so much as a second thought for my own welfare? I’d even been more concerned for saving Sofie Rhodes, a woman I supposedly despised, than I was for protecting myself.