Victorine’s voice cracked on the last sentence. And D’Arcy could feel her agony, that of having to make such a choice, of always doubting herself thereafter, but sticking to the course regardless because she’d believed that doing so would protect others. Victorine was the most selfless person D’Arcy knew. She was, in all of this, the true hero. “Your life,” D’Arcy managed to say. “Your life shrunk because of me.” Another act of selflessness.

“My life expanded because of you,” Victorine said, turning to her with a smile. “I’ve always loved you as my own. The part of me that might have been capable of forming an attachment to a man died that night I saw Warren rape Jess. My relationship with you has always been the most important thing in my life and I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

At that, D’Arcy ran to her mother and lay her head on her shoulder like a child and wept. After a long time, she asked two more questions. “Do you think that if both Jess and Dan come to the exhibition, they might…”

“I hope so,” Victorine whispered into D’Arcy’s hair. “They deserve it.”

And then the final question. “Did Jess never find out who Ellie’s father really was?”

Victorine shook her head. “There was no DNA technology back then. As far as I’m concerned, you’ve always been Jess and Dan’s granddaughter. You have her elegance, his charm, and the courage of them both.”

* * *

The night of the exhibition, D’Arcy couldn’t remember a time she’d been more nervous. Everyone would find out that the photographer was Jessica May. Jess and Dan would see one another again. She and Victorine would be reunited with their family. And Josh…might not come.

She’d deliberately asked not to be around when the exhibition was hung. She wanted to walk into it for the first time and be surprised. She wanted to see the looks on people’s faces when the truth—that every photograph there from 1943 onwards had been taken by Jessica May—was revealed.

She and Victorine arrived right on time. D’Arcy gratefully accepted a glass of champagne and passed one to her mother, stopping when she saw the look on Victorine’s face: one of adoration. And D’Arcy realized that a man had arrived who must be Dan Hallworth, that he’d seen her mother and D’Arcy together, and that the look on his face matched Victorine’s.

Every last shred of the worry D’Arcy had been unable to dislodge from her mind vanished. The next part of the story was finally ready to be played out. Dan and Victorine shared the true bond of a father and a daughter even though they shared no bond of blood. It was the same with D’Arcy and Victorine. And Jess could finally tell Dan about the other things that might bind them all together: Ellie, and D’Arcy. D’Arcy and Victorine had agreed that Jess should be the one to tell him that they might have had a child together.