I think of the many secrets other people have woven through the fabric of my life. Thick, black thread that marred everything, changed the structure of it all, and I know I can’t be the one to continue sewing that thread. I will not take up that needle and spread it through Ezra’s life as well, even if it does mean incriminating my sister and revealing his mother’s part in all of it.

“I will tell you, Ezra. I will tell you everything that I know and the things that I don’t, but we need to get comfortable. It won’t be easy, and it will take a while.”

I tell Ezra how I believe it was Willa coming to the island all this time, doing things to try to scare me away. I tell him everything she told me before setting the cottage on fire, even the part about my sister pushing my father and killing him.

He listens quietly, asking only one or two questions, his face serious, his emotions kept mostly at bay. He shows only a split second of shock when he hears that it was May who killed my father and then sympathy for what that must mean for me. We spend some time speculating on what my sister heard that night that brought her out of the cover of the stairs to confront my father with such rage, then accept that we will probably never know and agree that perhaps it’s for the best.

I leave the part about his father’s grave for the end. I don’t have any answers around it, and I don’t want to be the person who delivers such horrific news—two parents lost within twenty-four hours is unbearable. But he has a right to know, which means I have no choice.

“There’s one last thing,” I say, reaching for his hand. “Do you remember me telling you about the cross at the tree, how it kept reappearing?” He nods. “I thought it was kids messing with me, but then it dawned on me that it was actually a grave.” He gives me a funny look, but I just keep going, now that I’ve got the courage. “I dug it up, all around the tree, and I found a body.”

“Your father’s?” Ezra says.

I shake my head. “Yours.”

He narrows his eyes with skepticism, and I feel his hand tense in mine. I quickly tell him about the leather bracelet on his wrist and the photo with West that matched it. How I figure it must have been Willa putting the crosses there and visiting it regularly. “But I don’t know how he died or ended up there. Willa didn’t tell me anything about your dad.”

Ezra gently pulls his hand from mine. “I do,” he says, and the room feels as though somebody has set it spinning.