Melissa touched my shoulder.
“Good,” I said, looking at Matilda. “Then nobody gets another promise that breaks.”
Matilda’s chin trembled. “Does that mean you’re leaving?”
“No,” I said. “It means if I stay, I stay the right way, sweetheart.”
Later that week, Atlas’s family held a memorial lunch. I went so no one else could tell the story for me.
His cousin Bethany cornered me near the coffee urn. “So it’s true? Atlas had some secret child?”
“Matilda isn’t his child.”
“But he played father to her while you sat home alone?”
“Does that mean you’re leaving?”
