***
The next morning, I walked in with Lila on one side and Julian on the other. My sister, Anne, was already there, her coffee cup halfway to her mouth.
“Emily?” Anne asked. “What’s going on?”
I placed the locket on the table in front of my mother.
Her face changed for only a second, but I saw it.
“Did Leo leave me?” I asked. “Or did you make him?”
My mother folded her hands. “I did what any mother would have done.”
“What’s going on?
“No,” Lila said. “You did what gave you control.”
Ruth’s eyes narrowed. “You’re young, girl. You don’t understand the way of the world.”
“I understand lying perfectly well, Grandma.”
I kept my voice steady. “You told him I didn’t want him?”
“He had nothing,” my mother said. “No plan. No family worth joining. You had a future waiting.”
“He was my future.”
“You were seventeen and living in a dream world.”
“You don’t understand the way of the world.
