said, “I felt relief. And then I felt afraid.”
“Of me?”
“Of hope.”
That hurt more than blame.
She folded her arms around herself.
“Hope asks a lot from someone who has been disappointed,” she said. “It asks you to risk believing again.”
I nodded.
“I’ll earn what I can.”
She looked at me for a long moment.
Then she reached out and placed the photograph in my hand.
“Help me find out who she was,” she said.
I held Clara’s picture carefully.
“I will.”
“No,” Emma said. “Not as a rescue. As my husband.”
My throat tightened.
“As your husband,” I said.
That was the emotional conflict I had not known how to name. Emma did not need me to sweep in and fix her life like a hero arriving in the final act. She needed me to stand beside her in the uncertainty, to witness without controlling, to
