When investigators later discovered the cause, my parents paid them to leave it out of the report.
They told themselves it would protect me from pain.
Instead, I spent three decades believing the fire was my fault.
I stood up quietly.
“Daniel used his final breath trying to reach me,” I said. “And you knew why he was in that house.”
My mother cried. My father stared down at the floor. Neither of them had anything that could undo the years I had lived with that belief.
So I stopped waiting.
Ben followed me outside.
“I didn’t come here for them,” he said softly. “The people who raised me are my parents. I came here to meet you—and to be here with you today.”
I believed him.
Something in his voice reminded me so strongly of Daniel that my chest tightened.
“There’s somewhere we should go,” I said. “But first we need to stop somewhere.”
Ben followed without asking questions.
We stopped at a bakery and bought a birthday cake.
When the woman behind the counter asked whose birthday it was, I smiled faintly.
“My brother’s. We’re… triplets.”
