Page 108 of The Butcher's Wife

“She’sdead. I can’t give forgiveness to a dead person.”

I can’t make myself like everyone else, who insists her spirit is floating around us, invisible and present as oxygen. She’s not here. The emperor isn’t wearing clothes. The house is empty, the lights are off.

“It’s not about her,” Dom murmurs. “It’s about you. You’re not letting yourself process what happened, and you’re getting stuck.”

I glare at the shadowed benches covered by the awning. This is the place where people go to rest after they’ve visited their dead.

“I processed it just fine. My family and I put too much pressure on my sister to be the perfect daughter, and instead of talking to me or any of us, she bottled up all her feelings and turned to drugs and a secret boyfriend for escape. And then she let me get married to Frederico in her place, where I went through hell for three years, while she played Romeo and Juliet with Russell. And in all of our phone calls and my visits home, she lied to me every day, because she didn’t trust me enough to tell me the truth. I wasn’t important enough for that. I was expendable.”

“She loved you.”

“Not enough to inconvenience herself. Not more than she loved herself, orRussell.”

Dom straightens, the hood of the car bisecting his neck so that I lose sight of his face. He sips from his coffee and rests his body against the frame of the car, making it tilt in his direction. “You remember what I told your sister at the stadium? That I wouldn’t let any harm come to her? You wanna know what she told me?”

I grit my teeth and squeeze my coffee cup. I don’t want to know. I’m sick of picking up the pieces of myself and trying to glue them back together just to get shattered again. I’m not strong enough to keep doing this.

Dom’s steady voice continues from just out of sight. “She thought she was getting married to Aldo soon, and she knew that meant she had an expiration date hanging over her head, but instead of telling me thanks or asking me to help get her out of her marriage, she got mad. Or, you know, her version of mad, where she starts box breathing.”

I snort despite myself. She was always giving me andCarlo breathing tips, like if we just breathed in a specific timing or blew pretend bubbles in the air, we could inhale and exhale our way to a perfect life.

“She told me if there was anyone to keep out of harm’s way, it was you. She thought she was going to die, and she told me to worry about you instead.”

My hold on my coffee cup loosens. “Why would she say that? I never told her anything about Frederico.”

“Probably because she was paying attention to you. She loved you.”

I scoff bitterly. “Not enough to tell me the truth.”

“Sometimes people feel like they have a good reason for lying.”Dom sets his cup on the hood of the car and bends down to smirk at the side of my face. “Sometimes, even to people they love.”

My breath catches in my throat, and I glance at him. He grins.

I groan and drop my head against the car seat. Tears prick my eyes.

I lied to Dom, didn’t I? I told him I was my sister, and I forced him into a marriage that put his life at risk. He didn’t ever hold it against me. He trusted me, protected me,lovedme. And this evening, I left the penthouse without telling him—again—because I didn’t trust him to let me go otherwise.

Is Dom’s love so true that he can still give me kindness and affection despite my lying and betrayals? Does he forgive me every time I sin against him? Is that love? Forgiving someone, no matter what they do?

No.

That’s wrong, I know. Some sins are too big to forgive. But Serafina’s?

I blink at the tears in my eyes, blurring everythingaround me into dark shapes. I thought I finally had a handle on crying, but that seems to be the one guarantee in my life—always more tears in reserve.

Serafina didn’t lie to hurt me. She was just a girl with a broken support system, doing her best to stay afloat.

I don’t need to forgive her. There’s nothing to forgive. She was looking for relief and love, and she didn’t mean to cause any pain.

I know. I just wish I could’ve done more to make her feel less lonely. I wish I could’ve taken some of her hurt.

I take a deep, shuddering breath and whisper my confession. “I want to move forward.”

“Sometimes you can’t move forward without dealing with the past.”

I roll my head along the seat to look at him, a bitter smile playing at the corners of my mouth. “You get that off a fortune cookie?”

His grin is as beautiful as the sun. “Nah. Just made a lot of mistakes over the years.”