Cash exhaled, and looked down at his empty palm. ”We were very close when we were children,” he said. It was a fact much of his family knew, but it was still odd to say it — like admitting that he was grieving meant admitting a vulnerability.

”Less, after, but — still,” he added. She was not Angie, had not been Eli, was not Ford or Theo — Ellory was not privy to Cash’s inner world or secrets. But that did not mean that he had not loved her.

I was with her, he wanted to say, but could not manage. Cash swallowed.

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