Evangeline raised her chin. "No," she said. "He was not." No matter how anyone tried to paint Edward, that was the truth at the heart of the matter. A kind man wouldn't have done what he'd done to her, no matter how anyone might justify that she "deserved" it. If the point had been to break her, he'd failed miserably, and Eva didn't like to speculate what might have happened if he'd lived. She hadn't been very kind to him in return, but she hadn't been the one to seek him out. And certainly no one had questioned why he couldn't do "better" than her. "Certainly we're all the better off without his presence," she said.

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