Her voice trembled as she went on. “I don’t know who the father is,” she confessed. “I was with Aaron for three years. Then Daniel came along just after we broke up… the timing overlapped.” She covered her face with her hands, her shoulders shaking. “I thought I could pretend until it all made sense.”
Elise felt her throat tighten. All the fragments—the secrecy, the panic, the bruises that weren’t bruises—fell into place. Olivia hadn’t been trapped by violence but by shame, by the fear of losing everyone she cared about if she dared to tell the truth.