“What broke?” Jeremiah asked.
“They need the truth from paper.”
“Me,” I said.
All three of them froze.
I handed Adele the hospital folder.
“Heart surgery?” she whispered.
“Next week.”
“Next week?” Jeremiah stood too fast. “Were you going to tell us from the operating table?”
“I didn’t want to scare you.”
“Heart surgery?”
Chanel set the soup down hard. “Mama, hiding it scares us.”
“I didn’t want to be a burden.”
Adele sat beside me. “Loving us doesn’t mean protecting us from your life.”
Jeremiah rubbed his forehead. “You’re our mother. You don’t get to disappear quietly.”
I put Walter’s letter on the coffee table.
“There’s more.”
They read it together.
“I didn’t want to be a burden.”
Adele covered her mouth. Chanel gripped the back of the couch. Jeremiah stared at the memo line.
“For Sylvie’s due,” he said. “Dad wrote that every month?”
