He sat in his car afterward and cried for several minutes before driving home. The book stayed on his nightstand. Connor eventually visited Laura’s grave too. He asked Megan first.
“Would that be weird?” “Yes,” she said. “But everything is weird.” They went together in early fall.
Connor stood several feet back while Megan cleaned leaves from the marker. He did not speak to Laura aloud. He simply said to Megan afterward, “I wish she had known the truth while she was here.” Megan nodded.
“Me too.” Then Connor added, “I also wish none of us had to feel like my existence is part of what hurt her.” Megan stopped walking. “You are not what hurt her.”
Connor looked at her. “My dad’s choices hurt her,” Megan said. “Your existence is just proof those choices had consequences.” Connor swallowed hard.
“That is a pretty important distinction.” “I have had therapy.” He laughed. They left the cemetery arguing over where to get lunch.
That ordinary ending mattered more than either admitted. By the time Megan was twenty-one and Connor twenty-one, the scandal had stopped being the first fact either associated with the other. Megan had a new boyfriend named Lucas who knew the story before meeting Connor and wisely made no jokes about it. Connor dated a woman from his engineering lab who met Megan and immediately said, “You two have the same skeptical face.” Both siblings groaned in unison.