15
The thing Diana said to Aurelle after the abortion, the thing she’d never told anyone, was this:
‘I hated him. I wished he would die.’
‘Who?’ said Aurelle.
‘Keith. My brother. I hated him. I–’ She stopped short.
Aurelle’s pretty eyes blinked, once, twice, and she listened. She already knew this, on some level. How could Diana not have, given how he’d treated her?
‘Well, you probably heard him say things about me. I know he did. He… he wasn’t kind.’ He was, in fact, relentlessly cruel and s******c, pushing her into a box of loneliness that she’d eventually turned into stoicism. Aurelle nodded, ashamed again that she had never jumped to Diana’s defense.
‘Anyway,’ Diana continued. ‘We had a fight that morning, and he left, and went down to the dock. I followed him. And… I saw it ha
