My father is staring at a photograph of me kissing my stepsister, and the silence stretching through that hospital hallway feels like it might never actually end.
I step forward before I fully decide to, some instinct pulling me toward him even though every part of me knows there is nothing I can say right now that will undo what he is looking at. "Dad."
He looks up slowly, and the expression on his face is not what I expected. Not rage, exactly. Something quieter and far worse. Betrayal, maybe. The specific kind that comes from realizing the people you trusted most were carrying a secret right under your roof while you sat across the dinner table from them, oblivious.
"How long," he says, voice low, controlled in a way that scares me more than shouting would. "How long has this actuall
