I don’t tell her I’m not sorry. That I spent a long time in mourning, not for losing Claire, but for how my whole reality seemed to shatter the moment I got down on one knee and she said no. I thought I loved her, and maybe I did love the idea of her. But more than that, I wanted the life I had envisioned for us. A safe and secure and straightforward marriage. A surgical career in one of the best hospitals in the country. What my brothers had fought so hard and so long for me to have. A perfect life. Atonement for the sin I had committed, a final twist of the key to lock my secret away. Proof
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