I had to force the words up my throat. “When I told you we would save them, I believed it. I wanted to believe it.” I pressed my hand to my heart, and for a moment, my lips parted and no sounds came out. Everything was too close to the surface. Too raw. And this terrified me, because I lived my life carefully guarding what I presented to the world. “Those lives,” I choked out, “are my family just as much as they are yours. There is nothing I wouldn’t have sacrificed to save them. Nothing. Because they deserved better. They deserved so much better.”
