Page 104 of Two Wars and a Wedding

“Hey,” Holt said softly. Very gently, he put an arm around her, trying not to crowd her. Her bowed head bumped against his chest; she was gasping, snorting, trying to suck the sobs back in. “Hey.”

Betsy made a blubbery noise that might have been words or might not. It was hard to tell.

“Have you been holding this in all this time?”

Betsy lifted a ravaged face. “There should be—there should be a warning on me. Caveat . . . emptor . . . Beware. Lasciate ogni speranza . . .”

Holt felt a ridiculous surge of affection. Only Betsy would use what little breath she had to berate herself in three languages. He wanted to wrap his arms around her and tell her none of it mattered. But he didn’t think she’d believe him. That wasn’t how her mind worked. Her diamond-sharp, brilliant mind. Layers upon layers of pains and doubts shoved down, so one only saw the bright surface, hard and glittering.

Holt had guessed that there was something at the heart of it, but he had never imagined that this was what it was. I had a baby and I gave him away. I had a lover and I killed him.

“This lover . . .” Holt had a hard time pronouncing the word. “Did he hurt you? If you were defending yourself . . .”

Yanking back, Betsy gaped at him. “I didn’t— Is that what you thought?”

Holt felt like a heel. “You did say you killed him,” he said apologetically.

“How did you think I killed him? With a blow to the head? A knife to the ribs? Poison? That would have been quicker—kinder.” Betsy straightened, holding herself with a sort of tragic dignity despite the snot bubbling out of her nose. “No. I didn’t kill him like that. I was nursing—at a typhoid hospital—in Lamia. He came to see me. I didn’t ask him to! He just . . . appeared.”

Betsy swiped hard at her nose with the back of her hand. Holt handed her a handkerchief. She took it blindly, staring past Holt, her attention concentrated on something only she could see.

“There was an icon on the ward. A wonder-working icon. The queen gave it to me. All the men kissed it for luck. Charles—it was because he was trying to make a point, trying to impress me, trying to, oh, I don’t know.”

She wrapped Holt’s handkerchief around and around in her hands, twisting it, wringing it.

“Sometimes I wonder if it’s because I didn’t believe. Maybe God is punishing me for not believing in signs and wonders. But then why did Charles die and not me? Why take Charles?”

“Charles was your, er, lover?”

Betsy nodded abstractedly. She was somewhere else. Back in Lamia. With this Charles. “He didn’t deserve to die because of me. It wasn’t fair. I keep thinking—if he’d never met me—if I’d never known him—”

Holt couldn’t bear it anymore, not the twisting, not the wringing, not this Charles. He clasped her hands in his own. “Did you deliberately infect him with typhoid?”

Betsy blinked at him. “Well, no—”

“Then how was it your fault?”

“Because I was there.” Betsy pulled her hands out of his grasp. Holt’s handkerchief fell to the ground. “Because I destroy everything I touch.”

“You didn’t destroy me. You saved me. Three times over.”

Betsy frowned at him, momentarily diverted. “How do you get three? Never mind. It doesn’t matter. You don’t understand. If it hadn’t been for me— I killed Charles.”

“I understand more than you know.” Holt bent over to retrieve his handkerchief, taking longer than he needed to. It was hard, so hard, to force the words out. But he had to. For Betsy. “I killed my mother.”

That caught her attention. “Did you just say that you killed your mother?”

“By your logic.” By his logic too, Holt realized. It was why he’d gone West, trying to outrun his crime, trying to escape his guilt. He jammed his handkerchief down into one of his pockets. “I didn’t do it on purpose. Mine wasn’t the hand that pushed her. But if I hadn’t been born—”

“Childbirth fever?” Betsy said sagely.

“No.” Maybe that would have been better. Maybe it would have been kinder. Not to have all those years of fear. Beloved mother on her tombstone. “She was murdered. My father murdered her. He pushed her down a flight of stairs.”

“But you said—you said you killed her.”

Holt tried to back up, but he was trapped. Trapped between the wall and Betsy. “You said you killed this Charles.”

“That’s not an answer.”