Chapter 3 - The Rumors
I dropped the envelope and gently caught her hands, stopping her from hiding herself from me.
"Emily," I said, my voice thick with emotion as I looked at the burn scars that proved her absolute selflessness. "Why didn't you tell anyone? Why did you let the staff, my friends, my mother—why did you let them call you those horrible things?"
Emily let out a broken, exhausted laugh.
"When you are sixteen years old, working three minimum-wage jobs to pay for your siblings' skin grafts and physical therapy, you don't have the energy to care about gossip," she said, her voice shaking. "I didn't care what the other maids thought of me. I only cared that my paychecks cleared so Johnny could get his wheelchair repaired and Lily could afford her medication."
"But when I told you I knew about them," I pleaded, desperately trying to understand. "When I said I didn't care if you had kids... you looked terrified."
"Because I thought you were like all the other men I've met," she confessed, looking down at our intertwined fingers. "Whenever a man found out I was the sole provider for three severely disabled teenagers, they ran. I thought if you knew they were my siblings—and that they would be my financial responsibility for the rest of my life—you would fire me. I couldn't risk losing the income."
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The realization hit me with the force of a freight train.
While my mother was clutching her pearls in her country club, complaining that I was marrying a "loose servant," this twenty-five-year-old woman had sacrificed her entire youth, her body, and her reputation to keep her family alive.
