He stopped, taking a ragged breath.

“Go on,” I said quietly.

“I told her her father is building one,” he read. “A beautiful castle. But it takes a long time to build something real.”

Ethan closed his eyes, his chest heaving under his white shirt.

“I didn’t build them a castle,” he whispered. “I built one for myself and left them in the cold.”

“You did,” I said.

I wasn’t going to lie to him to make him feel better.

“Carl Brenner took everything they had left because no one was watching,” I added.

Ethan’s hand clenched into a tight fist around the edge of the notebook.

His expensive wool coat was draped over the back of the vinyl chair, looking completely out of place.

“I have so much money, Evelyn,” he whispered, looking at Mary’s still face.

“I know,” I said.

“And it couldn’t buy them a warm room when the radiator broke,” he said.

“It could have,” I said. “If you had remembered them.”

He bowed his head, resting his forehead against the edge of the mattress.