“We had to,” she whispered, her voice barely audible. “Arthur was going to lose the business. We were going to lose everything, Chloe. We had no choice.”

“You had a choice not to leave me in there,” I said.

“We thought you were with Chloe at the neighbor’s,” my mother wept. “We didn’t know you had gone back inside to get your book. I swear to you, Maya, we didn’t know.”

“But when you found out,” I said, “you didn’t call the fire department right away. You waited.”

My mother couldn’t look at me.

She turned her head away, her shoulders shaking violently as she wept.

Chloe stepped back, her face pale.

“You knew?” Chloe asked our mother. “You knew all this time?”

“We did it for you,” my father said, stepping toward Chloe. “We did it to give you both a life. Look at this house. Look at the school you go to. None of this would have been possible without that capital.”

“Don’t use me as an excuse,” Chloe said, her voice rising to a pitch that made several guests turn to look.