“Why didn’t she tell me?”
Claire looked down.
“Because she was afraid.”
“Afraid of what?”
“That you would spend the last weeks of her life dealing with Ethan instead of being with her.”
My eyes filled with tears.
“So she knew.”
“Yes.”
“And she kept it from me?”
“She wanted you to have your last days with her without that pain.”
I covered my mouth.
My mother had known the truth.
She had carried it while lying in that hospice bed.
And I had spent those nights worrying about her pain, never knowing she was protecting me from another kind of pain.
Claire continued.
“Your mother asked me to stop seeing Ethan.”
I looked at her.
“Did you?”
She shook her head.
“No.”
“Why?”
“I was selfish too.”
I stared at the floor.
“What about the pictures?”
“Ethan took most of them.”
“Why were they in the family album?”
Claire looked confused.
“I don’t know.”
Then I remembered something.
The digital photo frame wasn’t connected directly to Ethan’s phone.
It pulled from our shared cloud album.
Ethan had probably forgotten that the automatic backup was still connected.
One careless setting had exposed months of lies.
A single digital frame had revealed what two people had tried desperately to hide.
I left Claire’s house without saying goodbye.
That evening, I went home and opened the album one last time.
There were hundreds of family memories.
My mother’s birthday.
My childhood.
My engagement.
Christmas.
Beach trips.
Pictures of Ethan and me.
And now, mixed between all of them, were the photographs that had destroyed everything.
I deleted none of them.
Instead, I downloaded them to a separate folder.
Then I deleted the shared album from my account.
Ethan came over that night.
He stood at the door looking exhausted.
“I ended it with Claire.”
I nodded.
“I figured.”
“I love you.”
I looked at him.
“I loved you too.”