“And that’s when her world began to stir in a different direction,” Dahlia said quietly. “The Spencers are socially active, present, unavoidable. That’s when the noise started to seep in, slowly at first, then more insistently. And about a year into that marriage, she had my mother.”
Maya felt something tighten in her chest, the weight of generations pressing into her in a way she hadn’t expected.
“And as the world knows it now,” Dahlia went on, “my mother married into the Moretti family.”
“And then there was me.”
She tilted her head slightly, thoughtful.
“The Harrington bloodline never vanished,” she said. “It simply thinned—passed quietly through generations, softened by marriage.”
Dahlia met Maya’s eyes at last.
“My father never knew,” she said simply. “That’s how it was back the
