Clara
I sat in the hospital parking lot for nearly an hour after leaving my mother's room, the folder resting on the passenger seat like something radioactive, before I finally found the courage to open it fully and read through every document in order.
The settlement agreement was worse than I remembered signing, worse somehow to r******w with a year and a half of distance and grief layered over every clause. Marriage to Sebastian Ashford within seventy-two hours, in exchange for full payment of Ethan Cole's emergency medical expenses. A non-disclosure provision, drafted by my father's attorneys, explicitly forbidding either party from discussing the terms of the arrangement publicly, protection, I understood now reading it with clearer eyes, less for my sake than for the Bennett family
