“I didn’t correct them.”
“Oh, Cullen.”
“And it just kept going. I let them think we had money. I let them think the beach house was a family property, like it’d been handed down for generations. And then I met Blythe, and her mother—her mother was so impressed. With the house. With the ‘Vance place on the point.’ And I just… I kept building it up. Bigger and bigger. I couldn’t stop.”
“And I didn’t fit the story,” I said quietly.
He flinched.
“Mom—”
“A school secretary. A carpenter’s widow.
