A./N.: Very short and quite dramatic. I'm slowly getting back into the swing of things and decided to finally finish all my stories. Wish me luck with that. Hope you enjoy.

Chapter 20:

Clarisse stood in Joseph's bathroom, carefully running a wet cloth across her face. Somehow it was therapeutic, calming, … liberating; it felt as if she was washing away the mask of lies she had created too many years ago, a mask that was now superfluous. As she was cleaning the tracks of her tears from her face she also washed away all her remaining make-up, leaving her skin as bare as her soul was in front of Joseph and Rupert.

Drawing a shaking breath, Clarisse tried to prepare herself for the truth. She owed that to Rupert at the very least. After all the years of marriage and two children, she owed him honesty at last. Drawing another deep breath, she felt the slim golden chain around her neck, which she never took off. Joseph had given her that necklace on her 17th birthday … the night he had made love to her for the very first time; the night she had promised him her heart for as long as she lived. Grimacing sadly into the mirror, she reflected that it were usually the boys who broke promises such as this – or so she had always been told. Clarisse knew though that she had broken Joseph's heart into a million tiny pieces, had broken her word to him.

What neither men, semi-patiently waiting for her to re-enter the living room, expected was that there was much more to the truth than Mabrey had uncovered. It was only half her shame and she knew that once she revealed it, she would break Joseph's heart all over again and lose all the remaining shreds of respect Rupert had for her.

Sinking onto the seat of the toilet, she tried to brace herself against the barrage of emotions set on drowning her. She had to be brave for once in her life: not for herself, not for her sons, … not only for either of the two men outside, but for the daughter she had told no one about. Joseph's daughter. She was hardly able to look herself in the mirror as it was, but if she let this chance slip through her fingers, she would never forgive herself.