Page 114 of The Lies We Play

It doesn't.

“But?” I ask.

“But Halston spoke of you.”

The phone becomes too hot against my ear.

Ridiculous. It is glass and metal and battery acid and poor life choices. It can't burn.

Still, my fingers adjust around it as if I have been caught touching something I should have left alone.

“He did?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Before the accident.”

I close my eyes.

Before the accident is not a time.

It is a country.

One, I lost citizenship in a hospital bed.

“What did he say?”

Mr. Everhart exhales once, as if deciding which truth can survive the journey through a phone line.

“He said you could see falsified history faster than most lawyers could read it.”

A laugh breaks out of me before I can stop it.

It is small and ugly and gone almost immediately.

Of course, Halston would turn affection into a professional assessment. God forbid the man say something simple like she is brilliant, or I love her, or please make sure no one destroys her life with paperwork. No, naturally, he complimented me on my ability to identify fraudulent provenance.

“That sounds like him,” I say.

“It does.”

The silence after that hurts.

I look toward the window. The glass gives my face back to me: tired eyes, work shirt wrinkled from an evening I never changed out of, and hair pinned badly enough to qualify as a cry for help. I am sitting on the edge of a bed in a city I once used as a hiding place, speaking to a man who knew Halston before my life split into before and after.

Then Fitzhenry clears his throat.

“Also,” he says, “Creed Lafontaine has been looking for you.”

That surprises me so completely I almost forget to breathe.

Which is annoying. Breath is free. I should be better at keeping it.

“Well,” I say, aiming for dry and missing by several humiliating inches, “he has not done a good job.”

“We did the first years,” Fitzhenry says. “They just hid you really well.”