Page 163 of The Lies We Play

“You should change before we leave.”

“I didn’t know we were leaving.”

She checks her Cartier watch. The one Dad gave her a few months before he died. At least that’s what she said. It belonged to my grandmother—I know it shouldn’t be hers, but . . . I don’t remember shit, so there’s no way to argue about it.

“We have the donor breakfast at nine.” She taps the watch twice.

I did know that.

It probably sits somewhere in the approved calendar, a breakfast with patrons who donate large sums to cultural access initiatives and like to meet the recovering Saint Claire heir because the story makes the checks feel emotional.

When I can, I have to ask Creed if I used to enjoy these functions or . . . will he be able to tell me who exactly I was before the accident? Do I want to become that person again?

Fuck, maybe this is too much. I wish I could talk to a therapist, but how, when most of them tell my family everything? Which should be illegal, but I can’t even sue them because they own me. That’s fucking pathetic.

But today I feel like rebelling again, so I say, “I’m not going.”

Everett’s eyes move to her.

Still, after all these years, they glance at each other before deciding how much of me I am allowed to use.

My stepmother takes three steps closer. “You’ve had a difficult night.”

“No. I had a night.”

“We are not your enemies.”

That sentence is too rehearsed to be anything except a confession.

I breathe once. Slowly.

Cornelius’s voice moves through me.

Don’t sign anything today.

A second sentence follows it.

One I have not heard in decades.

I'm not even sure I have ever heard it.

But, of course, I am hearing it now, but not here. I’m in the kitchen of the house in Greenwich, on a Sunday I can't date, with the smell of the coffee Cornelius liked and morning light coming through the back windows.

Look inside yourself before you deal with the company’s paperwork.

Honestly, I don’t know exactly what that means.

What fucking paperwork?

Also . . . inside of what? My soul? My trauma? The emotionally unsupervised filing cabinet where I keep every terrible decision I have ever made?

It is a very cryptic thing to hear from the old man—or from the part of my brain currently having a short circuit.

I don't move.

I don't let either of them see what is happening behind my face.

“I’m not going,” I say. “Today, I’d rather stay and rest. It’s not like I’m going to party—you always say my health comes before everything else.”