Page 164 of The Lies We Play

Her face softens.

I hate the softening more than the lie.

“Halston, skipping public obligations because you are upset is not a healthy pattern.”

“Healthy,” I repeat.

“Yes.”

“Do you mean healthy, or do you mean inconvenient?”

Everett says, “That’s not fair.”

“To whom?”

My stepmother studies me. There is a calculation beneath the concern now. Finally, I prefer calculation. It is honest enough to fight.

“Did something happen last night?” she asks.

“Other than that I couldn't sleep?” I shrug, innocent and casual. “No.”

My first big lie of the day.

It tastes clean.

Maybe that is what frightens me.

Because for ten years, everyone in this family has lied to me so easily, I assumed lying required a certain moral deformity. It turns out lying isn’t hard when the truth would get someone hurt.

Creed told me not to tell anyone.

So I don’t.

My stepmother reaches for my arm.

I step back before she can touch me. They know I don’t like touch—it’s a symptom after my rough childhood, they claim. In reality, it’s probably my repulsion toward them which they mask with more lies.

The silence that follows is small and lethal.

Her hand hangs in the air for half a second before she lowers it.

I don't look away from her face while she absorbs it. Her mouth does the small wrong thing it does when she has been corrected without being insulted. She has been insulted before, in this apartment, by board members, lawyers, and a former Saint Claire wife who left back in 1992 and took a great deal of art with her. She has not been corrected in front of Everett before, by the man whose life she has been arranging for ten years.

She doesn't look at her own hand.

That is how I know she is choosing the response.

Everett notices.

Of course he does.

“I need to shower,” I say.

Everett’s phone buzzes. He glances down. Whatever he reads makes his jaw settle.

“I’ll have coffee sent up,” he says.

“No.”