Page 207 of The Lies We Play

Recognition.

“The folder contained six pieces of correspondence between Cornelius and a private firm in Manhattan. Bradford didn’t know about them.”

“Cornelius knew?”

He nods. “Cornelius knew everything eventually.”

Halston says it with affection, irritation, and grief all folded into one controlled sentence.

Then his face closes down a little.

“Bradford continued having affairs. Through every year of the marriage. Plural. Regular enough that it became part of the house.”

“Fuck.”

“Yes.”

“He was careful publicly,” Halston says. “He always was. He made restraint look like virtue when really it was just cowardice with better manners.”

I don’t interrupt.

I don’t move my hand.

He needs the room. I give it to him.

“Annaline raised me,” he says. “She read to me. She took me to museums. She didn't let my father’s family fully form me. She was the wall.”

His gaze drops.

“Until she was not.”

There is a pause after that.

A long one.

The apartment seems to tighten around us. Rain at the windows. Wine in the glass. His hand resting near mine, but not yet reaching for it.

I wait.

Halston was twelve when Bradford filed for divorce.

He doesn’t say it right away. He arrives there slowly, like the memory has rooms inside it, and he is walking through them in order.

“They had the family lawyers do it,” he says.

His voice is the most controlled it has been all night.

That makes me want to break something.

“I saw the decree,” he continues. “It was shitty. There were rules. So many rules. She could see me once a month for a weekend as long as I had no social events, no family obligations, no school function they deemed important enough to interrupt the visit.”

He laughs once.

It is an awful sound.

“Which meant they could cancel almost anything.”

I keep my voice low. “They isolated her.”