Page 213 of The Lies We Play

Then . . .

Cornelius Saint Claire had been a man who cared about money and the things money could be made to do.

He inherited his father’s holdings in 1967 and tripled them in twelve years. He bought a building in the Bronx in 1968 that he sold in the eighties for sixty-one times what he paid for it. He gave to causes the family found politically convenient. He knew how to turn a signature into leverage, a room into a hierarchy, and charity into a name carved into marble.

That was the man Halston had been raised under.

Then, a year ago, Cornelius started asking different questions.

Not about the family business.

About what Halston was reading.

About his sudden interest in hockey.

About the girl he spent so much time with, the one who was an art major and had opinions about paintings, wine, and the criminal misuse of recessed lighting.

Liv.

We’ve met Cornelius at functions where Liv and I have been guests, though Halston has never introduced us as ‘this is my girlfriend and my boyfriend.’ He introduces carefully. He places us in language the way he places a glass on a table, with precision and the full awareness of what could break if someone careless reaches for it.

“He’s asked me if I’ve been to the East Sixty-Third townhouse,” Halston says. “The one Constance wanted to sell. Cornelius quietly arranged to retain it in family trust against Bradford’s wishes. It has been empty for six years.”

“Wasn’t it your mother’s?” I ask.

He shrugs.

The shrug is too small for the answer.

“The family absorbed everything she had.”

“Shouldn’t it be yours?”

He snorts. “My grandfather believes in giving. He also believes in taking back.”

“So you’re saying he changed, but he took that back.”

“That was more than ten years ago,” he reminds me. “Now he’s wondering about legacy.”

He says the word like it tastes different than it used to.

“He’s beginning to understand that legacy is not how much money you accumulate,” Halston continues. “It is not how many buildings you buy or how many trustees sit straighter when you enter the room. The people around him are waiting for him to die so they can take a piece of what he accumulated. Nothing in that says Cornelius Saint Claire was a good man who left something important to the world.”

“So?” I ask because, seriously, that is not Halston’s problem.

It should not have to be.

He has already paid enough for that family’s name. He has paid in childhood, silence, holidays, dinners, boardrooms, and every careful breath he takes before saying what he really thinks.

“So I'm not going to do the public interest fellowship,” he says.

“I'm not going to take the small apartment in Brooklyn. I'm not going to be the man who left the table.”

I still hold his hand. His fingers are cold in mine, even though the apartment is warm. Outside the windows, rain keeps sliding down the glass in thin, silver lines. Chelsea glows below us, taxis moving through wet streets, people carrying umbrellas, the city doing what it always does while one man quietly changes the future.

I hold tighter.

Not enough to stop him.