Page 32 of The Lies We Play

Nearly elegant.

Everett glances down at his notes. “The Bianchi Conservation Institute.”

“Why was access amended?”

Margaret looks at Everett.

Not at me, at Everett.

Something behind my eyes burns.

A ring catching warm light. A legal packet under a woman’s hand. A male voice, low and disgusted, from behind me—No one who uses pursuant deserves love.

The fragment hits with no permission and no mercy.

That voice.

A man behind me. A hand on my neck. Expensive cologne worn off by midnight. A mouth that said cruel things in public and true things only when cornered. A body held so carefully it made surrender look painful.

Our husband.

The need for him, or her, is inexplicable. They’re unattainable because I don’t even know if they exist or if they’re part of some hallucinatory product of what happened to me ten years ago. But I can feel them—both. I look at my left wrist. The Celtic knot tattoo that I don’t understand. I can’t remember when I got it, but sometimes it serves as a symbol of hope.

Hope that one day I’ll remember who I was and won’t feel trapped in a life that seems more fabricated than real.

My grip on the pen goes too tight.

Everett says, “The changes were administrative.”

“Administrative changes are usually documented.”

He nods. “They are.”

“Then I want to see the record.”

Margaret folds her hands. She is not a Saint Claire by blood, which has always made her more loyal than those of us cursed with the name. “Halston, the record is part of a larger audit package. It would be more efficient for legal to summarize.”

“I didn’t ask for a summary.”

The sentence comes out colder than I intend.

For a moment, no one moves.

Twelve people sit around a table purchased with money that has passed through so many trusts, shell entities, and charitable vehicles that no one in this room can tell the truth about where it began without checking a binder first. They watch me with careful expressions.

Grief, polished into governance.

Everett leans back. “You’ve been under a great deal of stress lately.”

I almost smile.

There it is. There it is. The words they have spent nine years making sound reasonable. Stress. Recovery. Fragile judgment. Temporary limitations.

They never say the word incapable outright. Instead, they circle the words with expensive pens and practiced concern. Attaching it to every decision I make, until even I’m asking for my own medical records, becomes proof that I'm not ready to have any independence.

Everett doesn't have to threaten me. None of them do.

The restriction is already sitting in the room with us, tucked into the language of the conservatorship they still insist is temporary. I can own the name on the building, but not the file with my name on it. I can sit at the head of the table, but only if I behave like a patient grateful for permission.