Chapter 36 #2
Remy is quiet. The anchor fills the space between us, repeating information I already know in a tone calibrated for gravity. Then the remote is in Remy's hand. The screen goes dark. The room contracts into a small, close, silent thing.
He didn't ask. He killed the screen. The choice my hand had been about to make.
When I look at him, a hunger moves across him that I almost miss because it's gone so fast. Not softness.
Not pride. The look of a man watching a woman lie in his bed without a purpose or a function or a single useful thing to offer anyone, and wanting her more, not less.
"You need water." He's already reaching for the glass on his side. "And your next neuro check is in forty minutes."
I take the glass. My hands need a task. The water is lukewarm. I drink it all.
The light in the master suite has shifted from gray to gold by the time Remy's phone buzzes. I'm propped against the headboard with two pillows behind my back and one under my ankle, my bandaged hands resting on the blanket in my lap because every position hurts and this one hurts the least.
Remy is in the chair by the window with his laptop open, close enough that I can sense him at the edge of my vision but far enough that the space between us feels chosen and kind.
The faint antiseptic smell from the bandage on my ear drifts every time I turn my head, clinical and sharp, a reminder that the stitches are real and the morning is real and I am not dreaming this particular disaster.
He hasn't spoken in twenty minutes. He doesn't need to.
His phone buzzes again. He glances at the screen, then at me. "Margaret." His thumb hovers over the answer. A question.
I nod. He answers, brief. "Yeah, she's here. Hold on." He passes the phone across the bed.
My back straightens as my fingers close around it. Shoulders drawing back, chin lifting, the whole posture of a Blanchard woman assembling itself from muscle memory.
"Margaret, hi." Warm. Measured. The tone I use for people who matter.
"Evangeline." She says my name unhurried, careful with what she's about to say next. "I heard this morning. How are you, honestly?"
"Honestly, I've been better." A small laugh that costs me nothing and gives her permission to move past the pleasantries. "But I'm safe. I'm okay."
"Good. That's what matters first." A beat, and then Margaret shifts into the cadence I've come to recognize over these weeks, competence and care running parallel, not competing.
"I want you to know the Foundation has resources for situations like this.
Victim advocacy contacts, legal referrals for the family side of things, people who've navigated public exposure before and can walk you through what comes next. "
People who've navigated public exposure. She means the daughter whose face is going to be on every screen next to his by dinnertime. She's doing what my father never did, which is treating the problem as a thing that belongs to me, not a thing I belong to.
"I'd like the advocacy contacts and the legal referrals." I hold steady, the Blanchard polish serving a real purpose for once. "The PR management, I think I need to sit with for a while."
"Of course." No hesitation, no push. "I'll have my office send everything over this afternoon. And Evangeline, whatever you need from me personally, you have my cell. Use it."
"Thank you, Margaret." The gratitude is genuine and it surprises me how much, how the simple fact of a woman offering help without attaching conditions makes my throat tighten in a place the news coverage didn't reach.
The call ends. I hand the phone back to Remy.
The Blanchard posture holds for one more breath, two, and then it leaves. My shoulders drop. My chin lowers. My whole body softens against the pillows into something smaller and less organized and more honest. My wrapped hands settle back into my lap and my eyes close.
When I open them, Remy is watching me from the chair. His laptop is closed. I don't know when he closed it. His expression is open. The man, looking at the woman sitting in his bed with nothing left to perform. His green eyes are steady on mine with recognition. Just that. Plain and undisguised.
He's seen every version now.
He doesn't speak. Neither do I.
The light has gone amber and low. An hour has passed without me tracking it.
I've been here the whole time, present but settled, the way water settles into whatever holds it.
My ankle throbs in slow, predictable waves that I've stopped bracing against, and my bandaged hands rest palms-up on the blanket because palms-down hurts the lacerations and this is the position that requires nothing from me.
Remy is on the bed now, his back against the headboard beside mine, close enough that his arm presses against mine through his t-shirt.
He has a book open on his thigh, the same page he opened to when he sat down.
His left hand rests on his own knee, and his right hand is between us, his pinky finger overlapping mine on the blanket in a contact so small it barely qualifies as touch, and he hasn't adjusted it, and neither have I.
I don't know who I am right now.
The thought arrives without panic. I have no calls to return, no statements to draft, no rooms to read, no donors to charm, no father to build a brand for.
The phone is off. The television is off.
The performance is off. What's left is a twenty-four-year-old woman with stitches above her ear and a sprained ankle and bandaged hands sitting in a bed that belongs to a man who kills people for a living.
And no one in this room is asking her to be anything but Evie. She doesn't know what that is yet.
I always knew. I just couldn't afford to look.
It moves through me. Then it passes, and I let it.
My hand moves before I decide. My pinky leaves his. I reach for my own phone on the nightstand, turn it face-up, hold the power button. The screen wakes in the dark.
The backlog floods the lock screen, names stacking faster than I can register them, the same relentless cycle I've spent my life feeding. I'm not turning the phone on to feed the machine. I'm turning it on because I don't want to hide.
It rings before the lock screen finishes loading. Unknown number.
I answer.
The recording begins. "This is a prepaid call from." A pause. His own name, recorded in his own voice, small. "Carter." The recording resumes. "An inmate at the Federal Detention Center. To accept this call, press one."
I press one.
For a beat there's only the line. Then him.
"Evie."
Just my father. Smaller than I have ever heard him.
"Daddy." It comes out small too.
"Baby girl." A breath that catches. "I never thought you'd get hurt. I need you to know that. I never thought it could touch you."
The polished cadence I have heard my whole life is coming apart in real time. He's crying. The senator who taught me to never let a microphone hear me crack is crying on a monitored line where every word is going on a federal transcript.
"I got greedy." Thinner. "I let myself be used. I told myself it was strategy. Sweetheart, I—" Another breath. "I never wanted you in any of it. I'm so sorry."
I don't speak. Remy hasn't moved. His presence beside me is the only thing keeping me upright.
"I love you. The rest of it, that's mine. None of it was ever yours."
The line crackles. A monitor cuts in: "Two minutes remaining."
"Okay," I say. It's all I have. "Okay, Daddy."
"I love you, baby."
"I know."
The call ends. The phone goes dark in my hand.
He let himself be used. I let myself be useful. Different shapes of the same hunger, his pointed outward into power, mine pointed inward at people who needed managing. Both of us building lives out of being needed. I always knew, and so did he, and neither of us looked at it for the same reason.
I set the phone down on the nightstand. Face up this time.
Remy's pinky finds mine again. He doesn't say anything.
"I'm hungry." The words surprise me. Not because they're profound but because they're true and small and I said them without checking first whether they were useful to anyone.
Remy's pinky curls over mine. "I might could make you somethin'."
He doesn't move. His thumb starts tracing again, the slow arc across the blanket, and this time the motion isn't absent. It's decided. The book on his thigh stays open. He hasn't looked at it once.
My body does a thing I don't have a template for.
My shoulders drop another half inch, which shouldn't be possible because they're already down, and my weight shifts sideways until my head rests against his arm, and my lungs fill all the way for what feels like the first time today.
The animal recognition of a body that isn't asking me to be anything, and the terrifying, unnameable relief of not knowing what comes next and still breathing.
The bedroom door stays open.