Chapter 5 Compromised Record #2
My heart hammers violently against my ribs.
“You really do look beautiful,” he murmurs, low enough that only I can hear.
Oh.
So he’s committing to this.
It takes everything in me not to whip my head toward him, to demand what the hell just happened and who, exactly, has taken over his body. Because this isn’t just passive participation anymore.
My brain short-circuits, rewires itself, and then scrambles again as I force myself to remember—this isn’t real. It’s just an act.
At least now, he’s actually pretending we’re together.
Gerry takes the empty chair on Evelyn’s other side.
She places a hand on his arm, an acknowledgment of his presence.
There’s an ease between them that speaks to years of shared loss—Henry, and the life that used to fill this house.
He leans in to whisper something that earns a small giggle from her.
It’s a rhythm they’ve clearly fallen into over time.
Two old friends bound by grief, a partnership built on knowing what it means to survive someone you love.
I know that feeling. I just don’t have anyone else to share it with.
Emily comes in a few moments later and takes the seat next to me. She kisses my cheek and I give her a squeeze. She is subdued, but seemingly grateful to have me here. More herself than she was yesterday.
Emily’s uncle Thomas sits at the head of the table, surveying the room with that cool detachment that’s always made my forensic brain itch.
It did even before everything happened. His sister-in-law, Nora, sits to his left; his wife, Katherine, to his right—drained and drawn, her grief written in every careful movement.
The air each of the Langleys emits couldn’t be more polar opposite, and Nora seems as uncomfortable as hell sitting next to them.
It doesn’t take long into dinner for me to figure out why. The food’s perfect, the lighting’s soft. Napkins unfold, glasses clink, but there's a tension that emanates from every corner of the room, volatile as a chemical fume, waiting for someone to light the match.
Thomas sets his wine glass down with a sharp clink. “I assume everyone’s caught up on the new tax proposal?”
Nora snorts. “Caught up? I’ve been rage-scrolling about it for three days. It’s a masterpiece in screwing over anyone who isn’t already sitting on a trust fund.”
Thomas looks at her, unimpressed. “You say that like having to work hard is a bad thing.”
“Oh, please,” she fires back. “You mean hard work for other people’s profit. The rich stay rich, and the rest of this godforsaken country gets austerity and lectures about pulling themselves up by their bootstraps.”
I’ve officially decided I like Nora.
Thomas slices into his steak, not even looking up. “You say that as if you weren’t born with a silver spoon in your mouth.”
And I’ve officially decided I really don’t like Thomas.
“Oh, good. This conversation again,” Emily groans, then whispers loudly. “I apologize in advance for the fact that Uncle Thomas is a dipshit.”
Baryn, surprisingly, grunts in agreement.
Nora ignores them both. “I think you mean the billionaires who treat campaign donations like shopping sprees and still whine about paying taxes.”
Thomas exhales, the sound pure disdain. “It’s called capitalism, Nora. You’re welcome to find another system if you hate this one so much.”
Evelyn glances upward briefly. “Ah, the ‘leave the country’ defense. Lovely.”
Thomas points his fork at her. “Maybe if more people stopped blaming the system for their own bad decisions, we wouldn’t need all these so-called safety nets.”
Emily crosses her eyes at him and sticks out her tongue. “You mean people who aren’t born rich and still want to eat? The nerve.”
Nora leans back in her chair. “Tell me, Thomas, how many bootstrap metaphors does it take before you realize some people don’t even have shoes?”
His lip curls. “Maybe they should’ve made better choices.”
I nearly choke on my baked oyster, an ache forming just behind the center of my frontal bone as a simmering rage coils in my chest. Every fiber of my being is vibrating with the itch to hurl my plate across the room—or, better yet, directly at Thomas’s old bastard face.
Then, under the table, Theo’s hand finds my knee. An innocent, steady, grounding squeeze.
I nearly fall off my chair.
He doesn’t move his hand.
The warmth of his palm seeps through the thin fabric of my dress, his fingers firm but not demanding. Just there. Solid. Unwavering. A gentle reassurance.
Or maybe a warning.
Katherine clears her throat timidly. “Why don’t we all just—”
“Agree to disagree?” Thomas interrupts.
Nora looks like she wants to stab him with her salad fork. I kind of wish she would.
“It’s just that, maybe we could talk about other things? Right now. While—”
“We’ve been over this, dear,” he says, dripping with exasperation, the way only an asshole spouse can manage.
“Carrying on with our daily routines helps speed up the grieving process. That’s why we’re here, why we didn’t cancel our weekly family dinner.
It’s not like you were all that close with your brother’s wife to begin with. ”
Katherine looks utterly dejected at the fact that part of his daily routine is to be a fucking douche. Nora reaches across the table to squeeze her hand.
Someone cuts in before I can throw a dinner plate and commit an act I’d later regret.
Low, steady, and mildly amused. “Now, now,” Gerry says evenly.
“You all know I’m not opposed to hard conversations, but this one won’t end anywhere good.
Not when the wine’s this strong and the company’s this proud. ”
It’s the sort of line that’s part scold, part plea, and somehow both disarming and absolutely final. Even Thomas startles, caught off-guard by the man’s gentle authority. Evelyn’s eyes drift to Gerry and there’s a tiny tilt of approval.
Gerry looks at Thomas, polite but unyielding. “Thomas, you’ve always had a talent for carving meat. Shame it doesn’t extend to knowing when to stop cutting people down. If this is your idea of a daily routine, I think the rest of us could use a vacation from it.”
Thomas opens his mouth and, astonishingly, closes it again. He grunts something that’s half concession, half wounded pride, then sets his fork down more carefully than before. The temperature in the room drops a degree, the performance of outrage deflating like bad soufflé.
Theo leans in, his lips nearly touching my ear. “Are all their family dinners like this from the get go?”
Emily leans across me. “Usually worse. Gerry’s the only one who can talk them down before someone flips the table.”
Gerry makes a low, satisfied sound.
The rest of the evening passes uneventfully, or as uneventfully as a dinner with this family can be.
The food is insanely good. A perfectly plated meal that could make a person forget they’re sitting in the middle of an abhorrently maladjusted household.
I eye the risotto wistfully and skip it in favor of not dying via dairy.
Thomas, mercifully, keeps his mouth shut for the most part, only chiming in occasionally with some smart-assed remark about Nora’s preference to drive an electric car or the fact that she isn’t eating any meat.
Evelyn, however, more than makes up for his silence.
She asks us a million questions about our jobs, how we met, how long we’ve been together, if we think we’ll get married (Theo chokes on his drink at that one), if we think we want kids (I nearly choke on mine), and whether Theo has ever considered trimming his hair shorter (he has not).
Gerry listens to every word with open, good-natured interest. His politeness feels genuine. He doesn’t interrupt, just observes with tacit curiosity, eyes crinkling whenever Evelyn presses too far, as if he’s fondly cataloging the trouble she stirs up.
Theo is surprisingly good at feeding her full of charming bullshit. It becomes increasingly difficult to maintain my composure when he does things like wrap his arm around my shoulder, twist my hair around his finger, or place a well-timed kiss on my temple.
This kind of attention from him is unexpected, even given the circumstances.
And overwhelming.
There are moments in which I experience abnormal brain function due to oxygen deprivation, namely when he places his big hand on my thigh under the table again, this time further up, for a split second when he leans across to refill my glass.
Meanwhile, Emily quietly annihilates an entire bottle of wine.
It starts slow—a casual sip here, a refill there. But as Evelyn’s questions get increasingly more invasive, I think Emily must feel less like everyone’s eyes are on her, because her drinking gets increasingly more reckless.
By the time dessert is served, she’s eyeing the wine in her glass like it personally victimized her.
At some point, Theo’s gaze flicks to mine. Subtle, questioning.
Yes, I notice.
Yes, I’m mildly concerned.
No, I don’t know what to do about it.
So I just keep my focus on Evelyn, nodding along as she launches into a highly specific rant about the decline of proper handwritten letters, while Emily nonchalantly self-destructs beside me.
She’s quiet until she isn’t anymore.
Quiet until I see her out of the corner of my eye, her glazed-over eyes fixed on the spot where the back of Theo’s fingers move lazily back and forth across my shoulder.
I turn to look at her.
She sighs loudly, with a hint of longing. Drunkenly. Twirls the stem of her wine glass between her fingers, eyes glassy, lips curled over her teeth like she’s considering saying something she shouldn’t.
She shouldn’t.
Whatever it is, I know she shouldn’t.
She knows she shouldn’t.
And yet—
“You know, Lila never dates,” she says to no one in particular.
The aunts and uncle are deep in conversation, if you could call it that, at the head of the table, as they have been the entire dinner. They blessedly do not look up.
Evelyn, Gerry, Baryn, and Theo, however?
Rapt attention.