Chapter 22 #2
What fucking paperwork?
Also . . . inside of what? My soul? My trauma? The emotionally unsupervised filing cabinet where I keep every terrible decision I have ever made?
It is a very cryptic thing to hear from the old man—or from the part of my brain currently having a short circuit.
I don't move.
I don't let either of them see what is happening behind my face.
“I’m not going,” I say. “Today, I’d rather stay and rest. It’s not like I’m going to party—you always say my health comes before everything else.”
Her face softens.
I hate the softening more than the lie.
“Halston, skipping public obligations because you are upset is not a healthy pattern.”
“Healthy,” I repeat.
“Yes.”
“Do you mean healthy, or do you mean inconvenient?”
Everett says, “That’s not fair.”
“To whom?”
My stepmother studies me. There is a calculation beneath the concern now. Finally, I prefer calculation. It is honest enough to fight.
“Did something happen last night?” she asks.
“Other than that I couldn't sleep?” I shrug, innocent and casual. “No.”
My first big lie of the day.
It tastes clean.
Maybe that is what frightens me.
Because for ten years, everyone in this family has lied to me so easily, I assumed lying required a certain moral deformity. It turns out lying isn’t hard when the truth would get someone hurt.
Creed told me not to tell anyone.
So I don’t.
My stepmother reaches for my arm.
I step back before she can touch me. They know I don’t like touch—it’s a symptom after my rough childhood, they claim. In reality, it’s probably my repulsion toward them which they mask with more lies.
The silence that follows is small and lethal.
Her hand hangs in the air for half a second before she lowers it.
I don't look away from her face while she absorbs it.
Her mouth does the small wrong thing it does when she has been corrected without being insulted.
She has been insulted before, in this apartment, by board members, lawyers, and a former Saint Claire wife who left back in 1992 and took a great deal of art with her.
She has not been corrected in front of Everett before, by the man whose life she has been arranging for ten years.
She doesn't look at her own hand.
That is how I know she is choosing the response.
Everett notices.
Of course he does.
“I need to shower,” I say.
Everett’s phone buzzes. He glances down. Whatever he reads makes his jaw settle.
“I’ll have coffee sent up,” he says.
“No.”
He looks up.
“I can make coffee.”
“You never make coffee.”
I do, but I choose to be petty and say, “Then today is a day of personal development.”
My stepmother gives me a look that says she is trying very hard to remain patient with my charming little rebellion.
I close the bedroom door before either of them can continue.
Then Everett says, quietly, “Halston?”
I walk away from the door.
My hands are cold.
I go to the desk, then stop myself. Do not take it out of the notebook. Not now.
If they come in somehow—if they have a key, if the lock is more decorative than functional—I need nothing visible.
My phone buzzes.
I look at it.
A calendar alert. Donor Breakfast, 9:00 a.m.
Beneath it, a message from Everett.
We need to discuss this morning. You are not yourself.
I stare at the last sentence.
You are not yourself.
For once, I hope he’s right.
I shower, then dress in a dark suit because my body has learned armor comes in wool. I leave the tie loose. That, too, feels like a rebellion, which is embarrassing enough that I nearly put one on out of spite toward myself.
When I step into the living room, a breakfast tray waits on the dining table. There’s no one around.
I hate that Everett or my stepmother sent breakfast even after I said no coffee. Also, it makes no sense to have food when I’m heading out for breakfast. There’s coffee, toast, and half a grapefruit. Also, a manila envelope is under the tray.
I pull it out, and there’s no courier mark. No postage, just my name typed on the front.
Halston W. Saint Claire.
My first thought is that Everett had something sent up. Probably pills to claim I’m using or . . . fuck.
My second thought is that my pulse has changed.
I look around the apartment, and there’s no one.
The doorman would have called if an outside messenger came upstairs.
I decide to open the envelope with a butter knife because my life has become absurd enough that I am weaponizing breakfast.
Inside is a single folded sheet of paper.
And a thin phone.
I set the phone on the table as if it might explode.
The paper contains a few sentences.
Do not use your devices unless it’s a Saint Claire matter. We checked for bugs, and your apartment is clean. You’ve got an asset watching you now—you’ll be safe. Burn this note.
—F.E.
Fitzhenry Everhart?
Whoever left this envelope walked into this apartment.
Past the doorman, past my stepmother’s personal assistant who supervises the grocery delivery, past the staff that has been vetted for ten years to keep me inside a particular shape of life.
Whoever placed this tray placed it under the noses of the people who have been managing my breath, and they did it cleanly, and they did it on a tray, and they did it with toast.
I sit down at the table.
The phone screen wakes before I touch it.
One message.
Creed is waiting. Call him.
The room changes.
No.
Not the room.
Me.
I sit because my body has lost interest in dignity.
For ten years, every door has opened from their side.
Doctors deciding when I was tired. Lawyers deciding when I was competent.
Family deciding when I had recovered, relapsed, improved, or overreached.
Rooms are opening because someone with my last name allowed it.
Rooms are closing because someone with my last name feared what I might remember inside them.
This door is different.
It is small enough to fit in my hand.
It is black, probably prepaid, inelegant, and possibly illegal in three states if whoever delivered it is having a creative morning.
I have never loved an object more.
Another message appears.
If you can answer safely, type one word: here.
I stare at the screen.
Creed is waiting.
Fitzhenry is waiting.
I think of her name as Creed said it.
Livia.
Beautiful name, just like her.
Will I be able to reach out to her? Is that even a possibility?
I don't remember enough.
That is the wound.
I remember too much.
That is the terror.
I pick up the phone.
My thumb hovers over the letters.
From the other side of the door, someone knocks again. This time, my stepmother.
“Halston?” she calls. “We need to leave soon. I’ll be in the car waiting.”
I look at the burner phone in my hand.
Then at the estate phone on the table, bright and useless, and watched.
For once, I know exactly which device belongs to which life.
I type one word.
Here.
I press send.
I look at my regular phone for a long second.
The thing has been an extension of my body for years.
It has reminded me to take medication. It rang when my stepmother wanted to know whether I was eating.
It has told me when to be at galas. It has returned my life back to me in tidy color-coded reminders, and I have lived inside those reminders the way an animal lives inside a fence it has stopped noticing.
I press the side button.
I hold it down.
The screen goes dark.
The first openly defiant act of my recovery is silent. It costs me nothing physically. It might cost me everything in this apartment by the end of the day.
I don't care.
I put the burner in my interior jacket pocket, against my ribs, where it can feel my heart while it waits for someone to call. Someone to tell me who I am. Someone to tell me who I was before everyone else got there first.
If the truth is buried under lies, then fine.
I will learn the shape of every lie until the people I love come back to me.