Chapter 29 Lee
Lee
After she walked out of the press conference, Lee asked Markos where she could “powder her nose,” an insipid euphemism that Charlotte had taught her daughters to use, because God forbid a woman mention her bodily functions or wish for privacy. Lee needed to be alone…just for a minute, offstage.
Markos pointed her down a side hallway with a polite nod. The door to the women’s WC was unmarked aside from a fading stick figure in a skirt. How apt, thought Lee, pushing open the door to a utilitarian room tiled in white squares.
The sink had two taps: “Ζ” and “Κ.” Lee vaguely remembered from her sister’s bathroom that “K” was “kryo,” cold.
(She later discovered that “Z” was “zesto,” for a zesty, hot shower.) It felt good to run water over her hands.
The window above the stalls was open a crack, letting in the ambient chorus of Athens: horns, mopeds, passionate shouting in a language she could not decipher.
There she was, cloudy in an old mirror above the sink: Lee Perkins, superstar.
She’d done it again—made her eyes vulnerable, let her voice break at the perfect moment as she said, Help us, please. Even in genuine terror about her sister, she’d automatically performed grief like the trained seals she’d once seen on a school trip to SeaWorld Orlando.
And the most damning thing was that for those few minutes in front of the cameras, with everyone hanging on her words, she’d felt supremely alive, even verging on happy.
Lee gripped the edge of the porcelain sink.
She’d sworn she was here to find Regan, but she’d just used her sister’s disappearance to score a hit of attention.
The pattern was gross and obvious: Create a crisis or find one, swoop in as savior, thrive on feeling essential. Then what?
Then nothing.
Then back to the gnawing emptiness.
She was still that fifteen-year-old girl who’d just found her father’s body, the one who tried to convince herself that tragedy made her special. (As opposed to just…tragic.) A weight settled on Lee’s chest. The high of being needed was already fading, leaving her emptier than ever.