Chapter 18
Skyler
The blue light of my phone is the only thing with any pulse in this room.
Hey Harl. Please. Just let me know you got home.
I’m so sorry. I don’t know what to do.
Harley, I’ll leave. I’ll walk away from everything. Just talk to me.
The status of the messages remains unchanged. Delivered, but never read. Or maybe read through the notification bar, then swiped into the trash like our wedding invitations. I don’t blame her. It doesn’t mean I don’t wish she’d pick up the phone, though.
I haven’t left this bed in three days. The sheets tangle around my legs like white silk restraints. I’m still wearing the same undershirt I had on when I crawled in here after the club emptied.
Enjoying my purgatory in the only way I can, I flinch when my bedroom door crashes open. It’s Steven. Desperate for him to leave, I pull my duvet over my head and hope he takes the hint. We’re not close anyway. I bet he’s here to gloat.
But he does neither. Instead, he rips off my covers and then tugs the heavy velvet curtains open with a mechanical screech.
Sunlight hits me like a bucket of ice water.
I groan, shielding my eyes with my forearm. “Get out, Steven!”
“And the Sleeping Beauty stirs. I was thinking you’d pulled a Juliet and taken the easy way out. But no, you’re just rotting. Efficient, I suppose. Less paperwork for the Thompson Foundation.”
I squint at him through the glare. He’s standing by the window, silhouetted by the mid-morning sun. He’s wearing a faded band shirt and jeans, looking entirely too functional for a house currently in the middle of a social nuclear winter.
“What time is it?”
“Tuesday. Or maybe Wednesday. Does it matter?” Steven walks over to my desk and picks up a gold trophy. He examines it with an expression of profound disgust before setting it back down. “I’ve seen better-looking corpses in documentary footage.”
“Steven, really, I’m not in the mood.”
“Oh, I know. You’re in the ‘strategic retreat’ mood.
Your favorite. The one where you crawl back into the womb of the family mansion and wait for Mother to tell you it’s all going to be okay, as long as you marry someone with a better pedigree.
” He kicks a discarded shoe across the floor.
“The Thompson retreat ends now. You’ve had seventy-two hours of wallowing. Time to get up.”
“She won’t answer me,” I say, the words catching in my dry throat. “She’s gone, Steven. Really gone.”
He lets out a short, harsh laugh. “Of course she’s gone.
She walked out of a three-hundred-guest wedding at the Lake Forest Country Club after telling our parents to go to hell.
What did you think was going to happen? She was going to wait by the Audi and ask if you wanted to go for spicy potato tacos? ”
“I love her.”
“No. You love the idea of her.” Steven leans in, his face inches from mine.
He doesn’t have the Thompson polish. He looks tired, cynical, and honest. “You loved having someone real to point to so you didn’t have to admit you were becoming a cardboard cutout of Robert.
But when the choice came between being a man and being a Thompson, you froze.
You let her drown in a sea of silver and navy so you wouldn’t have to explain to Mother why the napkins weren’t the right shade. ”
“That’s not fair.”
“Fair is a word for children. We’re Thompsons. We don’t do fair; we do ‘appropriate.’ And what you did to that girl wasn’t appropriate.”
I sit up, the movement making the room spin. I look at my hands—clean, soft, the hands of someone who has never done a day of real work in his life. I think of Jake’s hands. I think of the cedar boxes. I think of the dumpster.
“I didn’t think Mother would actually do it,” I whisper. “I thought if I gave in on the venue, then she’d leave the rest alone.”
“Then you’re more of an idiot than I thought.
Our mother doesn’t want compromises, Sky.
She wants total surrender. She wants to see the light go out in someone’s eyes so she knows they’re finally safe.
She did it to Dad, she did it to Amanda.
She tried to do it to me, but I was too much of a prick for the mold to take.
And look at us now. I’m free, and you’re… here.”
“I have to find her,” I say, my voice trembling.
“You can’t find someone who doesn’t want to be found by you.” Steven turns back to me, his expression softening just a fraction. “You’re not ready to see her, anyway.”
“That’s not what I’m thinking.”
“Isn’t it?” Steven walks over to the closet and yanks open the doors.
Row after row of tailored shirts and expensive blazers stare back at us.
“Look at this. This is your life. A collection of garments designed to make you look like you belong in a room full of people who don’t care if you’re happy as long as you’re successful. ”
He grabs a handful of shirts and throws them onto the floor.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m giving you a tour,” Steven says. “The Thompson Estate Guided Tour of Regret and Institutionalized Misery. Get up. Put on some clothes that don’t cost five hundred dollars. We’re going for a walk through the museum.”
“I’m staying here.”
“No, you aren’t.” Steven grabs my arm, his grip surprisingly strong. He pulls me toward the center of the room.
Saving myself the embarrassment of crawling back into bed, I say, “Fine. Lead the way.”
“Welcome to the east wing,” Steven says, his voice dripping with practiced irony. “Ever noticed how we never played in here? Not once. Not even on Christmas. We sat on the edge of the chairs, held our cocoa like it was nitroglycerin, and waited for Mother to tell us we could leave.”
I trace the fluting on the doorframe. As an architect, I appreciate the craftsmanship. The crown molding is hand-carved; the proportions are mathematically ideal. But as a man, I feel the walls closing in. It’s a room designed to discourage movement.
“It’s just a room, Steven,” I murmur, though my heart is thrumming a nervous, erratic rhythm against my ribs.
“It’s not just a room. It’s a blueprint for your marriage.”
We move to the dining room. The table is a twenty-foot expanse of polished mahogany that reflects the light from the chandelier like dark water.
“The boardroom,” Steven says, gesturing to the head of the table.
“Remember the ‘Sunday Performance’? We’d sit here for two hours while Dad went through our grades like they were quarterly earnings reports.
If you got a B+, it was a ‘market fluctuation’ that needed immediate correction.
If you won a trophy, it was ‘meeting expectations.’”
Glancing at the chair where I spent my childhood, my back straightens instinctively. I can almost taste the sea bass, along with a metallic tang of fear. I remember the way Robert would tap his signet ring against the wood when he was disappointed.
Ting. Ting. Ting.
“He never raised his voice,” I say, my breath coming shorter now. “He was just . . . thorough.”
“He was an executioner with a calm demeanor, Sky. He didn’t raise his voice because he didn’t have to.
He just withdrew his approval until you were gasping for air.
He made us believe that love was something you earned through achievements and social standing.
And you believed him so hard that you tried to make Harley earn it, too. ”
Steven leads me toward the back of the house, toward the heavy, brass-studded door of our father’s study. The air here is different. It’s cooler, smelling of old leather, expensive tobacco, and the crushing weight of legacy.
“The inner sanctum,” Steven whispers.
He pushes the door open. Books line the room, though no one has ever read them—for display only. Meanwhile, Robert’s desk is a massive slab of dark oak, positioned so that anyone entering feels small, unimportant, and already on the defensive.
I stop at the edge of the rug. I can’t go in.
My feet are lead. I remember being ten years old, standing on this exact spot, while Robert explained to me that a Thompson never settles for second best. He’d looked at my drawing of a house—a simple, messy thing with a crooked chimney—and told me that the foundation was flawed before he tore it up.
“This is where he broke us,” Steven says, his voice losing its mocking edge. He walks over to the leather chair behind the desk and sits down. He looks absurd in his band tee, but his eyes are old. “I spent four years in therapy in order to walk into this room without wanting to vomit.”
I lean against the doorframe, my shoulders tensing until they ache. “I’m not like him.”
“Hmm. You’re right about one thing. While our father is strict, you’re weak.
But you still built a cage for Harley, just like he built one for you.
You used his tools, his logic. You thought if you could just get her into the club, if you could just get her the grant, if you could just make her ‘appropriate,’ then she’d be safe.
But you weren’t protecting her; you were trying to protect your own standing in this room. ”
Steven stands up, the leather of the chair creaking like a moan.
“This isn’t a home,” he says, stepping toward me. “It’s a prison where identities go to die.”
My breath is shallow, a frantic, stuttering thing. I feel a wave of nausea, a visceral rejection of the environment I’ve spent my entire life trying to master.
“I hate it here,” I whisper.
“Good.”