Page 79 of The Illusion
She doesn't look up from her phone. "Fine."
I stop a little too hard at the red light, mostly because I feel like it. "That's good. Therapy can be really helpful."
"Mm hmm."
I grip the steering wheel tighter. This girl has a master's degree in dismissiveness. Every response is designed to shut down conversation while still maintaining plausible deniability. If I complained to Asher, he'd say she's just quiet, just processing, just grieving. Truth bomb. I'm not sure anymore that she was ever grieving. I don't think she's capable of real emotion.
"So," she says, still not looking at me. "About the other night. Your anniversary dinner.”
“What about it?”
She's twisting her hair around and around her finger. "I know Asher felt really bad about having to leave."
The light turns green. I press the gas pedal harder than necessary. "These things happen," I say, keeping my voice neutral.
"I told him he didn't have to come home. I told him I would be fine." She finally looks at me, her blue eyes wide and innocent. "But he insisted. He's just so protectiveof me, you know? He wants to be therefor meanytime I need him."
She's just stabbed me with an invisible knife and now she's turning it by telling me that Asher chose to leave. That she gave him permission to stay, but he came home anyway. "He cares about you a lot," I manage.
"He does. So much." She smiles. "He's the only family I have."
Oh yay, a second knife wound. A reminder that she's the orphan, the victim, the one who deserves sympathy and support. And I'm just the wife who gets in the way.
She goes back to her phone, her plump lips curled in what might be satisfaction or might be annoyance. It's hard to tell with her.
So much about Devon exists in a space of maybe, maybe not.
She never says anything truly cruel. There’s no gotcha moment. She never does anything you could point to and everyone would agree that it was pure shit. A jury would never convict because there’s never quite enough evidence to nail her.
"Your shop keeps you really busy," she says after a moment.
"Yes. I love it."
Real talk? Without that shop, this last nine months would’ve broken me like a bad habit.
"That'ssweet." She pauses, still scrolling. "It must be nice to have something to focus on. You know, instead of just sitting around thinking aboutthings."
I want to slam on the brakes. I want to pull over and demand to know what the fuck that's supposed to mean. But I don't. Because I think that's what she wants. She wants me to react, to lose my composure, to give her ammunition to take back to Asher. Look how unstable she is. Look how she yelled at me for no reason when I was just making conversation.
"It is nice," I say instead. "Having a purpose is important. I never wanted to just sit at home."
Like she does, I mean. She was too traumatized to finish her senior year in person, so she's completing her credits online. Over the course of the last nine months I've learned that Devon has zero close girlfriends, which I know now is a major red flag. She doesn't have a lot of friends, period.
When I questioned this she told me she was too mature for high school people. I wouldn't say maturity was one of her problems. Not at all.
"I've been thinking about getting a job, actually," she says. "Something to pass the time, you know?"
"That's nice."
"Yeah. Asher said maybe I could work at your shop." She says it casually, like she's commenting on the weather. "You know, help out. Learn the business."
No. Absolutely fucking not. But I can't say that. I can't say that the thought of having her in my space, in the one place that's mine, makes me want to slap the shit out of her. "It's a pretty small operation” I say carefully.
"Oh, I know. That's what makes it so cute."
Cute. There's that word again. The one she uses to make everything I do sound small and insignificant and vaguely pathetic. I know I need to say something but I’m so annoyed right now, I can’t.
She laughs. “God, Julie. Your face. Of course I wouldn’t work at your shop. As if I would ever workretail. When Asher suggested he realized his mistake and started laughing before the sentence was even fully out of his mouth.”
