Page 113 of The Lies We Play

“I emailed professionally.”

“Those are often the same thing when people are frightened enough to proofread.”

I close my eyes.

Against my better judgment, I like him immediately.

That is inconvenient. I prefer my suspicious men easier to dislike. It saves time.

“I didn’t say I was frightened.”

“No,” he says. “You said your credentials were used to authenticate provenance work you didn't perform. You said Cornelius Saint Claire’s trust language appears to prohibit what the foundation is attempting to do. And you signed the email, L. Crane.”

My breath catches somewhere I don't have time to examine.

“I didn’t know if your email was still active,” I say.

He scoffs. “My website is updated regularly.”

“You don’t sound surprised.”

“By the email address remaining active? No.”

“By me.”

Another pause.

“No,” he says.

The word enters the room and changes its shape.

I swing my legs over the side of the bed. My bare feet touch the cold floor, and the shock of it is almost useful. “Why?”

“Because Cornelius Saint Claire spent the last few years of his life worried that if anything happened to Halston, the foundation would become a laundering mechanism with a charitable tax structure and better stationery.”

I go still.

There are sentences a person knows are true before the facts arrive. That is one of them.

A terrible little click inside the mind. A door opening where there should have been a wall.

“You haven’t stopped it,” I say.

“They let me go soon after . . . everything.”

Everything.

He says it like a file name. Like a legal category. Like the rest of us, didn't have to live inside it with broken ribs and missing time and two men becoming ghosts in different directions.

I don't know what his everything includes.

I only know what mine cost.

“And me?” I ask, before I can stop myself.

“You weren't part of his original concern.”

That should make me feel better.