Page 266 of The Lies We Play

Now. . .

Things are strange, and I have no useful category for strange anymore.

That is the part no one explains about losing ten years. People tell me what happened. They hand me files, calendars, careful summaries, and doctor-approved language. They speak as if information can become memory if delivered in the correct tone.

It can’t.

I wish I had someone who could guide me through this without wanting anything from me—or being paid by my family. Someone who could stand beside me and say, yes, that terror is yours, but so is the wanting underneath it. Someone who could give me a hand with all the changes happening, and not turn my confusion into a report.

My therapist would try to manipulate everything.

I can’t tell anyone.

That is the problem with lies. The large ones can be dressed beautifully. The small ones arrive with their buttons misaligned.

Aren is the new guy—supposedly my old driver. Earlier, he told me I had a meeting at seven.

It was not in the family calendar.

I nodded and got dressed anyway.

Then the burner phone lit up. It was Creed. See you at seven. No pressure, but I can’t wait to see you.

So here I am, in the black unmarked SUV that belongs to my family, moving through Midtown while the city pretends not to know me. Rain has polished the avenues until every red light smears across the pavement. People on the sidewalk carry paper bags and umbrellas, and private lives. A woman laughs into her phone near a halal cart. The world continues to be ordinary in front of me, which feels almost rude.

Creed’s building is on West Thirty-Third, where Hudson Yards rises close enough to Madison Square Garden that I have passed the blocks several times on my way to galas, medical appointments, fundraisers . . .

Aren pulls to the curb. The engine keeps running.

“Sir,” he says. “The apartment is the penthouse. The doorman knows you are coming. He will not log you. I will be here for the full hour. You’ll be safe in there.”

The last sentence should comfort me.

It doesn't.

I turn my cufflink with my thumb. The Saint Claire crest catches a passing wash of light. It looks like every other cuff link my stepmother has ever approved for me. It is not. There is a hinge inside the post, a small pad hidden where my thumb can find it. “Press it,” Aren told me the first day he introduced himself, “and I am at the door in under ninety seconds.”

“Mr. Saint Claire,” he says. “Mr. Lafontaine is waiting for you.”

I stop for half a second.

“Thank you,” I say, because I am very good at sounding all right.

The lobby smells like stone, flowers, and climate control. A woman behind the desk looks up, then looks away with the trained blankness of someone being paid well to forget faces. No one asks for identification. No one writes my name down.

I step into the elevator. The doors slide closed.

The car begins to climb.

My reflection appears in the brushed metal, lengthened and dim. Dark coat. Dark suit. The tie I knotted twice because the first attempt sat too loose, and the second sat the way Constance prefers. That thought makes something sour move under my skin.

I need to stop doing that.

Giving people the version of me they trained themselves to expect.

A son who eats when watched. A patient who sleeps when medicated. A man who signs where the flag is placed. A body in a chair. A voice that doesn't interrupt.

Except I don’t know what version of me Creed has been waiting for.