Page 314 of The Lies We Play

Instead, I say the thing that has been waiting under my tongue since the plane.

“I want to see my parents’ house.”

Creed’s hand pauses on my back.

I hear myself, hear how strange it sounds, and scoff before he can ask. “My parents sold my childhood home and moved to some new place I never got to see. I thought . . .”

“Sorry about your parents,” he says.

“You know?”

He nods. “Fitz told me when this whole ‘she’s back, and we need her to get Hal’ thing happened.” His thumb moves once along my spine. “I can’t imagine what it was like, losing both so close together.”

“Mom . . .” I look past him, at the window. “She chose not to get treated.”

Creed exhales quietly. “Maybe it was for the best. Maybe not. My mom had surgeries and treatments that left her weak, and she still died quickly. Too quickly”

I gasp, covering my mouth. “Your mom died?”

His eyes soften.

Right away, grief enters the room and sits with us. Not between us. With us.

“She was extraordinary,” I say, because I met Anaïs a couple of times, and extraordinary is not enough, but it is what my stunned brain gives me.

Anaïs Lafontaine was a meddler with soft eyes and terrifying instincts. She once told me over the phone that when we were ready to let the world know who we were, she would support us. Then added that if, for now, we were “just roommates with complicated grocery needs,” she understood.

Creed nods, then shakes his head. “Last year, we almost lost Dad too. I can’t imagine how it was for you. Losing both and so close.”

“Losing my parents was . . .” I stop and try to find the cleanest truth. “Almost as painful as losing you and Hal.”

His face changes.

Not hurt.

Understanding.

“You never lost us.” He kisses my cheek. “They tried to break us, but we’re still here.”

My eyes burn.

“We’re still here,” I agree.

At nine, we’re in his car, driving north on I-95.

By ten thirty-seven, we arrive at a house much smaller and older than the one where I grew up.

The street is quiet in that Connecticut way that feels curated even when it isn’t. Bare trees. Wet pavement. Brown leaves collected near the curb. The house sits back from the road with white siding, dark shutters, and a porch my mother would have hated at first and then decorated within an inch of its life by the second weekend.

Creed parks in the driveway but doesn’t turn off the engine immediately.

He looks at the house.

Then at me.

“No rush.”

“I know.”