Page 316 of The Lies We Play

It doesn’t.

I head toward the bedroom area where there are two rooms. One was my father’s office.

I know it before I open the door.

The room smells faintly of paper.

The desk is neat. Too neat for him, which means someone cleaned around the truth and left the truth exactly where he meant it to be.

On top of the desk sits a brown accordion folder, thick, banded shut with a rubber band that has gone brittle. A sticky note is attached to the front in my father’s handwriting.

Livia. When you are ready. — Dad

I sit down in his chair.

Creed sits on the edge of the desk where he can see my face.

The chair creaks beneath me. It is a small sound. It should not feel like a greeting.

I take the rubber band off.

It crumbles in my fingers.

I open the folder.

The letter is on top.

I read the first paragraph aloud because I don’t trust myself to read it silently.

“Livia. I owe you this letter. An explanation of what happened from the moment of your accident until you decided to start a new life in another country because the accident had taken too much away from you.”

I stop.

The room holds its breath for me.

Creed says, “You want me to keep going?”

I shake my head.

“No. I need to.”

The letter explains that they did the things they did because my life was threatened. Because I almost died in that accident. Because the Saint Claires had money, reach, people willing to make phone calls from numbers that disappeared. Because my parents believed the only way to keep me alive was to let me believe I had lost everything else.

They kept documentation.

Just in case anything happened to them.

Or to me.

Their lawyer has copies of everything inside the folder.

I force myself to read the next section.

“Your mother was forty-five when you were born, Livia. We had stopped expecting you. We had stopped praying for you. We had stopped being people who believed prayer worked. And then you arrived, and we didn’t so much love you as build the rest of our lives around the fact of your existence, which is a different thing, and which I don’t think I understood until your mother got the phone call and chose, in under sixty minutes, to trade two strangers’ lives for the chance to keep yours.”

I lower the letter.

Creed hasn’t moved.