Page 69 of The Lies We Play

Because he is right, and being right in front of me while I am trying to continue a lie is very poor manners.

Sofia looks between us. “Should I⁠—”

“No. I’m good.” I force a smile. It probably looks like something found in a drawer after a haunting. “I’m okay. Really. Just low blood sugar. Or ghosts. Either way, very treatable and not scary at all.”

Sofia doesn't laugh.

Administrators are cruel that way.

“It’s been a long day,” I say. “Can I keep this overnight? I’ll review it properly and have my recommendation on your desk by tomorrow morning.”

Sofia hesitates.

She is supposed to log the folder back in. The institute has rules about foundation paperwork. She is also a person who has worked with me for six years, and a person who has now seen my hand do the thing it does when I lie.

“By tomorrow,” she says. “And, Livia⁠—”

“I know.”

“Are you sure you should⁠—”

“By tomorrow.”

She nods. Slow. A small worried thing in her face that she chooses not to name. She closes the door behind her on her way out, which is its own kindness.

Moises doesn't move.

I don't look at him.

“I need a minute,” I say.

“Livia.”

“Moises. Please. One minute.”

He looks at me for a long second.

Then he steps back, lifts his hands like a man surrendering to a process he has decided to trust, and goes to his bench. He doesn't leave the room. He just gives me the side of it.

I open the folder.

I tell myself I am opening it because I am the senior provenance researcher and the institute is paying me to evaluate transfer documentation, and there is nothing personal happening here, nothing at all, this is professional, this is Tuesday.

Lies.

Beautiful lies.

The first page is the cover letter, which I have already read.

The second page is a project summary, dry and bureaucratic, listing a nineteenth-century French landscape with restricted provenance materials currently held in Florence pending transfer review.

The third page is the chain-of-custody addendum.

The fourth page is the access amendment, signed by the foundation board.

Eight signatures.

I scan them quickly because my hand has stopped shaking, which is not a good sign—Bella doesn't stop. She slows, sometimes, but she doesn't stop. The only time my hand has ever gone still on a bad morning was the time I looked through old boxes in my parents’ garage three years ago and found a card from him—a birthday card, mine, the year I turned twenty-two, signed in handwriting I had not seen since the courthouse on a long-ago Tuesday in February.