Page 84 of Love and Lies

“Eli—” I began, but he interrupted.

“Get lost!”

He screamed those two words at me, turning his back again, and I respected his wishes, even if I didn’t want to. I got up and went to the door.

“I’m always here for you,” I told him. “Always, little guy.”

There was no reply. With a heavy heart, I closed the door behind me, then stood in front of it for a moment with my eyes closed. I knew this was a shitty day for everyone, and Eli missed Adam horribly, just like I did. The fact that he’d stood up for Adam today was proof of just how important he had been to Eli. And all I could do was lie to him.

Big Brother of the Year. Without a doubt.

I let out a quiet sigh and went in search of my mother. I found her in her study with a drink on her desk; she sat at the window looking out onto the city. The light was out, and I could almost feel the physical weight of her grief. Perhaps it was also my own.

“I’ll take off, then,” I said into the darkness.

“Sure,” she said, her voice laced with whiskey. “You always were good at that.”

I gave a snort. “Yeah, apparently that’s all anyone has to say about me.”

“You made your own bed there,” she retorted. “You’re the one who left everyone high and dry.”

I knew it was the alcohol talking, and her heartache, but nevertheless, I couldn’t control myself. Because that was how it was between us. How it had always been.

“Like you didn’t throw a party when I left,” I said bitterly. “You never wanted me under your roof in the first place.”

She turned to me, the light from the hall falling dimly across her face. “That’s not true. You’re my son, Jessiah.”

“Yeah, but not the one you wanted,” I replied. “I never was, and we both know it. If you could have chosen between me and Adam, he’d still be alive, and I’d be in the ground. Don’t think I don’t know it.”

She stared at me, incensed, but didn’t argue, and it was confirmation enough. I knew it was true. I’d always known.

I turned to go, leaving the apartment in a hurry, and as I entered the elevator I felt so leaden and heavy, as if I had the weight of the whole world on my shoulders. A terrible sorrow twisted in my gut, sending tears to the back of my throat, but I kept them in check. It was true, after all—I had left, and I hadn’t looked back. I’d run away, believing I would never be happy otherwise. I’d assumed they would be fine without me. That no one needed me. And most of all, that I didn’t need anyone.

How horribly wrong I’d been. I knew it the moment I stepped out onto the sidewalk, and all the pain of losing Adam hit me so hard I couldn’t breathe. All I wanted in that moment was someone to talk to about how it felt. How unbearable it was that he wasn’t here anymore. What it meant to lose your brother like that, and have to ask yourself every single fucking day whether you could have prevented it.

But I had no one to talk to. I was alone.

In a city of more than eight million people, I was totally alone.

38 Helena

The ball for the Society for a Better New York City was one of the most pompous, over-the-top, and above all boring events of the year. All the elite New York families were there in their fine clothes and much finer jewelry—old money only, of course, which excluded Trish Coldwell—making conversation with people whose lives they probably didn’t give a shit about. The last time I was here was three years ago, with Valerie, just before she died. We’d played our usual games—guess the price of the bling; guess the age of the surgically enhanced older guests—and laughed ourselves silly. She’d made a lame evening more bearable. She’d made all the events more bearable.

But now she was gone, and I was alone. Three long years, but not long enough that I didn’t still feel her loss like a thousand tiny needles, and they pricked a little deeper than usual today. I sat at the singles’ tables in a smoke-blue tulle dress that any Disney princess would have killed for, trying to get through the evening somehow. But the minutes ticked by so torturously slowly that I was already regretting coming.

Every so often I caught my parents’ eyes, and I knew they were proud of me. That pride left me with an ache in my gut, as it had done so often since I’d been home. On my tour of Valerie’s New York today, while I was visiting our places and thinking of her, I’d kept hearing my sister’s words.

Loyalty is a good thing, Len. But only as long as it doesn’t hold you back from being the person you really are.

I could feel the person I really was slipping away more and more each day. Or maybe I hadn’t even found her yet—the real me. The Helena who was shaped not by her parents’ expectations, but her own. Who was searching not for justice for her dead sister, but for her own happiness. Here, among all these inauthentic people, I realized I was on the path to becoming one of them. And I couldn’t do a single thing about it.

“Nobody really knows exactly.” Two of the other girls at the table were talking in low voices, and when I caught one of them looking over, I realized it had something to do with me and pricked up my ears. “I heard she wanted to celebrate her engagement with something a little harder than the thousand-dollar Veuve she usually went for,” said the blond woman, whom I didn’t know. “She clearly overdid it a little—and Adam too.”

“Engagement,” replied the other, rolling her eyes. “What a farce. They’d only known each other a few months and they acted like it was the greatest love story of all time.”

“It was all show,” a guy one seat over chimed in. “I heard it was all arranged. They wanted to merge CW and Weston, and the best way to do it was through those two.”

The blond gave a snort of derision. “Well, it went horribly wrong, didn’t it? Have they ever hated each other more than they do now?”