I reached out and squeezed Vivvie’s shoulder, and then we made our way out into the hall. Asher was standing next to the door. Henry was behind him. Wordlessly, I held up the article.
PIERCE FRONT-RUNNER FOR SUPREME COURT. The headline was just as disturbing the second time, but not as disturbing as the subheading. Sources say the president is moving toward nomination at an unprecedented rate.
“What sources?” Henry asked the question before I could. I had no answers. All I could do was move a step closer to Vivvie and take her hand in mine.
Her father had died on Friday. She’d just buried him—and now the Washington Post was announcing that some anonymous source had gone on record saying that the president was preparing to nominate the man who’d hired her father to commit murder.
“They can’t do this.” Vivvie found her voice again, her hand squeezing mine until it hurt. “Tess, the president can’t nominate Pierce. He can’t.” She pulled her hand away from mine and stepped back. “What if they killed him, Tess? What if Pierce and whoever he’s working with killed my father, just like they killed . . .”
Vivvie’s eyes darted to Henry’s. Her words dried up, and the two of them were suddenly caught up in the kind of staring contest that nobody wins. Neither one could look away.
“Henry.” Vivvie swallowed. “I . . .”
“I know,” Henry said softly. “About my grandfather. About your father.”
Vivvie flinched. She waited for him to lash out.
“You could have kept quiet.” Henry was so focused on Vivvie that I felt like I was eavesdropping, like neither Asher nor I had any place in this moment. “You didn’t,” Henry continued, his voice just as soft. “You spoke up.”
Vivvie’s eyes filled with tears.
Henry reached out and laid a gentle hand on her arm. “I owe you for that.”
“I’m sorr—”
“Don’t.” Henry’s voice was implacable. “Don’t apologize. Not now, not ever, not to me.” He turned back to me. “We need to know if the article is true.”
Was the president really on the verge of nominating Pierce? And if he was—what did that mean?
The president was at the gala. The president is in the picture. The president has the power to see this nomination through.
“Maybe Ivy knows something,” I said, turning the situation over in my mind, trying to come at it from a different angle. “She won’t give me details, but I can ask.”
“Right.” Henry’s voice went cold. “Because talking to your sister will make everything better.”
Vivvie looked from Henry to me. “Tess?”
Vivvie trusted Ivy—and she needed to trust someone.
“Henry,” I bit out. “A word?”
We retreated slightly from the group. “Vivvie’s been through hell, and right now, Ivy is the one person she is counting on to make this right.” I willed Henry to hear me. “You can’t take that away from her.”
“Vivvie didn’t come to your sister for help on this.” Henry’s tone was unapologetic. “When she saw that article in the paper, she came to you.”
I swallowed, trying not to feel the weight of that. “She trusts Ivy.”
“Maybe she shouldn’t.”
I took a step closer to him. “This isn’t about whatever unforgivable sin my sister committed to get on your bad side—”
Henry closed what little space remained between us. “My father didn’t die in a car accident.” Henry lowered his voice, whispering those words directly into my right ear, his lips brushing against the side of my face as he did. “He killed himself, and my grandfather hired your sister to cover it up.”
I froze. I’d read articles about Henry’s dad’s death. His accident.
“Your sister staged the wreck,” Henry continued. “She greased the right palms, and she put out the right story. My mother doesn’t know.” Henry was still so close that I could feel his breath against the side of my face. “I wasn’t supposed to know, either. But I do, Tess. I know.”
I thought about what it must have been like to carry a secret like that, to watch his family mourning his father, knowing that the man had taken his own life.
“I get up every day, and I lie to everyone I care about in this world. I don’t get to be angry. I don’t get to ask why. I’m complicit. She made me complicit.”
He had a problem, I’d said to Ivy, of Theo Marquette. You fixed it. Her reply had been Something like that.
“I told you,” Henry said, taking a step back. “Fixers are experts at covering things up. Your sister’s practically an artist.”
Vivvie’s father’s suicide hadn’t made the papers.
“Whatever Ivy did,” I said, my throat tightening around the words until I thought I wouldn’t be able to get them out, “your grandfather was the one who hired her to do it.”
How could he hate Ivy and not the old man?
Because it’s easier. Because he’d just lost his father. Because he needed someone to blame.
“My grandfather and I never discussed it,” Henry said tersely. “And now we never will.”