He’s right, of course. This is my dream come true. He uses his foot to pull out the chair across from me and sits down, pressing his elbows into the table.
“I knew your mother.”
I study his eyes. They’re a rich blue with a slight shimmer of gold.
“She was a fixture around here. She and Rachel were inseparable. I called her my other little sister.” He gets a faraway look. “She was quite the beauty, too.”
His gaze settles back on me.
He doesn’t say it, so I do. “I know, I don’t look like her, but she was strong and independent and in that way I’m just like her.”
His mouth twitches up at the corners. “I think you look quite a bit like her, actually. Even when she was nine or ten years old she was tall for her age, and she walked with this regal attitude. I used to call her the queen. You have her height and shape: slender like a dancer, and you move with that same regal attitude. I’ll bet Rachel tells you that all the time.”
I try to imagine what a regal attitude looks like. “Rachel never mentions her at all.” I take a moment to wonder if what I’m about to do makes any sense or if I’m just too tired to try to stay ahead of things. “Okay. I’ll tell you about the box, but you have to promise not to tell Rachel.”
He shakes his head. “I can’t make that promise. How did you get this, by the way? Through some access with Rachel’s job?”
I slink my shoulders up around my neck. I know how bad it sounds and how much I have put Rachel at risk for my selfish needs. Victor softens at my reaction.
“Okay. I can’t promise to keep this from Rachel, but I will help you present things to her in a way that won’t send her too far over the edge.”
I grip the edge of the table. I want to speak … tell him everything … spill my guts. But I can’t seem to get the words swirling in my brain to come out of my mouth.
“Erin,” he says. “Just say it. It’s okay.”
“Why? Because you say it is?” It’s not what I expected to say, but it’s what comes out. I sound like I’m blaming him.
“I know you don’t know me very well, but you can trust me with your feelings … especially about this.”
“You don’t get it.” My whole body begins to tremble.
“I don’t have to get it. Just tell me what you’re feeling.”
“I’m not allowed to have feelings!” I bellow the words as loud as possible, and when the words are gone I just keep making the sound of rage until all the air in my lungs is expelled and my voice fades. When it’s gone, my anger leaves with it. I flop back in my chair, spent.
There. That’s the truth. I’ve admitted it and I dare him to deal with that.
Victor sits back in his chair, his voice neutral and his face a mask of calm. “Okay,” he says. “We might be getting somewhere.”
29
People lie to avoid getting caught. It’s that simple.
—VICTOR FLEMMING
Victor and I are in a stare-down.
No one, not Rachel or any of my many therapists, has ever provoked me to this level of rage. All Victor did was talk about my mother like she was a real person and not a curse on my life.
He stands up, breaking our gaze.
Is he going to walk out and leave me hanging? If I screamed at Rachel like this, she would be fluttering all over. She would do anything to keep from having to let her real feelings out or having to deal with mine.
Victor doesn’t leave, though. Instead, he takes off his jacket and walks to the nearby closet to hang it up. “Does my sister know this is how you feel?”
I shake my head. “I’ve tried to tell her but she always comes back with How can you feel alone when I’m right here? Or I’m sorry I’m not enough for you.” I wrap my arms around my middle. “Oh, and I’m supposed to not care who my father is, either. He’s just genetic material, she says. Any questions about who killed my mother? Whoa. That topic is way off-limits.”
Victor rolls up his sleeves and slides back into his chair. He rests his elbows on the table, rubbing his hands over his face.
“How about this?” he says. “I’ll tell you a dark secret of mine—something that no one else knows.”
Uhhh. I didn’t see that coming. I peer at him through a safety curtain of hair. “That’s kind of random.”
“It’s not random. It’s an exchange. This way you’ll have the same power over me that you’re afraid I will have over you if you talk to me about this box and your stuff up in the attic. How’s that sound?”
I shrug because I don’t know how it sounds. I can’t imagine what he could tell me that would give me any power over him.
“I think I’m about to get fired.”
“What?”
He nods. “Yeah, no one knows that. But I’m pretty sure it’s coming.”
“Why?”
He pulls his phone off of his belt and checks it, then turns it upside down on the table. “I helped to put an innocent man in jail.”
“On purpose?”
“Not on purpose. But in this case, intent isn’t the issue.”
“Why not?”