He erased my entire existence with a single word.
He smiles again. A tight, conspiratorial smile.
“We all need to recharge, don’t we?”
“We certainly do,” the reporter laughs. “Well, send her our best. Now, Judge, about the Supreme Court rumors...”
The camera pans away.
I sit frozen.
My mind cannot process the input.
Bali. Yoga. Mental health break.
He lied.
He’s made me disappear with a smile.
Just like he did to Mom.
My mother used to plan these galas. She was the ideal political wife. She wore the designer dresses, smiled at the wealthy donors, and managed the Hale estate. She performed the routine for fifteen years.
Then she broke.
I was ten. I walked into the kitchen late at night and found her sitting on the cold tile floor in a silk evening gown. She held a bottle of my father’s scotch in one hand. She looked at me, but her eyes were vacant.
My father walked in seconds later. He stopped in the doorway, keeping his hands in his pockets. He looked down at her with disgust, turned his back, and made a single phone call.
By morning, black SUVs idled in the driveway. Men in suits escorted her out of the house.
A private psychiatric facility in upstate New York, he told the press.A mental health retreat.She faded into oblivion and died in that facility three years later.
I learned the lesson that morning. The Judge demands absolute perfection. You play the exact role he assigns you, or he removes you from the board.
Now, he is doing it to me.
“No,” I croak.
I slide off the chair, scrambling toward the screen as if I can claw the truth out of the pixels.
“Why did you say that?” I scream at the frozen image of my father. “Why did you say Bali?”
A shudder rips through my chest. I double over, clutching the console table, gasping for air that feels too thin.
For a second, the dark thought takes root:He chose the nomination. He cut me loose.
I shake my head. No. He wouldn’t. He loves me.
“It’s Cassian,” I whisper, grabbing onto the only other explanation. “It has to be Cassian.”
Cassian must have contacted him. He must have sent a demand:Tell the press she’s away, or I’ll kill her.My father isn’t abandoning me; he’s buying time. He’s playing the game to keep the kidnappers calm while he organizes the rescue.
He made you say it,I tell myself.He forced you.
The alternative is that he chose the nomination over the mess of me.
I can’t hold that thought for long without breaking, so I don’t. Not yet.
