I’m not in the habit of wasting my time.
“I don’t have a problem with you, Micah.”
“Right. Move over.”
“Micah. No.”
“Danielle. Yes.”
Oh, we’re pulling out the government now, I see.
“You almost crashed thirty seconds ago. Let’s be forreal.”
I wave him off. “I was distracted for a second, damn. I’m fine.” I know I’m not fine. I don’t know how long it will take for anything to be fine again, but I know it will be. I don’t have any other choice. Tanya was the main person in my life who made me feel okay in my skin. Without her to push me out of my failure mindset, I would’ve given up on my modeling dreams before they had a chance to take off. For all the bad and ugly that world brought me, it also gave me too much good to discard. As encouraging as she was, she could also play hardball and she would have my ass if she thought I let her death make me give up on my own life.
Micah opens my door and stoops until he’s at my eye level. “I hate to break it to you, but this is gonna end with me getting my way this time. We don’t have to talk on the ride over, but please don’t make me stand around helpless to help someone else.”
The severity of his words and his pained expression take the wind out of my sails. On one knee in front of me, fists balled like he’s barely holding on, ready to beg me for salvation that I can’t give, he leaves me no choice but to unbuckle my seat belt and climb over the middle console.
After climbing in, he adjusts my seat and mirrors.
“What about your car?” I ask, looking back at his impeccably clean white Audi SQ8 parked right behind me, waiting for someone to come along and fuck with it.
“Not worried about it.” He locks eyes with me, tossing any follow-up question I might’ve had to the back of my mind, and pulls off.
Mr. Townsend’s office is as boring as I expect it to be. The walls are plain, his various degrees serving as the only decorations. His oak desk is traditional, neatly organized, and lacking anything worth taking a second look at.
As a matter of fact, the only note of color in this entire office is a pink rose preserved in a glass-covered vase sitting on the bookshelf behind him.
That had to be from Tanya. I highly doubt she’d work with this man without trying to add at least a little color to his space.
“How did she do it?” I ask, forsaking all pleasantries.
I feel Micah’s eyes on me, but I don’t look his way. My attention stays on Mr. Townsend, watching his every move for any signs of deception.
“How did she do what?”
I pull out my phone and open my texts with Tanya. I navigate to our photos as quickly as possible to avoid rereading that final exchange once again. Stretching my arm across his desk, I swipe through the numerous pictures Tanya sent me while supposedly on her travels. There are pictures of her on the beaches of Italy, at Madame Tussauds in New York, at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, and so on.
“She told me she was traveling. She sent me all these pictures. Clearly that wasn’t true, so how did she do it?”
He stops watching my slideshow and adjusts his suit jacket. “She did do some traveling when she was first diagnosed. But she also arranged a photoshoot to make it look like she was in all these places when her condition progressed. They were all places she’d been to before, so she’d be able to answer any questions you might ask.”
He says it matter-of-factly, oblivious to how it flays me wide open that someone I treasured went to such lengths to hide her health from me.
Maybe he’s not oblivious. Maybe he just doesn’t care. I’m well aware that this man doesn’t deserve my judgment or my ire. He is only doing his job, after all, but someone has to hold this rage in my chest and it can’t be me.
“Why would she do that?”
“She didn’t want either of you to know about her diagnosis. She said it was important that you go on living your lives without seeing her like that.”
“Like a human?” I ask. No matter how hard I try, I can’t wrap my head around the fact that she would leave us without saying goodbye. Yes, she was the textbook definition of fabulous, so I’m sure seeing her sick would’ve been a shock, but I would take that shock a million times just to give her one last hug.
Fuck.These beige ass walls are not going to see my tears.
“I suppose so,” Mr. Townsend says. His nonchalant tone makes my blood boil.
“Right. And you’re a lawyer, so of course you don’t mind perpetuating lies.”
