Page 136 of Cruel Lies

"I'm not breaking in. Stage a phone call to draw her out, or send them in with fake maintenance men, or—I don't fucking care how. They just need to go back."

"Why?"

"Because I took them and I had no right. I've been telling myself for weeks it was a favor, but it wasn't. It was me deciding what she got to have and how she got to see herself." I set the napkin down. I never want to touch it again, if I can help it. "She should be able to choose those things herself."

Navi stands up. He comes across the room and, for the first time all night, he puts a hand on my shoulder. He's not one to do much of that. Neither of us are. So it sits there, heavy and strange.

"Okay," he says. "I'll get it done." He squeezes once. "For what it's worth, cousin… your old man never would've done any of this. Igor would've stolen it all and let her drown and never lost a night's sleep."

Another creeping chill steals through me. "That's not a comfort."

"It's not supposed to be. Just stating facts." He picks his jacket up off the chair. "You did the right thing tonight. It's a shame that she's just never going to know that. And you're never going to get to tell her." He heads for the hall. "Get some sleep, Ro."

I won't. He knows that as well as I do.

He lets himself out, and the apartment goes back to being the enormous, empty box it was before she walked into it. I stand at the window until the black over the park turns gray, and then a thin, sick blue, and then, finally, the color of an ordinary morning.

Out there, the mirrors will soon be on the move. I close my eyes and picture her house, her bedroom. I imagine the first glance she takes into that mirror when it's hung up again. What will she see? What will she think? Who will be left to tell her she's beautiful?

I do endless, meandering loops around the apartment for hours, looking out of this window and that one, thinking thoughts that have no beginning and no end, no purpose and no meaning.

At midnight, I grab my phone.

This won't do anything anymore, but I made a promise, and I intend to keep it.Every day, until you believe me.

And I'm not the kind of man who breaks that particular promise. It might be the only true thing I ever gave her.

You're beautiful, Calista Meadows.

The read receipt appears underneath almost at once.

Read 12:01 A.M.

But even though I sit and stare at the screen for hours, the three dots don't come. Just a single receipt, as thorough and damning as if she'd spit in my face and left me only a single napkin to clean it with.

I set the phone facedown on the counter.

Then I slump back in my armchair and wait for tomorrow, so I can tell her again.

37

CALI

I wake up with my cheek stuck to the kitchen island and a spreadsheet open on my screen. My neck is a solid bar of pain. There's a puddle of drool by the trackpad. Classy.

The clock on the microwave says 7:22 A.M.

I don't remember falling asleep. I was just typing like a woman possessed, building columns and rows, writing code, laying out everything I knew about He Who Must Not Be Named.

And then, I guess, my body gave out on me, and I face-planted onto the counter.

I sit up slow. My back cracks like a glowstick. My eyes are gummy and swollen from crying. I feel like I got hit by a bus, and then the bus backed up and hit me again to make sure.

I need coffee. I need a shower. I need to remember how to be a human being. My children are depending on me for that much, at least.

So, summoning willpower from depths I never knew I possessed, I get the coffee going and then I drag myself up thestairs to the bathroom, one hand on the rail because my legs still feel like they belong to someone else.

I push open the bathroom door.