Page 156 of Boardroom Mask

I’m standing backstage at the National Press Club holding a glass plaque with my name etched into it. I’m wearing my best Normal Girl smile as a woman from the awards committee pins a lanyard to my lapel and tells me where to stand for photos. I nod and hold the plaque the way she shows me, tilted so the overhead lights don’t bounce off the glass.

I won for the Elena Lazarev story. Not the first version, thank God, because that was a disaster and a half. This award is for the corrected one, which I rewrote in a feverish haze in the forty-eight sleepless hours after Kir left town. It might not have had the lurid tabloid appeal of “Billionaire Slaughters Wife,” but at least it was honest.

I look down at the object in my hand. The plaque saysEXCELLENCE IN INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISMand then my name in smaller letters underneath.Jillian RosePierce. TheNew York Times.I vaguely consider dumping it in the nearest trash can.

Doug finds me after the photographer takes mercy on me and cuts me loose. He’s wearing a tie, which means this is a big deal, though he doesn’t look the least bit happy about it. “I’m proud of you, kid,” he says. “You earned it. Every damn word.”

I wish I could accept the praise, because this is the moment I’ve been working toward since I first took up pen and paper as a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed little girl. Front page reporter. Prestigious award. Career made, lives changed.

But it doesn’t feel like enough.

Nothing does anymore.

Rae and I are talking again. Not the way we used to, though. There’s a carefulness now, a politeness that was never there before, and it makes me want to scream into a pillow. We used to finish each other’s sentences and steal fries off each other’s plates without asking. Now, we text before we call. We ask permission before we show up. We treat each other like people who might break.

We might, yeah—me more so than her—but it still bums me out if I think too long and hard about it.

She knows everything now. I filled her in bit by bit over the course of a few late nights. When I was finally done, she pulled me into a hug so tight my ribs hurt, and she said,“I wish you’d told me sooner.”I reminded her that she had her hands fairly full, which she laughed and acknowledged, but she insisted that she would’ve been there for me.“You’re not alone, Jilly Bean,”she insisted.“You never have been.”

Agree to disagree. Anyway, she and I are getting there. It’s just slow.

The other thing is slower.

I wrote back to Briarwood Family Services three weeks ago. It was a short letter, carefully worded, and even though I’m quite literally a professional writer, it still felt like pulling teeth, every single line. Basically, I said I was open to contact and kept it at that. I didn’t want to sound like a crazy, desperate, frothing-at-the-mouth lady who should not be allowed within five hundred yards of a school. Adoptive services companies tend to frown upon that sort of thing. I can’t imagine that my daughter’s new parents would be so keen on me, either.

The letter wound its way through all the intermediaries, but eventually, the adoptive family wrote back. They seem kind. They said that they’d send pictures if I wanted them, but the mere thought made me want to puke and cry and scream, in no particular order. Worse still was their other offer: An in-person visit.

Come see her,they urged.She’s smart, and brave, and beautiful, and she’d love to meet you.

I haven’t gone.

Why not? That’s the million-dollar question.

I tell myself it’s timing. Or if not timing, then logistics. Or psychology. Just a headspace thing, you know, and I just gotta figure a few things out, get various affairs sorted, settle this, arrange that.

All of which is obviously bullshit. “Cope,” as the kids say.

There was a window of time, brief and bright, when I actually believed I could do it. There was someone who made me feel like the kind of woman who walks into hard rooms and doesn’t flinch. Who bites through leather and fights back, who stays when every nerve is screaming at her to run. For a few weeks, I had borrowed courage. It wasn’t mine, but I wore it well enough to fool myself into thinking it was.

Now, that borrowed courage is gone. Wherever it went, it took the version of me who could’ve made the drive to New Jersey and knocked on that door.

Without that, I’m just regular Jillian again. Regular Jillian doesn’t knock on strangers’ doors. Regular Jillian sleeps with the windows locked and the lights always on.

I get home from the ceremony a little after nine, heels in one hand, plaque in the other. The elevator deposits me on my floor. As I’m awkwardly fishing for my keys with my hands full, Elliot’s door opens halfway down the hall.

He’s got a bag of trash in one hand and his keys in the other. He freezes when he sees me. I freeze right back.

The scar above his left eye has faded to a thin white line. You’d only notice it if you knew to look. Seeing as how I know exactly where to look, I always notice it.

His gaze drops to the plaque. He reads it, or at least pretends to, and then he nods. “Congrats,” he says. His weight edges backward, ready to flee at a moment’s notice.

“Thanks, El,” I say in a lame, bright voice that makes me cringe the second it leaves my lips. “How are you? Haven’t seen you in a while.”

He switches the trash bag to his other hand. “Good. I’m good. Yeah. Good. Yep.”

He’s clearly not good. He’s plastered against the wall and looking at me the way you’d look at a dog that bit you once. I did that to him. Well, Kir did that to him, but the distinction feels pretty thin from where I’m standing. Lie down with the masked man and get the fleas, or however the expression goes. As I’ve said before, I’m no good with metaphors.

At last, the guilt gets to be too much. “Elliot, look, I know we’ve never properly talked about this, but I’m really sorry about?—”