“Maisie.” My voice catches. “Earlier, what had you meant about making Faust promise something? What did he promise?”
She glances down. “Um, I thought you’d be angry I’d dropped out. So I made him promise not to tell you that he and I had talked, or about the restaurant stuff.”
“Did he?”
“Promise?” She blinks, confused. “Yeah. He was kind of weird about it, but he said he’d go along with it as long as I told you soon. And I wanted to in Monaco, but it was a last-minute thing, with school, and the garage. We wanted to surprise you both?” She winces apologetically. “Sorry.”
He really didn’t know that they were coming to the race. I feel like the room is tilting, though I don’t think I’ve moved an inch. “Has he talked to you since then?”
“Oh, I don’t think so. Why?”
He hasn’t talked to me, either. And my anger hasn’t fully vanished, knowing that Maisie was the one to contact him first, that she’d had to make this loyal-to-a-fault man promise to keep a secret from me… but it does change things. For me, at least. It makes me regret some of the things I said to him. Quite a few things, actually.
She watches me very carefully, and apparently, her giant eyes can still pick up silent radio waves. “Shit,” she whispers. “Him?”
“Don’t swear.”
“Cat.”
“Sorry—old habits—oh my god.”
I can’t breathe. I lean forward, and Maisie catches me, arms around my shoulders. I apologize to her. Over and over. Until she asks me to stop, though I don’t want to listen. My chest aches with how much I want to apologize to her, and Dad, and Mei, Christine, the team, Faust, him more than anyone else. He hadn’t meant to expose me. He’d just been helping my sister. And he’d been right about me, too. I’ve never thought that I could fully balance the karmic scales, take down the healthcare industry through well-timed breakup texts. But I hadn’t thought I’d been running from this anger. This grief.
But he’d noticed.
He saw the real me, and I couldn’t stand it.
Eventually, begrudgingly, Maisie leaves to eat dinner with everyone else, turning off the light switch as she goes. I’d be alone if it wasn’t for the glowing green stars I’d taped to my ceiling over a decade ago, their light soft and blobby. I’ve counted twenty of them before my tears catch up with me. The big dipper, the little dipper, pointy Taurus, two-faced Gemini.
When I started going by Cat Cromwell, I’d thought it was just a mask. Me, imitating Grandma a bit. Carrying on the Alden brand. Shaking shit up. It was more than that, though. I’d consciously made a new version of myself to fill the void—a woman with a new name and a new identity, who did cool things. Important things. A legend. Like becoming larger than life could bring anyone back from the dead, or prevent it. But I didn’t change, not on the inside. Not where it counted the most; without my job, without my armor, when no one else is around, in the dark, under the glowing stars.
I fall asleep finally understanding that horrible, illuminating truth.
You can’t run away from yourself.
Chapter 30CORRESPONDENCE CHESS
A week without a job,the internet, or your sanity can go surprisingly fast. It takes Dad a full five days to ask if I want to pick up hours at the garage. I sit at the front desk, greeting the regulars like I’m in high school again. Greg, who’s been coming to the garage every Friday since I was born, does a double take, falling against the door, grasping his heart. “The prodigal daughter has returned!” he yelps. “Call the Hallmark channel!”
I don’t think this is the beginning of my post–Monte Carlo, move-back-to-my-small-town breakdown. That said, it is nice. I’ve been between apartments and cities for so long that I forgot how convenient it is to have my full clothing collection in one place, and nobody in Waterfield gives a fuck about what they’re saying online about me. On Sunday, while I’m in a back pew, reading one of Renata’s spicy books, Mrs. Sherwood asks if I’d like her to report the people being mean about me on “the Facebook” to the FBI.
I tell her it isn’t worth her time.
I allow myself to check my phone twice per day. Once in themorning, after I wake up. Then again in the evening, before dinner. I check to see if Faust has announced he’s retiring yet. He hasn’t.
He also doesn’t text.
Or call. Or email. No carrier pigeons, either. And on one hand, it’s kind of affirming, a big win for my intuition—Faust might not have hurt me on purpose, and he might have done an incredibly nice thing for my family, but he also doesn’t care about me the way he said he did. He is endlessly meticulous, too intelligent for his own good. The last thing I said was that I didn’t believe him. Bare minimum, I think he’d text me that we should discuss what happened, if it kept him up at night, too.
I could reach out as well. I know. But in a weird way, I’m grateful for his silence. I have a lot of catching up to do on my own.
“Are you sure that you’re ready for this?” Samantha asks as the four of us stand in the grocery store haircare aisle, nervously tugging her pristine ponytail.
“No shit she isn’t,” Maisie mumbles.
“It’s just Manic Panic,” Bailey says. “It washes out.”
“And it’s my birthday, and I’m sad,” I remind them, grabbing the small orange-colored jar. “Sue me.”
