Page 95 of City of Liars

“You give that paper to Olivia,” my mother said, her voice steady. “You give her the choice of reaching out. You take back the threat of rescinding her inheritance. And then…” She folded her arms across her chest. “You and I have a lot to talk about, Russ, and we need privacy to do it. But first—Olivia, I owe you an apology. We both do.”

Her expression was pleading, and no matter what she’d put me through, I didn’t have the heart to reject her. “You can keep the money,” I said, making sure to sound kind rather than cruel. For years, I’d equated my inheritance with a sense of belonging—that if I was worthy enough to deserve their money, I was worthy of the Carter name. But now, I understood.

Families were made. Families were chosen. Families were fought for. As for me: I was a Carter. And a Brentwood. And a Gallagher, my bio mom’s last name. I had nothing to prove to anyone.

“Are you sure?” my mother asked, searching my face. “You’re our daughter, Liv. You deserve⁠—”

“I know what I deserve. And I have it.” I squeezed Theo’s hand, then gave Mom a small, compassionate smile. “I’ll be here if you want to talk. And I accept your apology. But just yours,” I said, holding my hand out for the paper. “Dad will have to make his own.”

I was done excusing the men in my life for their misdeeds. I’d broken the cycle with Chloe, and Theo had done the same with his own family. We were building a new life together, based on honesty and doing hard things, one day at a time. We were healing, and we wouldn’t make our parents’ mistakes.

Dad handed me the slip of paper, and I glanced down at it. Bonnie Greene, the real Ella Carter’s daughter. A physical address. And a phone number.

“What are you going to do?” he said.

I hadn’t expected him to apologize. It wasn’t in the narcissist’s arsenal, not unless they saw a way that it would benefit them. But still, I couldn’t deny that his reaction hurt.

I shook my head. “I haven’t figured that out yet. And honestly? It’s not your business. You and Mom have things to discuss. And Theo and I are going to leave and let you do it.”

They would work it out, or they wouldn’t. That wasn’t up to me. I’d tell my grandmother and Krista the truth, and they could make their own choices. And if my mother took me up on my offer, I’d be here for her. We couldn’t erase the past, but we could build something new.

Theo and I turned and left the study, hand in hand. We didn’t speak; we didn’t have to. The reassuring pressure of our interwoven fingers said everything the other needed to know.

Step by step, we made our way down the dim hallway. The wind gusted again, and the stained-glass window at the end of the hall rattled in its frame. A wisp of air caressed my face, and when I blinked, I could’ve sworn that May, Elizabeth, Charles, and Ella stood in the shadows. That my own mother walked beside me, and she was proud.

Maybe it was my imagination. Maybe it was a trick of the light.

Or maybe they were with us. Maybe they had been here, all along.

60

The Voice of the Wind

In a small city by the sea, the wind curled around the eaves of a home filled with love, rustling the glossy leaves and crimson berries of the holly bush outside the kitchen window.

The wind had stories to tell, but few wanted to listen. It spoke, but most people dismissed its cries. Once, long ago, there had been a girl who was different, but she had grown angry with the wind, and then she had grown up and away. The wind had mourned her loss, as it had the loss of few others.

Though the girl had forsaken the wind, the wind had not done the same. It had raced alongside the train that had taken her from Chicago to New York City’s Grand Central Station. It lingered outside her apartment building, watching her grow and change as her city did the same. Up went the Empire State Building, the Waldorf Astoria, the High Line. Down came the Twin Towers. The girl lost friends when they fell, and the wind cried along with her, raining ashes on the city she loved.

When the grown girl left New York City, an old woman now, the wind came with her, content to fill the sails of the boats that drifted through the Intracoastal Waterway and shape the dunes that hemmed North Carolina’s beaches. It knew when the grown girl remembered her real, true name. When she understood the truth the wind had been trying to tell her so long ago.

The wind knew, too, when Lily’s son bared his secrets at long last. Now it gazed through the leaves of the holly outside her granddaughter’s window, witnessing the homey scene within: three people clustered around the table, eating brunch and laughing together.

Curious, the wind curled closer, slipping into the gap between the window and the sill as the woman’s granddaughter, Liv, smiled at the dark-haired man she loved. Long ago, the wind had foreseen this moment, guiding Liv and the man named Theo together on its inexorable currents. There is no such thing as chance, the wind thought as it crept toward the table to glimpse what it had wrought, nudging the napkins so that the small, red-headed girl grabbed for hers with a giggle. There is no such thing as time.

The wind knew Liv’s heart. It knew how long she had dreamed of this—a family sitting around the table, happy and content. Three days from now, three weeks, three months, the man named Theo would ask Liv to marry him. Time was but an illusion to a force as old as the wind. She would say yes, of course. For Theo belonged here, the way the man named Gray had not. Gray had been a placeholder, a way station on the winding path of Liv’s life. The wind had paid him little attention, before fate had blown him off and away.

The one gift Gray had given Liv was the small girl who sat beside her, slipping forkfuls of scrambled eggs to the brown-and-white dog that sat, eager, beneath the table. The wind had listened, intrigued, as the man named Theo had convinced Liv to pick out the saddest, loneliest dog at the shelter, the one that had been there the longest, the one no one wanted. If anyone had asked, the wind would have told them Theo chose the dog that reminded him of himself—the one who had been invisible until the right person came along. The one who never believed he would truly find a home.

But no one asked, of course. No one paid the wind any mind as it traipsed home alongside the car that carried Liv, Theo, and the dog that would become Chloe’s perfect Christmas present. No one noticed it billowing the curtains now, as Chloe fed the dog Theo’s terrible eggs—the wind could not blame her—and Liv bent her head over a pad of paper, drafting a message for the third time. She read it aloud to Theo, who smiled, shrugged, and sipped his coffee.

The wind was pleased. Theo would listen as many times as Liv needed him to. He would be here today, as she worked through what she meant to say. He would be here tomorrow, when his brother Will came to visit, bringing the grown girl’s sister. The wind would rejoice at Lily and Susi’s second reunion. It would bring a blizzard to celebrate, just as it had carried snow on its wings the day the sisters had been torn apart nearly a century before.

For months afterward, people would speculate about the blanket of white that covered the beaches and bobbed on the ocean’s waves. They would have all sorts of explanations, from science to happenstance to Christmas miracles. No one would know the truth—that the snowfall was the wind’s gift to the girls it could not save, who had, at last, found peace.

It was time to go. The wind’s next host awaited, but it lingered as Theo brushed a curl from Liv’s cheek, his fingers drifting for an instant to the pendant that she never took off. It ruffled the dog’s fur and fluttered the pages of Liv’s notepad in approval, then swirled through the gap in the window and went on its way.

For old times’ sake, the wind followed the path it had taken nearly a hundred years ago, when the train stole the girl away from New York City to Chicago. The trains still ran, though not with such pomp and circumstance as they once had. Still, from the sky, it was easy to imagine nothing had changed. The wind snaked along, invisible above the spine of the train, imagining the girl was beneath it, that her story had just begun. Such things were easy to do. The wind had existed forever. It lived in all times and none.