Page 84 of State of Ruin

I sigh. “Okay, so I need to show you something.” I produce the letter. “I seriously need advice.”

Her brows wing up. “Seriously? I get to read one?” I’ve been filling her in on some of the smaller details of his other ones, but I’ve kept a lot to myself. Between paying me for sex and all of his dodgy business dealings, there’s not a lot that’s shareable. She knows he’s been doing therapy, and she knows he’s finally grown to understand the severity of his betrayal of me. She also knows that he told me he loved me.

“You do, but I have to tell you something first, and then you can decide whether to read it. This is a big confession that he wanted to get off his chest, but it’s a tough read. When he was a kid, he knocked a woman over on his bike one night—and he didn’t stop.”

I let that land between us for a moment.

Sylvie closes her eyes briefly. “Of course he fucking did.”

“It gets worse. His parents paid the victim off and made it all go away—and she was pregnant. It’s okay,” I say quickly at the sight of her expression. “The baby was fine. But it’s a lot.”

She holds her hand out. “Give me the fucking letter.”

I slide into the seat next to her and watch as she reads it. To say my sister has an expressive face is an understatement, and it’s quite the show, watching the various levels of judgment that pass over it as she takes in Sinclair’s confession.

Finally, she throws it down onto the table. “What a bunch of assholes.”

“Yeah.” I watch her carefully. She blows out a breath and puts her face in her hands.

“Jesus,” she mumbles through her fingers. “Poor woman. If that would have happened to me when I was pregnant, I… I dunno. And she was alone. I wonder how long she was on her own.” She looks up and shivers.

My sister’s injuries were far worse than Maria’s, but she was also tended to immediately by passersby. I can’t imagine what it would have been like for her, not knowing if the boy who’d hit her would be as good as his word, not knowing whether anyone would come for her, whether her baby had been harmed.

Sylvie slides the letter toward her again with her fingertips. “The issue isn’t that he ran away, though. I mean, it’s not great, but he was a kid. I don’t think any parent wants to think about what their kid would do in that situation, but, much as I dislike this dude, I don’t know for sure that Fleur would be strong enough to stay in ten years’ time. I mean, I just have no clue.”

I stare at her. “I think she’d stay.”

“Really? On a dark road in the middle of nowhere, where some woman is screaming in agony? I hate to say it, but I think a lot of kids would run. And he went and got his parents straight away. It wasn’t like he hid under the covers and pretended nothing had happened.”

“True,” I say slowly. “I thought you’d be less… forgiving.”

“I mean, the part of me who got thrown across the street and left for fucking dead wants to punch someone in the face.” She picks up the letter and waves it at me. “Unfortunately, the part of me who’s a mom feels a little bad for this kid. How old was he—fourteen? Fifteen?”

“Fifteen, I think. He’s thirty-six.”

She makes a face like, Exactly. “And he stepped forward eventually. Like, twenty years too late, but still. Right now, the only people I want to punch are his asshole parents.”

I throw up my hands. “Right? Thank you!”

“I mean, what the fuck? The protecting-your-kid part I get, but brushing the whole thing under the carpet and getting some fixer to deal with it? That’s messed up. I would march Fleur into that hospital so quickly and make her look that woman in the face and apologize. You have to learn to take responsibility for your actions, and I don’t think you get a better teaching moment than a fuck-up like that.”

“I totally agree,” I say. “No wonder it’s taken him another twenty years to understand what the word consequences means.”

“It’s more than that, I think,” she says. “It’s like they don’t think anyone else’s life has as much value as their family’s? So they shut this down. Poor old Maria gets stitched up and paid up and told to shut up, while darling Sinclair’s route to Princeton, or wherever the fuck he went, remains a straight fucking road. No blemishes on that résumé.”

“It was Yale,” I say automatically, and she snorts.

“Of course it was.”

“You’re right, though.” I look down at my hands as I consider that that’s exactly how he treated me: like everyone else’s needs and wants are expendable if they get in the way of his. “That’s exactly how it feels. They did him a huge disservice.”

“Him, and everyone who’s had to deal with his bullshit ever since,” she says. She looks back down at the letter and starts to laugh.

“What?”

“It’s just—it sounds like he was fucking terrified to tell you. It’s funny, that’s all, because I think what he did to you last month is worse, in some ways. I say worse because it’s not like you can judge a freaked-out kid and a grown-ass man by the same standards. But that kind of makes it sweeter that he felt he had to tell you. He really is getting it all off his chest, huh?”

I give her a decisive nod. “Oh, yeah. He really is.”