Page 76 of Redline Communion

Nothing in the report is obviously false, which bothers me more than a direct lie would. A lie would give me a clean violation to confront. This requires me to establish what he chose not to say and why.

I open the previous submissions: class, home, garage, university, no notable concerns, no unusual behavior. Lorelei’s decline does not appear, and Talia exists only as ordinary household contact.

The reports are not incomplete through carelessness.

They have been curated.

Rafe has removed the parts of Lorelei’s life he believes the house could use, leaving enough truth for the reports to pass while withholding everything that matters.

He has been deciding what we are allowed to know.

The thought should make me angry.

It does, but not cleanly.

I close the reporting file and open the Offering ledger. Ash’s name is still struck through in red. Lorelei’s lineage remains at the top, followed by her assessments and the household’s requirements, and my signature sits beneath Rafe’s, both of us preserved in ink as recognized claimants.

Talia exists nowhere in the document.

Neither does the cocaine.

It was already in Lorelei’s system when I took her hand. She had used that day, then drank the flower because we told her to, and I knew what the flower was designed to do. I used its effects to explain why she seemed so open, so willing to yield after months of fighting me on everything.

I asked whether she was there.

She said yes.

I accepted the answer because I wanted to believe it, then signed an account that contains none of the conditions under which she gave it.

Records are useful because they make events look finished: a signature, a struck-through name, a status entered into the proper field. A person becomes whatever survives the page.

I have spent most of my life believing the record was where disorder ended.

Now, looking at Lorelei’s name above an account that leaves out half of what happened to her, I understand that a record may only mark the place where someone decided to stop writing.

I close the ledger.

For once, I don’t know which missing line frightens me most.

Chapter eighteen

Redline

Lorelei

Ash is waiting outside my music building when class ends.

Of course he is. He’s leaning against the hood of his car with his arms folded, sunglasses on despite the sun already dropping behind the west buildings, looking like somebody sent a bodyguard to collect a woman who explicitly did not order one.

Kiwi spots him first.

“Oh,” she says.

That one syllable contains judgment, curiosity, and at least three follow-up questions she has enough survival instinct not to ask while he can hear.

“Ignore him.”

“Can he hear us?”