Page 29

It has to be.

“You seem to do that a lot lately,” Carson adds, sharing a laugh with my father. They give each other A Look. It should be humiliating. I should be angry, but I just feel . . . low and let down. Still, I try laughing with them, as if it will lessen the sting.

“I asked how your studies are going.”

Studies. Carson wears his arrogance with the same affinity as his golden Rolex. A rower at Harvard and a business major, he was raised just as pampered as me so I can’t poke too much fun at him. But it’s different.

There was a harshness to my upbringing, in the form of an angry boy who held the paintings I gifted him in his hand with the reverence of someone touching an original Van Gogh. Who taught me how to press my mouth into curses my dad rarely used. Of how to close my fist correctly to throw a punch.

Carson and I may have been raised similarly, but my ivory tower was graffitied and half lit on fire. That made me different. Better, I think.

“Classes are fine. I’m . . . actually . . .” I clear my throat and glance toward my dad. “I met with the art professor for my final project and I’ll be doing a show in—”

“She has made art her minor now,” my dad says, taking an annoyed sip of his coffee. At my slight flinch he clenches his jaw and continues, “It’s great to have a hobby, but there are better things to spend your time on. Her major is still communications.”

It’s confusing when he does that—talks half to me and half about me.

“Yes, sir.”

My dad nods to Carson then, dropping his voice slightly. “Lillian is a bit of an art savant. Specifically with Van Gogh. She’s . . . brilliant, really.”

It’s hard to soak in the compliments when they seem wrong in some way. I can never quite lay my finger on why it feels different when he says these things about me. I should be happy that he calls me brilliant or discusses my affinity for art—history or otherwise, but I feel reprimanded in some way. Like something is actually wrong with me.

Still, I can’t stop from asking Carson, “Do you like Van Gogh?”

It’s odd that for all the time we’ve spent shoved together, our conversation has rarely gone anywhere below the surface of pleasantries.

Why did I ask that?

I bite down on my lip in regret. Van Gogh is . . . special to me. It’s personal, even if it’s all I want to speak about most of the time. As a child, his art made everything loud in my brain go quiet. I couldn’t get enough of it, couldn’t see enough of it. It’s just the same now.

Perhaps even more calming etched in black across golden skin—

Carson shrugs, eyebrows furrowed. “He’s fine. Starry Night, right?”

I nod, because it is his most famous work. That’s the easiest place to start.

“He actually painted that one when he was—”

“Lillian,” my dad snaps, so suddenly I jump in my seat. “Enough.”

There’s a war inside me. I want to kick my dad under the table or throw a full-blown tantrum. I also crave his approval and his company more than I want to. Because, for a long time, he’s all I’ve had.

“I’m sorry.” I sink back into the unforgiving woven wood of my too-small chair in this too-small upscale café. “I . . . yes, I enjoy art. As a hobby.”

Carson smiles.

“I’d love to see some of your work, Lily,” he says. He’s nicer to me when it’s not just the two of us—not to say that he’s mean. If anything, he’s just . . . entirely uninterested. But with my dad here, he’s on display. A performance. An ugly, mocking art piece.

My dad grimaces at the shortened name. I’m aware he doesn’t like it, but I don’t know why. Mom called me Lily, and I can vaguely remember my dad using it a time or two. Then, after, it was only ever Lillian. Having Carson call me Lily feels like a small rebellion itself.

“How is the job?” my dad asks Carson now, dismissing me with the turn of conversation. “Peter treating you well up there?”

They speak and I slowly sink into numbness. Everything slows, my brain moving like molasses over each person around us. My nail scours my napkin on the table over and over in a pattern, using the small tears to make something that resembles the speckled painted brick of the outside of the café. Maybe like looking through a snowfall on the navy building.

If I could just—

Carson’s hand covers mine on the table and I freeze. “Should we do dinner this weekend?”