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“Altair?” she asked.
She knew from experience not to react when people think they know something because they always know less than they think they do, or they’ve somehow drawn erroneous conclusions, and by reacting a certain way, she could end up giving away the information they were missing.
“Who are you?” he repeated. “What’s your real name?”
She looked at that folder again. She didn’t know what Elizabeth had done to make them think she was Meghan. She had no idea what he’d found.
A few times, she’d fantasized about telling him the truth. She’d imagined feeling relieved. She hadn’t done it because she hadn’t wanted to get Elizabeth in trouble. Now she realized, looking at Altair’s face, that it wouldn’t be that easy. He wore a cool expression, not revealing his emotions, and she had no idea how he would react to the truth.
“My name is Nova.”
Some of his walls came down when he heard her name, her confirmation of what he’d feared. He was angry.
“How did you find out?” she asked.
He picked up the folder from the table and handed it to her.
She swallowed, took a deep breath in, and opened it. It was Meghan’s file. The same file that Altair had brought with him when he’d first picked her up in the town square, except this one had Meghan’s picture on it. Blond, happy, smiling Meghan laughing back at her.
“Where did you get this?”
“I got suspicious a couple weeks ago. I asked someone I know on the Algorithm project to send me your file. I finally received it today.”
So he knew nothing. Only that she wasn’t Meghan.
“What made you suspicious?”
“When you were flirting with me.”
That was almost a month ago.
“A girl flirts with you, and you automatically assume something is wrong?”
“You are not ‘a girl,’” he said, his voice getting irritated. “You are my wife. And you behave strangely when you act like you want me one second than reject me and refuse to share my bed the next.”
“So it was actually my rejection of you that made you suspicious? There’s my arrogant Altair.”
He frowned at her, probably confused by her calm tone and the endearment.
“When I reread your file, I found some interesting inconsistencies.”
Inconsistencies.
He was getting formal on her.
“In addition to the picture of course.”
She crossed her own arms, waiting for him to go on.
“Meghan never knew her parents. You said your father moved you around a lot as a child.”
Yup. She’d said that and more about her father. Altair had shared so much about his past, she’d wanted to reciprocate. And maybe she’d needed to get some of that stuff off her chest too.
“I figured you’d assume that I’d lost my parents later in life.”
“There’s more.”
It looked like he’d spent a long time thinking about this. Maybe he’d imagined she would deny the truth and had thought of ways to prove her wrong.
