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I halt, my ears perking up.
“I heard it was an affair,” Margot whispers, but clearly not softly enough. “And Glen’s wife…she killed herself after.”
“Oh, no. It wasn’t anything like that,” Sabine says as though giving a firsthand account. “Glen was separated from his wife a long time before she passed. Before he even met Ellie. Don’t believe a word anyone says otherwise.”
Lie. Lie. Lie.
Glen didn’t tell Atlas’s mom shit until the whole messy truth came out. And now Sabine is parroting the lies she’s been told to protect Glen and Mom’s precious reputations. What a crock of shit.
“And it was a car accident,” Sabine goes on. “No one really knows what happened, but Glen says she was really unstable before that. He’d tried to get her to seek professional help, but she wouldn’t.”
Even knowing it’s not true, I wouldn’t have blamed her if she had, since being in this family really fucks a person up.
I don’t need to hear this shit.
But then Sabine says, “Poor Glen and Ellie. You know Ellie has another son, Brandon. He’s quite a bit older than Troy. After her husband left her with two kids, Brandon started going out partying, running with a bad crowd. Experimenting with drugs. She’s never told me what exactly, but given that he’s basically disappeared, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was opioids. Just such a selfish thing, given how much this family was already going through. I’m surprised he hasn’t come back and asked for money.”
Anger pulses through me. How dare she even speak his name? What does she know about my family or our problems? What does she know about Brandon? Nothing.
But a part of me is pissed because there’s some truth to it…too much truth.
I realize my fists are clenched and I’m positioned like I’m about to charge in and state the truth.
About Glen and Ellie’s bad behavior. About Atlas’s mom. About my brother.
But what good will that do? What’s the point?
I swallow my rage.
No, I just need a minute.
Just one fucking minute.
10
Atlas
“Hmm?” I askTim…Tom? Hell, I can’t remember the man’s name. He’s worked with my dad for years, but he’s also a dickhead, so I don’t give a fuck what he has to say. He’s been rambling for ten minutes straight while I’m trying to figure out where in the hell Troy went. From the way Dickhead T is staring at me, it’s clear he asked me a question I haven’t answered in who knows how long.
Where the fuck is Troy?
“Your mom…she looks happy today,” he says again, so not a question but something he expects me to agree with rather than what he said making me feel like I’m being cooked alive.
“My mom is dead. I don’t think she looks very happy.”
Dickhead T gapes at me, as if he can’t believe I said that. It just proves he doesn’t know me and likely thinks I’m like dear ole Glen and going to kiss everyone’s ass so I can get something out of it.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean… Your stepmom, of course.”
“Later,” I tell him, and walk away. I’m over listening to him talk and doing a shitty job of pretending I give a fuck.
Even though I tell myself I’m not doing it, I’m looking around the backyard for Troy. Everyone is laughing and talking, and all I can think about is how fake it all is. How this facade we have in place has everyone tricked, or maybe it’s really that they’reall wearing facades too. They see right through ours but pretend they don’t, just to whisper behind our backs.
“Richard, I’d like you to meet my son, Atlas.” I hear Glen’s voice getting closer and closer, and I’m trying with everything I have not to be sick. Christ, he’s so fucking fake. “Atlas, this is Richard, one of our new controllers. Richard, this is Atlas.”
I reach out to shake Richard’s hand. “Nice to meet you,” I tell him when it’s really not. Meeting and talking to him or anyone at this party is the absolute last thing I want to do.
“You too. You’re an engineering major at Peach State, right?” Because of course that’s what he would ask. It’s a much more respectable career choice in my dad’s circles than being a sociology major. Hell, Glen probably led him to believe I was Mr. Perfect Troy. That his real son isn’t going into a career he thinks is a waste of time.
