Page 197 of Boardroom Sins

I tap the voicemail they left me with numb fingers. It plays against my ear.

“Ms. Everett, this is Jessica Moyer calling from Westgate Recovery Center. I’m reaching out again because you’re the listed next of kin for Mr. Gideon Everett and we haven’t been able to get in contact with you. I’m sorry to inform you that your brother...”

The rest of the message dissolves into static. Or maybe that’s just the blood roaring in my ears. It pounds in a two-syllable rhythm, like an accusation, repeated ad nauseam.

It happened again.

Again.

RAE

MISSING: GIDEON EVERETT

Age 21. Dirty blonde hair, brown eyes, 5'11".

Last seen: Westgate Recovery Center, Saugerties, NY. December 19.

(917) 525-0148.

Please help. He's my brother. He's all I have.

The phone feels like a brick of ice against my ear as I hit replay. Maybe I misheard. Like, the connection was probably bad. Just a weird case of crossed wires, no harm, no foul?—

“Ms. Everett, this is Jessica Moyer calling from Westgate Recovery Center…”

Nope. I heard that bit right the first time.

“I’m reaching out once again because you’re the listed next of kin for Mr. Gideon Everett and we haven’t been able to get in contact with you.”

Again.

Again,booms my accusatory heart.Again, again.

“I’m sorry to inform you that your brother has signed himself out of our facility against medical advice. He departed yesterday morning and we haven’t been able to reach him.”

It’s not relief I feel, because this is not good news. But the knowledge that he’s missing, not dead, is like getting punched in the stomach. I fall to my knees on the kitchen floor and suck in one shuddering, stuttering breath.

Then the despair roars right back in.

“Given the circumstances of his treatment, we wanted to make you aware that patients who leave AMA—that’s ‘against medical advice’—during this stage of recovery are at significantly elevated risk for relapse. If you hear from Gideon, please encourage him to return or seek alternative treatment immediately. You can reach me at?—”

I end the call before she can finish. “Elevated risk for relapse”—that’s clinical speak foryour brother is probably shooting up in some alley as we speak.

I drag myself up onto one of the kitchen stools. My legs are suddenly useless. The half-eaten apple sits on the counter, its flesh already browning where I bit into it. The sight of it makes my stomach lurch.

I’ve beenhere, in this beautiful hidden brownstone, happily squirreled away, getting fingered and edged and fucked andlovedinto oblivion. And all the while, Gideon…

Gideon was…

Gideon wasrelapsing.

He was walking out those doors nobody to stop him, because his sister, the one personwho swore she always would be there,who was supposed to answer the phone no matter what, had powered hers off to traipse off to Fantasy Land with a Brioni-wearing beast.

I had a choice, and I chose Lukas. I chose orgasms and whispered confessions and the exquisite torture of being wanted so completely that the rest of the world ceased to exist.