Page 67

My mouth was already moving.

"He was in a program," I said.

Bex blinked. "Sorry?"

"Bex, I'm going to tell you something, and you have to sit on it until Monday." I put a hand on her arm, dropped my voice half an octave, and did the thing I have done in every room I have ever needed anything from. "He came out of what I'll call an intentional community. Zephyr was there a number of years before he got out. And part of what he left with was a legal identity that had been—" I let it hang "—administratively managed for him. By other people."

Bex's mouth came open.

"Oh my God! Do you mean a cult?"

"The Ferrante name is real. It's from before." I shrugged. "He was an out-of-work actor with nothing. They took him in at the lowest point of his life. They fed him when he couldn't afford food and they fed him a great many other things besides. And when he finally got out they kept his paperwork and everything he owned."

I could hear how good it was as it came out of me. That's the horror of it. It was excellent.

"That isn't a compliance problem. That's the documentary I’m shooting with him."

"That's—" Bex had both hands on the phone. "Gregory. That's the vertical."

"That's the vertical."

"That is the whole vertical. A man whose identity was taken from him, who had to build a life out of nothing—"

"And who won't name them," I said. "Because he says naming them is another kind of ownership."

Bex put her hand over her mouth.

"I have to tell Steven."

"After the wedding, Bex." I laid a hand on her arm. "Let them have their day."

"After the wedding," she agreed, nodding hard. "Oh, absolutely after. God. After." She grabbed my forearm. "Thank you. Thank you for telling me, because I was about to walk over there and ruin a wedding.” Then she bounced down the terrace steps toward the meadow barefoot with her heels in her hand, glowing.

I stood there and finished my drink. I would like to write that I felt sick. I’ve been trying to write that sentence for some time now. What I actually felt was the thing I always feel, the thing I have felt in every room where I ever pulled a fix out of the air with no time on the clock, and there is no honest word for it except good.

It lasted about ninety seconds.

Then I went to find Billy, because a lie that size needs the other party briefed, and the sooner the better.

* * *

He was behind the caterers' tent with his phone in his hand. He looked up, and I knew that he knew, immediately.

"Billy."

"She talked to you."

"Bex talked to me, yes."

"She talked to me first." He held the phone up. The podcast, paused, on that younger and heavier face. "Before she found you. She was very nice about it. She said she was sure there was an explanation. Then she said she'd hate to have to take it to Steven, and she went off looking for you."

"Right."

"So there's an explanation now. Isn't there." He set the phone on his knee. "You've made one up."

I sat down on a crate.

"Yes."