Page 110

“Shit,” I whisper, scrubbing my face with my sleeve. “God-dammit.”

Felicity reaches for me, and I kick off my shoes and climb into the hospital bed next to them.

Dad is calling. The prison’s caller ID, USP EAST EARLY, lights up my phone screen with blocky white letters.

You’d think Dad would have better things to do in prison than bother me—work out, or watch TV, or stare at a wall—but he calls like clockwork. Not to mention that it’s burning through his commissary, and I’m not going to be the one to fill it back up.

I wonder if he knows his wife is dead.

The phone continues to vibrate in my hand. I watch it ring out.

“Morgan?” my lawyer says.

I put my phone face down in my lap. “Hm? I’m listening.”

On the other side of her desk, my lawyer levels a stare that says she does not believe me. Hetty looks up from her notepad and sighs.

“As I was saying,” my lawyer continues with a barely contained huff, because I’m almost eighteen and should definitely be paying more attention at this age, “a lot of this comes down to whether you go to trial before or after you reach the age of majority. I mean”—she taps her laptop with an elegant acrylic nail—”you are definitely being tried as an adult, but—I’m sorry, who’s calling?”

My phone is buzzing again.

I lift it up to show the screen. “Dad.”

“Jesus,” my lawyer says.

Fuck it. I know there’s a process to get myself removed from the list of approved contacts, but I don’t want to deal with it.

I block the number.

On the way out of my lawyer’s office, I text Dr. Lý to see if we could possibly have an extra session later this week. Hetty caught me stealing her liquor last night during a breakdown, and I handled it badly, and I feel enough like my mother that I hate myself more than usual. Dr. Lý says that’s fine. We can schedule a virtual appointment, if I’d like. I tell her that’d be great.

See? I tell myself as I put my phone away. I’m trying.

In the lobby of the fancy office building, a block from the waterfront, Felicity and Vincent are waiting for me. As I approach, they’re chatting—Felicity with the scar on the underside of their jaw, Vincent with a folder in his lap. They’re talking about Felicity’s speech therapy, considering the damage Mom did to their mouth, and a movie I haven’t seen. About vampires or something. I’m unsure how those are related.

Vincent stands when he sees me. “Morgan.”

I frown at the folder. “Is that homework.”

“Guilty as charged.” He slaps the folder against his hand. In the lobby chair, Felicity kicks their feet and smiles innocently at me, like they had nothing to do with this. They definitely did. “It’s, ah, makeup work, really. But we wanted to make sure you got caught up before the semester ends. You’re still planning on graduating in the spring, right?”

I hadn’t thought about it, but the idea of not managing to finish high school after everything doesn’t sit well with me. And I’m certainly not planning on redoing senior year. “Yeah. I guess so.”

“You and Ms. Keating can help each other out, then.” He looks over my shoulder. “Where’s your social worker? I want to have a chat with her.”

I nod behind me, where Hetty’s coming down the hall now. “She’s all yours. Gonna get some air.”

With the adults blessedly distracted by each other—”Don’t go too far,” Hetty calls—Felicity gets up, grabs my hand, and leads me out the glass double doors to the street.

November in the capital is cold, and the city is even grayer than normal: no leaves on the trees, no color to the Potomac, too many clouds. Felicity fits right in, with their dark coat and black combat boots. We cross the street together, and Felicity tugs me into a café for an iced coffee. I roll my eyes and get a hot chocolate.

In the line, they play with their cross necklace and the tiny locket that now accompanies it. They put a scrap of Cordelia’s photo inside.

We’ve had a lot to talk about lately. Cordelia’s life. What we said to each other at the penthouse. What Felicity’s bio parents did to them and what Dad made me do. Last week, when we pulled an all-nighter on video call, I asked why they risked themself like that to stop my mother. Hell, why they helped me at all, after everything I’d done. They rubbed their new scar and grimaced. When they were little, they said, and things were really bad, at least they always had their sister. I didn’t have anyone. So even if they hated me, they weren’t going to sit back and let Mom hurt me. That’s not what Cordelia would have done.

We’ve apologized to each other, a lot.

For what it’s worth, it gets less scary every time.