The Lie I Packed

ROMY'S POV

"Who's Paloma?" he asked again.

He hadn't moved from the end of the hallway, and his voice was quiet, which somehow made it worse.

"My stepsister," I said.

"And why are you whispering to your stepsister in my hallway, asking how she could?"

I could tell him everything: the fake groom, the stolen savings and the courthouse. I opened my mouth to say it.

"Let me guess." He came closer, slowly. "She's the one who introduced you to my grandmother. And now that you've landed me, she wants her cut."

"That's not what happened."

"Then what happened?"

"If you would just listen to me for two minutes..."

"I've listened to you for two days." He stopped in front of me, close enough that I had to tilt my head back to see his face. "Here's what's going to happen, and then you can call whoever you like."

He held up one finger.

"Nobody outside this family knows about this marriage. Not your friends, not your sister and not the press. If I read about it online, the contract is over and you get nothing."

A second finger.

"Six months. You live in this house, you come to family dinners, and when my grandmother calls, you're the happiest woman alive."

A third.

"And you don't fall for me." His mouth twisted. "Whatever fairy tale you came here for, this isn't it."

I stared at him. Five minutes ago I had been ready to confess everything. Now I wanted to throw Mrs. Quarles's glass of water in his face.

"Are you done?" I asked.

"Are you going to keep pretending you're the wrong woman?"

He waited for my answer, and I realized he wanted me to say yes, so he could throw me out and tell his grandmother it was my fault.

I thought about the five thousand dollars, and about Paloma laughing. I thought about going home to that house and that dinner table, and to Margaux's long, cold stare.

"No," I said. "I'm done pretending."

It was the first lie I ever told him, and I said it straight to his face.

Something flickered in his eyes, but it was gone before I could read it.

"Good," he said. "Hollis will send a car for you in two days. Bring what you need. The rest can be bought."

Then he walked away.

Hollis drove me home himself, and he spent the whole ride on the phone rearranging somebody's schedule. When I got in, the house was empty, so I went straight upstairs and packed that night with my door locked.

I didn't take much: some clothes, my laptop, my scripts and the shoebox of photos from before my mother died. Last, I took her dress out of the back of my closet.

She had sewn it herself the summer before she got sick. It was midnight blue silk, with a neckline she had redesigned three times, and tiny hand stitches along the hem that nobody would ever notice unless they knew to look. She wore it to the premiere of her last film, and Dad had told her she was the most beautiful woman in the room.

I folded it in tissue paper and laid it on top of everything else. Then I put the sewing tin beside it, with the certificate still hidden under the spools of thread.

Someone knocked.

"Romy?"

It was my father. I hadn't heard his voice outside my door in months.

I shoved the tin under a sweater and opened the door halfway. He looked past me at the open suitcase on the bed.

"Where are you going?"

"Atlanta." It came out faster than I expected. "I booked a streaming series. They're shooting for three or four months."

"You didn't mention it at dinner."

"You said there was nothing to talk about until I got something." I made myself shrug. "Now I've got something."

He stepped past me before I could stop him, but he didn't go near the suitcase. He looked at the midnight blue silk on top of it, and he didn't say anything for a long time.

"She wore that to the premiere," he said at last.

"I know."

"I didn't know you'd kept it."

He reached out to touch it, and then he didn't. When he turned around, he studied my face, searching it for the lie.

"Atlanta," he repeated.

"Atlanta."

"Which studio?"

"It's a small production. You wouldn't know it."

He held my gaze for a moment too long. Then his phone buzzed, and he glanced at the screen.

"Call me when you land," he said, and he left.

He had never once asked me to call him.

I spent the next two days in my room, eating alone and rehearsing my lie about Atlanta until I almost believed it. Then, on the morning Hollis had promised, a black car with tinted windows was waiting at the end of our street, where I'd asked him to send it.

Paloma was on the front porch when I came down with my suitcase. She had a coffee in one hand and her phone in the other.

"Atlanta, huh?" She smiled at me over the cup. "Who's casting you in Atlanta?"

"A streaming series."

"Which one?"

"I signed an NDA."

"Of course you did." Her smile didn't move. "Break a leg, Romy."

Margaux was in the kitchen window behind her. She didn't wave, and she didn't look away.

I dragged my suitcase down the street to the corner and got into the car. The driver pulled away, and for the first time in two days I let myself breathe.

I turned around to look at the house one last time.

Paloma was still on the porch with her phone pressed to her ear, watching the car go.

Two blocks later, at the light on Rossmore, a silver Audi pulled out of a side street and slid into the lane behind us.

I knew that car. I had sat in its passenger seat a week ago, going over the plan for our fake wedding.

It was Brice's.