Page 160 of Boardroom Mask

I set that aside for now. I haven’t seen her yet in the ten minutes I’ve been standing here, at the shadowy edge of the garden. Various guests have flitted past the window of the brownstone I grew up in, but I didn’t care about any of them.

That is, until I saw my father dancing with Rae.

I almost didn’t recognize him at first. It’s the smile that makes him look so different than the man I spent my whole life terrified of. Is that a mask, too? Or is it what he looks like when he’s finally not wearing one?

His hands, as scarred and gnarled as they are, are cupping Rae’s hip so delicately. You can’t fake that. I wouldn’t say I’m healed, not in any real kind of way, but there is part of me that’s happy for him.

I wasn’t sure I’d come until I was already on the plane. I bought the ticket in the dead of night, packed nothing, and sat in the terminal for hours arguing with myself. The flight was seven hours of the same argument. Throughout customs, the cab ride, all of it, I asked myself again and again,Is this a good idea? Am I fixed enough for this? Will I ruin their lives if I show up again?

I don’t know the answers. Six months in Europe didn’t fix me. I’m not sure six years would, either. The anger isn’t gone. Neither is the guilt.

As for the love?

Fuck only knows what’s happened to that. I can’t be sure until I see her.

And then, without any warning at all, there she is.

The whole journey here, I imagined this moment. I thought angels would play trumpets to announce her re-arrival in my life. But nothing happens. She’s just not there until she is, and when she appears, all the broken, jagged edges of me settle into place. Every thought in my head goes quiet. I can breathe again.

She’s in a deep green dress that hugs her frame. Her hair is down, loose and red against her bare shoulders. Her freckles arebright against tanned skin, spilled cinnamon, constellations on the bridge of her nose. She’s holding a champagne glass in one hand, and her other hand is pressed flat against her thigh like that’s the only way to stop it from shaking.

To say she’s beautiful is to undersell it to a laughable extent. She’s a mirage, an enigma, a vision, a dream.

But she’s also fuckingfake.

The whites of her knuckles tell me everything I need to know. She’s faking her way through it all, laughing loudly, smiling broadly. She’s wearing a mask on a mask on a mask on a mask. Too scared to take off a single damn one of them.

I hurt for her in a way that six months of introspection hasn’t even come close to making sense of. I ache and yearn. Ineed.I want to throw myself at her feet, kiss one of those pretty ankles, and tell her that I’ve dreamed of her every night I’ve been gone.

But that would be selfish. I didn’t come back to tell her about my problems. I came back for another reason entirely.

I came back because, three weeks ago, Matvei called me. I was sitting on the balcony of a rented apartment overlooking the harbor in Monaco. I’d decided to take up smoking cigarettes that week, but they didn’t make me feel any more alive or dead than any of the other vices I’d tried since I left New York.

I braced myself for thehow are you, bro,but Mat skipped right over the pleasantries.

“She still hasn’t gone.”

He didn’t have to say who. He didn’t have to say where. I knew.

He meant that Jillian hadn’t gone to New Jersey. It had been seven months since the initial contact, and she still hadn’t knocked on that door. The adoptive family was still waiting. Her daughter was still waiting. And Jillian was still standing on the wrong side of a chain-link fence, watching other people’s children and going home empty-handed.

I understood why.

She can’t do it alone.

Rae knows now, sure, but she doesn’t knowallof it. Not the way I do. Even though Rae loves Jillian more than anyone on this planet, she can’t stand beside her in that doorway in Montclair and comprehend the full weight of what it costs Jillian to walk through it.

Only I can.

But should I? That was the question I didn’t know how to answer. I’ve spent seven months trying to outrun what I am. I crossed oceans and kept going until I found places where nobody knew my name. I thought I could outrun the man I was and the things that that man had done.

But none of it worked. The fire didn’t burn out like I thought it would.

So I came back. Not for me.

Forher.

The glass door swings open and she steps out. She’s moving fast, stiletto heels punching holes into the soft grass. The green dress shimmers like a woodland nymph and her hair floats off her shoulders in the breeze.