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I should go upstairs, change and go to sleep.

Instead I drift through the living room, looking at his shelves now that no one is watching me look.

The books are real. The photo frames aren't staged. The art is too restrained to be decorative in the usual billionaire way. Everything feels chosen and Everett is too particular to let anyone make those decisions for him.

My eyes catch on a smaller silver frame half-hidden behind a row of books. A woman and a little boy.

She's beautiful in a hard, polished way. Dark hair. Sharp cheekbones. A smile that looks like it was put on for the camera and removed the second it was done.

The boy beside her is maybe eight, and a neat shirt, perfectly combed hair. Standing straight without a smile as if he’s not sure if he is supposed to.

"That's your mother," I say.

Everett doesn't move from the island.

"Yes."

I pick up the frame carefully.

"You look like her."

"I've been told."

I turn to face him.

He's watching me from across the room, glass in hand, expression unreadable in the low light.

"You don't have any other photos of her," I say, glancing around the room in case I missed something.

"No."

"But you kept this one? Is she coming tomorrow?"

"I didn’t invite her."

He looks at the glass in his hand, turning it once, the amber swirling around the glass and catching the light.

"Is there a reason why you didn’t?" I ask.

He doesn't answer right away. Instead his eyes stay on his drink as if he’s calculating how much he should tell me. How much he should let me in. How much explanation of his life his soon-to-be fake wife deserves to know.

"She got a payout," he says. "When the trust finalized. Multi-millions for raising me through college. That was supposed to be the end of it."

"Have you spoken to her since?"

He nods. "She called every month after. Not to ask how I was. Not to ask about the company. Not to ask whether I was sleeping or eating or managing." His jaw tightens as if the memory is painful. "To tell me my father was a stingy billionaire and she deserved more money."

I don't breathe.

"Every call was the same," he says. "What she was owed. What she sacrificed. What she gave up." He sets the glass down. "She never once asked me a single question about my life."

The room feels cold all of the sudden and the distance between us feels too far. I can’t imagine having a mother who only acted as a surrogate.

"She saw me as a paycheck," he says. "The same way she saw my father. A transaction that didn't pay out the way she planned though the contract was black and white. She was given a million dollar a year stipend that afforded every luxury item she wanted to keep up the Kauffman lifestyle, and a million dollar a year bonus up to the year I graduated."

I set the frame back down very carefully.

"My mother drove through a storm to pick me up from an art show," I say quietly. "And your mother called to complain about her twenty-two million dollar bonus."