Page 111 of Gilded Fake

“Would’ve been nice if it wasn’t everyone,” I mutter.

“If we visited, someone at school might have found out,” Everleigh adds. “We had to distance ourselves so people wouldn’t think we were like you. You know how it is.”

I look from one of them to the other, then shake my head. “I do know,” I agree. “But I also know the Dolces and their friends were all gone for your senior year, so the only real consequence of being associated with me was a hit to your reputation.”

“That’s important,” Eleanor cries.

“I say this in the gentlest way possible: You should really get therapy.”

A beautiful sound fills the air seconds before a shimmering, custom green ’69 Boss Mustang turns into the lot, and my heart stops beating. For one terrible second, I’m sure this is why my sisters are here, to stall me, to make me witness whatever torment they’ve concocted for me next. It will never be over.

June Bug glides to a stop at the curb in front of us, and the driver’s side door swings open. We all wait, not breathing, until the driver steps out.

“Colt,” I gasp, nearly choking on the word.

“Let’s go, Butterfly,” he says, cracking a grin.

“How—you said—”

“I said she went to auction,” he says, tapping his knuckles gently on the roof. “Didn’t say who bought her.”

“You bought my car?” I ask, my eyes swimming with tears. Of all the things he’s done for me in the past year, visiting every week, bringing me coffee and bubble tea and root beer floats, walking with me in the gardens, he never told me he did this.

“Surprise,” he says, looking all smug and proud of himself.

I laugh and wipe at the tears blurring my vision, wanting to see her clearly in all her glory, the dent in the hood gone, her whole sleek, sexy shape as good as new. Then I turn to my sisters. “So this is why you’re here? To make amends, because you heard I landed a Darling?”

“No,” Eleanor protests, her cheeks reddening as she glances desperately at her twin for help.

“We’re sorry, you know,” Everleigh says. “I don’t even know why we were fighting. It was all so high school, wasn’t it?”

“Totally,” Eleanor says with a nervous giggle.

“Right?” I ask, drawing the word out and mimicking their tone. “Like, how totally lame. Remember that time my own sisters fucked my boyfriend for clout, turned their backs on me when our brother died, and laughed in my face when I was forced to sit on the floor like a dog and eat lunch out of the hands of our rapists? What a silly goofy family we were!”

“That’s not fair! We had—”

I slide into the passenger seat and close the door on her words. Harper says that we should forgive for ourselves, not the person who hurt us, so we don’t have to carry the burden of our anger for the rest of our lives. I say if I’m going to do the work to forgive someone, they need to be worth the effort. And some people just aren’t.

Colt slides into the driver’s seat and shifts into gear, and we pull out of the lot and away from Cedar Crest, leaving my sisters behind. I’m ready to leave behind the last year too, and all the ones before it.

Right after the baby came, Harper flew back from college and came to see me over Labor Day. She sat beside the bed and held my hand while Colt slept wedged into the hospital bed behind me.

“Did you see the baby?” she asked.

I cried harder, and she didn’t press the issue.

I didn’t want to tell her that I’d seen it, that I had to know, so I asked Colt to wheel me down and look through the glass into the nursery. I prayed it would have a dark complexion, but not olive, and maybe there would be hope for it. I stared through the glass at it for a long time. It seemed impossible that a whole person with fingernails and eyelashes could have come from my body. I knew which one it was despite the name on the basinet that didn’t belong to me.

Colt said nothing, asked nothing, offered nothing. I was grateful. I didn’t have it in me to answer questions or even to fall apart. I knew then that I’d made the right choice because I felt nothing but horror when I looked at that foreign creature, a terrible potential lurking inside a tiny, vulnerable body, ready to break out and unleash its evil upon the world. I left it with a prayer that it wouldn’t become a monster like its father.

Sometimes, I still feel guilty for not warning the nice, unsuspecting couple.

“Where to, Butterfly?” Colt asks, snapping me out of my memories.

“Anywhere but here,” I say, twisting the dial on the radio.

“I owe you a night under the stars,” he says. “How about we grab a couple root beer floats and head up to the quarry?”

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