Page 19 of Liars and Liaisons

I’ve never laughed around her.

Violet appears to spend the majority of her time thrift shopping, sowing the earth with varying types of plants, and making the people around her smile. Janus, whom I’ve had tailing her since she left the hotel last week, even caught her giving all the cash in her purse to an apparent unhoused person as she got off the ferry in Aplana Island.

Until I saw the photos of the act, I’d genuinely thought people only did that in movies.

The amount of time I spend thinking about her is becoming a problem.

In fact, the first time my fingers stroke the sacred ivory keys for longer than three seconds, it is as I think about the soft, silken feel of her skin and how her lips felt molding against mine at the gala that night.

How she didn’t really know who was beneath that mask, even if she hoped it was my brother. She still took that chance, gambled for the sake of excitement, and a short tune bursts free from the tips of my fingers as the memory rears its head.

My body has become so unaccustomed to the sound of music at this point that I sit, staring at my hands in denial. For a long time—so long that Arsen knocks on the door and lets me know Priya’s gone back to the city.

It’s late, and I can’t fucking move. Can’t drag my thoughts away from the smoky doe eyes, or the lilt of her voice, or the blush of her naked body.

The longer I sit, the louder the silence becomes. That horrid, haunting melody creeps its way back in, pulsing in the recesses of my brain like the waves after an earthquake.

This time, I ignore it though.

I ignoreeverything. Even my father’s warning from the other day.

I won’t stay away from Violet Artinos.

In fact, I won’t even wait for her to come to me.

I’ll go to her and drag her to Duris if I have to. Drugged or kicking and screaming—I don’t fucking care what I have to do.

Her refusal is no longer an option.

5

“I just don’t understandwhy you won’t come home.”

Dirt embeds beneath my fingernails as my hands curl into the fresh soil. A crick has started to form in the valley between my right shoulder and neck from where I’m cradling my cell phone. Cora’s dog, Laurel—a forty-pound black-and-white pit mix—lies on his stomach a few feet away, watching me with his head on his paws and judgment in his big brown eyes.

Chlorine from the in-ground pool a few feet away fills the air, and I inhale it slowly.

The irony of my mother’s sentiment isn’t lost on me as I desecrate the flower beds outside of the South House, the mansion on the southernmost point of Aplana Island, where Cora lives with her boyfriend.

A year and a half ago, it was me uttering similar confusion to my cousin, who left home to look for her long-lost brother. At the time, I didn’t understand why she couldn’t let the authorities do their job—if I’ve learned anything since leaving North Carolina with nothing but my license and some dollar bills to my name, it’s that they’ll find you if they really want you.

Especially if you owe them something.

I guess that was the problem with her brother, Lucian, though. He didn’t have anything they wanted.

Hearing my mother lament my absence causes a suture to unstitch itself in my heart. The thread loosens one spool at a time, until I’m sitting back on my heels and holding my hand over the organ, praying to a god I haven’t believed in, in years that she’ll stop asking me to come back.

Ican’tgo home. No matter how badly my body aches to.

Not just because my estranged half-brother would follow, the way he’s followed me around my entire life. My mother still doesn’t even know about him, and I certainly don’t want those worlds colliding anytime soon.

There are other reasons. Ones I can’t confide in her even though keeping secrets feels like suffering from a flesh-eating virus. Each lie that slips from my tongue burns on its dismount, and I hate myself a little bit all over again.

“I’ll come home soon, Mom,” I tell her.

It’s the same song and dance I’ve fed her now for years. She doesn’t even call me out on it anymore, and for some reason, that fills me with an unfathomable sadness. A lonely, dull pang echoing in the recesses of my soul.

“I know, dear,” she says, like she really believes it. Her Southern drawl makes my chest feel empty. “We just miss you, is all. I’m stuck here with the boys and your father, and all they want to do is argue about business at the body shop, or they fight over which local basketball team is heading to state tournaments. It’sboring. No one wants to plant flowers with me or sit at the table while I bake and read the engagement announcements in the paper. They don’t even let me half-break HIPAA laws by oversharing about my ER shifts anymore.”

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