I find a tube of pain cream in the little first-aid kit in my bathroom and do my best to rub it into my shoulder. My phone buzzes repeatedly while I’m covered in pain lotion. Irony: whatever’s in those texts will just cause even more pain.

I need to bathe in nothing but pain cream. Swim in an ocean of it.

Let it swallow me whole.

After washing my hands and taking a few deep breaths, I think about Alice. I stare at myself in the mirror. Red-rimmed eyes. Splotchy complexion. Slightly hunched-in shoulder. Wrinkled and rumpled, I’m nothing much to look at.

But in Alice’s eyes, I was beauty. The light brought me in, made me more real than this world, made her paint me for all eternity.

I have worth.

I do.

Alice said so.

What I don’t have is love.

I walk into the living room, flip on a show, and regroup. The pain in my shoulder is an endless reminder of Silas. I know he didn’t hurt me on purpose. Remorse radiated off him, the apologies genuine. At least there’s that between us: basic human decency.

And Kelly.

Soon, Linda and Kelly will leave. The little sweetie will have to learn to live all her future days without a mommy. Without hers. You can find substitutes. You can have friends. You can even, for a brief and shining moment, have an intimate partner who seems to genuinely care.

But not having a mother leaves a hole no one else can repair. You have to learn to navigate around it for the rest of your life.

If you fall in, the abyss is endless. And it calls you, like a mother whispering your name in the night.

Bzzzz.

My phone. Again. Grudgingly, I pick it up. Texts galore.

Lindsay: Coffee at The Toast. Tomorrow. 1 pm.

Harry: I need you to come to The Grove. Now.

Marshall: You need to come to The Grove.

“I need you all to go to hell. How about we have a meeting in hell? I’ll bring the coffee,” I mutter to myself.

Except for Lindsay. Lindsay’s already been in hell. She doesn’t need a return trip.

I text Harry and Marshall as a group: I’m not leaving my place. If you want a meeting, come here.

Instantly, Harry responds: That would be a security risk.

I reply: For whom?

Blocking his number is so tempting.

Nothing from Marshall. Silence from my father.

I pour myself a glass of wine and try to watch a political drama. Too close for comfort. Instead, I turn to a dystopian fantasy involving fascism. I make it through one episode.

I settle on old improv comedy shows.

One hour and two shows later:

Tap tap tap.

“Jane?” It’s Duff. “Open up.”

I do.

To find my father and Marshall in the doorway.

They walk in like they own the place.

“Good idea to hold the meeting here,” Marshall says to me pleasantly. Harry looks around my apartment as if I live in a slum. Disgust is all over his face.

“I never said you could come now!”

“Best to get this over with,” Harry says, looking me over. “You smell like sports injury cream. What happened?”

“None of your business.”

He looks at Marshall. “Get the injury report from security.”

“It wasn’t–oh, forget it. You could have warned me you were coming over!”

“Security risk,” Harry snaps.

“Your entire life is a security risk!” I lob back.

“Now you’re starting to understand.” Harry sits down on one of the chairs at my dining table. I only have two. Marshall gestures for me to sit, too.

“Why are you here?” I remain standing.

“We need to talk to you about what’s really going on.”

“You think I’m not experiencing reality? Have you looked at the news, lately? I’m real, all right.”

Deep discomfort seeps out of Harry’s pores. “That’s bad enough, but we’re here for other reasons.”

“There’s something worse than having my naked body exposed to the world and the tabloids covered with pictures of Silas and me kissing at The Grove?”

“Yes,” Marshall says without irony. “We know your mother was innocent.”

“You what?”

“And we know you are, too.”

“Okayyyyy....”

“We also know that someone in the inner circle is sabotaging us. And you. It’s someone very, very close.”

My father looks at me. “We’ve narrowed it down to about eight people. You’re not one of them.”

“Gee, thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“But Silas is,” he adds as if he’s ordering a side of bacon with his breakfast.

“Silas? You think Silas is behind all of this? You’re crazy. Legitimately, certifiably crazy.” I start laughing. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to stop.

“Think about it,” Harry says, eyes intense and full of determination. “He knows explosives. You’re tracked by him. He’s your main conduit of information. Drew’s focused on you. I think he’s blinded by loyalty and can’t see Silas for what he might be.”

“Which is?”

“A deep-state operative.”

I can’t stop laughing.

“What about Silas’s sister?” I finally manage to choke out.

Harry’s face tightens. “A junkie who overdosed? What about her?”

“Someone gave Drew an anonymous tip that I was behind her death.”

“What?” Harry looks genuinely shocked. He gives Marshall a displeased look, as if Marshall isn’t doing his job properly. Hope rises deep within me. I want to quash it. There is no way Silas will ever come back to me. None.

I can’t let go, though. Hope springs eternal, right? But killing hope, even if it’s unrealistic, is a kind of soul death I just can’t handle.

“First I’ve heard of it,” Marshall defends, giving Harry an earnest shrug.

“The heroin she took was laced with fentanyl. It killed her quickly. And now my entire life is being ruined–again–by someone telling your security team that I made her die.”

“That’s crazy,” Harry exclaims.

“My entire life is crazy, Harry. Has been since before I was born.” A yearning for my mother rises up in me.

“That’s not true,” he says softly. “We gave you a good life.”

“We? We? We, who? You and my mother? You gave me twenty-four years of nothing but lies!”

“It was the best we could do.”

“STOP SAYING THAT! It’s just another lie! You could have divorced Monica and married my mother!”

“You’re right. I could have. But Monica was pregnant, too. I wasn’t about to leave my wife in that condition.”

“But you’d do it to my mother? You sick, sick bastard.”

“I’m not proud of how I handled everything. But I had a very difficult choice to make.”

“And you chose Monica.”

“Yes. I did.”

“Because you love her more than you loved my mother.”

“No. That isn’t true.”

“Then why?”

“That is personal.”

“We’re talking about my life here! You can’t claim it’s personal when your decision changed the course of my entire life!” I challenge.

“I can, and I am.”

“What are you hiding? What makes you use people like this? Only someone with a disturbing secret would manipulate so desperately. What is it? What did you do?”

If Harry could flip the dining table, he would.

Instead, he stands, visibly shaken, running an angry hand through his hair. I can’t look away, watching every move, trying to find myself in his gestures, his features, his emotional reactions.

“I’m only here to protect you. Drew told me you threatened to stop allowing the protection we provide. You can’t do that,” he tells me.

“Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do. I don’t need you anymore. Alice’s estate means I’m independent financially.”

“That will take months, maybe a year, to trickle in to you.”

“I don’t care. I’m done taking ‘help’ from someone who doesn’t believe me.”

“I do believe you. I said so.”

“If you believe I’m innocent, and you also believe someone in your inner circle is sabotaging you, you’re missing the obvious.” I want to say her name. I do. I’m about to, just as Harry’s phone buzzes. He looks at it.

Abruptly, he leaves. Just like that. Poof! My front door shuts with an efficient click.

“Jane,” Marshall says, his voice surprisingly casual and kind. “I know this is hard.”

“For someone whose entire job is to spin, you are doing a bad job of it right now.”

“How about I take off my spin suit and we’ll just speak in blunt truths. Off the record.”

“My entire life has been off the record, Marshall. Go for it.”

“Your father loved Anya. Deeply. But he loved becoming president more.”

“And he chose Monica because divorcing a pregnant wife for his pregnant lover would have ruined his political career?”

“Yes. But it’s deeper than that.”

“How?”

“Monica is... ambitious.” He clears his throat, a pink flush mottling his neck. Marshall is fair in the way of Irish men, with skin flushes and thinning blond hair. He looks at me as if I’m supposed to decode his nonverbal signals to find some unspoken truth.

“Hard not to notice.”

“And becoming president is all about building the right team. Making compromises to move up. Leveraging assets and relationships. Knowing when to be tough and when to back off. People have those skills–they’re innate. You have them or you don’t. And Anya didn’t. She loved Harry for who he is. Wanted a quiet life with him. Was holding out for that. She didn’t understand.”

“You mean she wasn’t a predatory, power-hungry bitch like Monica.”

“Yes.”

“You weren’t kidding about the blunt part.”

“I never kid when it comes to work,” he says with a pointed smile.

“It really comes down to that? Monica was a better fit when it came to rising up the political ladder to become president? She was more of an asset as potential first lady?”

“That is a very watered-down version. I’d go much further. She has made Harry. He would be a state rep piddling away with quid pro quo contracts and private corporate payoffs if she hadn’t worked tirelessly to get him into the U.S. Senate.”

“Why?”

“She wants to be first lady.”

“But why?”

“I don’t know. I know very little about her. She’s not the friendliest of people.”

“Where is she from? What’s her history?” It dawns on me that I’ve never asked this question before. I need to research her. Dig into her past. Understand more about her, because it turns out she’s my enemy. Has been since I was conceived.

And I had no idea.

All these years.

“Why are you telling me this? Why now?”

“Because you know. We know.”

“Did you know I was Harry’s daughter before all this?”

“No. Rumors abounded. But the blood test confirmed it.”

“Why did you make me go through that awful medical exam? You could have just asked for my blood.”

“Orders from a different agency.” He shrugs, as if that violation I faced were just another bureaucratic procedure.

“There are a lot of orders about me. Anonymous tips about me. But where is the evidence I’ve done anything wrong?”

“None exists. Trust me, we’ve looked.”

“If Harry knew all along I was his biological daughter, why has he consistently tormented me like this? What kind of father orders a medical exam like that one?”

“It wasn’t Harry who ordered it. Like I said, an agency. Acting on a tip.”

“A tip.”

We stare at each other, neither willing to break first.

“Marshall,” I finally say, “there’s a reason you’re telling me so much about Monica, isn’t there?”

“Yes.”

“Oh.” All the air in me runs away.

“Be careful, Jane. Be very, very careful.” He slides a small box across the table. It’s black molded plastic, the size of a laptop. As I touch it, the edge feels cold and unyielding.

I look at him, puzzled. He lifts one finger to his lips in a shhhhh gesture.

And with that, he stands up, plucks a pink peony from my vase, swallows the rest of his glass of water and gives me a somber nod good-bye.

“But I–”

My door snaps shut on my words. I jump up to click over the deadbolt. Duff is out there, so it’s just a precaution, but one he’s drilled into me.

I practically sprint back to the table and look at the black case. It has thick click-locks on it. I pop all three sides and open it.

It’s a gun.

Tiny, with two boxes of ammunition. I’ve been to firing ranges before. Mom taught me how to shoot when I was a teenager. We always had a gun in a locked box, ammo stored separately, for home invasion protection.

But this? This is different.

Marshall has given me a gun.

The man acting on behalf of my father, Senator Harwell Bosworth, candidate for president of the United States, has given me a mysterious firearm after warning me about the future first lady.

Talk about blunt.