Preston opened his eyes.
“I used to park across from Harper’s.”
My mouth went dry.
“What are you talking about?”
“Sometimes.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
He started crying.
“I think I wanted to tell you.”
“You had my number.”
“I know.”
“You could have walked inside.”
“I know.”
“Then why didn’t you?”
His answer was barely audible.
“Because every time I saw you working, I knew exactly what kind of person I was.”
The quad was silent.
He reached inside his jacket.
An agent immediately stepped closer.
Preston raised one hand.
“Paper.”
He slowly removed a folded envelope.
He held it toward the agent.
“My father didn’t just use Claire.”
My father shouted again.
“Preston!”
My brother looked at him.
“You said you’d fix it.”
“I did everything for you!”
“No. You did everything through me.”
He gave the envelope to the agent.
“What is that?” I asked.
Preston looked at me.
“The real Palisade accounts.”
My father stopped struggling.
Completely.
The agent opened the envelope.
Preston continued.
“Palisade wasn’t failing because I was bad at running it.”
He laughed bitterly.
“It was never really mine.”
My mother whispered, “Please.”
“Dad used the company to move money.”
“Stop talking,” my father said.
“From clients. From loans. From relatives.”
“Preston.”
“From Claire.”
One of the agents began speaking quietly into his radio.
My brother wiped his face.
“I signed things too.”
My mother reached toward him.
“You don’t know what you’re saying.”
He stepped away from her.
“I know exactly what I’m saying.”
Then he looked at me.
“There’s something else.”
I didn’t want anything else.
I wanted the sky to split open.
I wanted the ceremony to go backward ten minutes.
I wanted my cap on my head before the slap.
I wanted to be eighteen again with enough knowledge to run.
“What?”
Preston’s mouth opened.
Nothing came out.
The agent beside him said, “Mr. Mercer, you should understand that anything you say—”
“I know.”
He looked at me.
“The psychiatric file wasn’t Mom’s idea.”
I turned toward my mother.
She was shaking violently.
“Then whose?”
Preston looked down.
“Mine.”
The world shifted.
Not metaphorically.
The stage seemed to tilt beneath my shoes.
“What?”
“I found one of Dad’s old client templates.”
“No.”
“I changed the name.”
“No.”
“I copied the clinician information.”
“Stop.”
“I was seventeen too, Claire.”
“You were sixteen.”
“Almost seventeen.”
“That doesn’t make it better!”
“I know!”
His voice cracked through the speakers.
“I KNOW.”
I stepped backward.
My mother began crying harder.
Preston looked like he wanted me to hit him.
Maybe part of me wanted to.
“You made that file?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
His face twisted.
“Because Dad told me if you reported the loans, I’d go to prison.”
The words hung between us.
“He said Palisade would disappear. He said I’d lose everything. He said you were trying to ruin the family.”
“So you made me look insane.”
“Yes.”
“At seventeen.”
“Yes.”
“You wrote that I was dangerous.”
“Yes.”
“You created a document that could have gotten me locked in a psychiatric ward.”
He covered his mouth.
“Yes.”
I turned away from him.
The crowd blurred.
All those years, I had pictured my mother sitting at a desk.
My father dictating.
Adults planning.
Adults conspiring.
It had never occurred to me that a sixteen-year-old boy had typed those words.
My little brother.
The kid I taught to ride a bicycle.
The kid who used to crawl into my bed during thunderstorms.
The kid I defended when Dad called him weak for crying.
My mother suddenly spoke.