The Comeback(73)

“Gracie, I know that you ended up in the hospital. After you . . . overdosed,” Emilia says softly, embarrassed for me. “Able told me about your . . . issues with your mental health. I knew they were working you too hard and I felt so guilty for not having said so at the time.”

I don’t know why I’m so surprised by her words. I’ve never owned my own story.

“We actually sent a gift basket when we heard . . . Did you get it?” she asks now urgently.

“I never went back to the house in Venice,” I say, my voice strange sounding.

“Oh, darling, I’ve upset you,” Emilia says, looking stricken herself but recovering quickly because she doesn’t like to think about sad things for too long. “You’ve come so far since then, it really is so incredible to see.”

I stare at a framed photo on their wall that wasn’t up last time I was here. It’s a picture of Able standing in between two beautiful chestnut horses with Silver and Ophelia sitting proudly on top in full dressage outfits.

“You’re angry at Able,” she says then, and I feel instantly dizzy, unspooled by the unexpected accuracy of her words. “I realized it when Camila asked you about him the other day. He hurt you.”

I swallow hard because now that the moment is here, my throat feels as if it’s closing up.

“You know there was a time when I was jealous of you. You and Able always had that connection that nobody else could get near. Not that I’d have even wanted to be involved, it wouldn’t have been healthy. It just seemed unfathomable to me that there was this huge, important part of his life that I couldn’t be a part of,” Emilia says, thoughtfully. I study the chipped black nail polish on my hands, trying to shield myself from her words. The light behind Emilia warps slightly as she struggles for the right words.

“What I’m trying to say is that sometimes we forget that we can never really know someone else, you know, all of them. And that’s okay, we’re all allowed our secrets, but it does mean that occasionally we mistake our own perspective, our own narrative, for theirs. All it took was Able explaining that he saw you like a daughter and that you were the one who asked him to guide you, to nurture your talent where your parents couldn’t seem to, like his grandmother did for him all those years ago, and my jealousy just . . . shifted.”

I swallow, unable to meet Emilia’s eyes as her words float into me instead, settling in even the darkest places I’ve worked so hard to protect. I search for some secret subtext in them but all I hear is that Emilia has no idea about anything that happened to me. She has no clue who I really am at all, and how could she when Able had already started his campaign against me years ago?

“Anyway, I didn’t want to make this about me, but maybe you should talk to Able, see what he has to say. He will have his reasons for whatever happened between the two of you after Lights. You just might not have been able to understand them at the time.”

I nod, slowly.

“We were, close, you know,” I start, my heart hammering in my chest. “Able and I. We were always close.”

“Of course you were, anybody could see that. I don’t think you could have done the work you did if you weren’t,” Emilia says, then she stops abruptly and something in her face changes.

“What are you saying, Grace?” she asks, and I swallow hard, understanding that this is my final chance to tell her what happened while still protecting myself. To brush over it now would be to deliberately lie to her for the first time, and if the truth ever came out, we would both always remember the moment in her kitchen when she left me room to tell her my story.

Emilia’s pale eyes hold mine as I think of everything I could say, both now and onstage at the IFAs, how even if I somehow managed to say the right words out loud, each one would only ever bind me tighter to Able. When I think about him, it’s as if I’m being dragged back down to my knees, only this time I’m pulling everyone around me down with me. For the first time since we met, I am the one with the power to threaten his happiness, but the power is all wrapped up in that threat, and as soon as I actually say the words, that power will be released into the world for others to claim, fight over, apportion blame. After that, I would never be anything more than Able’s victim, to the rest of the world too.

I think about another type of revenge—the quieter, less explosive kind I could inflict just by living my life in spite of him. And what could be more galling for Able than watching me become happier, more successful without him? To know that I always held the power, I just never believed I could do anything without him. I could work again, maybe even on Anatopia, and this time it would be without any of Able’s conditions. Maybe I could learn to relax around Emilia, could learn to accept some of her small acts of kindness toward me, and maybe the way Dylan occasionally still looks at me, as if I am someone good and important, wouldn’t have to change beyond recognition.

“Nothing,” I say after a moment. “Just that maybe it’s too soon. I’m not sure I’m ready to be back in public just yet.”

Emilia nods without meeting my eyes, and I’m relieved when she changes the subject after that, telling me that Silver has been begging her for a retired greyhound for Christmas. She turns away from me as she talks, changing the water of a vase of exotic, fleshy flowers that have wilted in the heat. This is enough, I tell myself as I pick up a fallen petal from the table, scrunching it up in my hand until it’s unrecognizable. This has to be enough.