The Girls I've Been(40)

“She’s my sister. Same mom. Different dads.”

“And where’s your dad in all of this?”

“Where’s your dad, Iris?” It’s low. But the game is Truth for Truth, not just All of My Truths for No One Else’s.

“Nora, come on,” Wes says in such a way that has me staring at him as heat crawls across my face. Not out of guilt, but out of the horrible dawning that he knows. He knows whatever there is to know about her dad. She told him, but not me.

I know it makes me the biggest hypocrite in the world, but it hurts in that chest-aching way that only she can squeeze my heart into feeling. The back of my throat burns with tears I’d never dare shed.

“My dad is in Oregon,” Iris says, like it’s a real answer, when we all know it’s not. She’s playing me, and if I can’t take my own game, what does that make me? She’s twisted this into the ultimate dare with the same skill she applies to mending her clothes and raising money for shelter kittens and calculating probable wind patterns in a wildfire.

“I have no idea who or where my dad is,” I say.

“And my dad is an asshole who Nora had to blackmail so he’d stop beating me,” Wes says, and Iris’s eyebrows disappear into her bangs at this information. “Everyone in this room has a fucking asshole for a dad. There’s the truth.”

“So do you just hop around town, doing crimes and conning people?” Iris asks me.

“I’ve never hopped anywhere in my life, thank you very much. And blackmailing the mayor was a . . . coming-out-of-retirement thing.”

“How can you be retired from something you’re actively involved in?”

“I’m not involved in anything,” I say, acutely aware of Wes at my right. He’s looking down at his knees, at where they’re touching Iris’s, at where they’re touching mine. I know without having to ask that he’s trying to weigh his loyalties, because I’m bending the rules.

“You’re not who you say you are. Your mother isn’t dead. You have hitmen scouring the country—maybe the globe—for you. You talked that bank robber out there into handing Lee the little girl like some kind of magician. But you’re not involved in anything? You’re not Nora O’Malley!” Her voice rises too high on my name and I don’t expect it and neither does she, I think; the full-bodied flinch that goes through me when those words come out of her mouth.

“What’s your real name? I know it’s not Ashley Keane.”

My mouth goes dry. I can feel the phantom sting of rubber against my wrist. You’re Rebecca. Snap. You’re Samantha. Snap. You’re Haley. Snap. You’re Katie.

You’re never, ever her. She was to stay locked up inside, somewhere safe, untouched. The only girl who goes untouched. The only girl who remains unknown.

I’ve said the name out loud only once since I left that hotel room in Florida with Lee. I whispered it in Wes’s ear and I’d been scared he’d make it into a weapon, a final blow to the pieces I broke us into. But instead he’d extended the first warped and tattered piece to build the Franken-friends on. He’s always had the grace I find so hard to fake.

Iris has grace, too. I think I shattered some of it today, and maybe too much.

“Right now, I have to be Ashley.”

Her eyes narrow, and for a moment, I mistake it for anger. But when her gaze meets mine, there’s a blazing in it that makes my stomach melt. “You listen to me, whoever you are,” she says. “I will set those assholes out there on fire before I let them take you like some sort of bank robbery consolation prize/human shield.”

“Iris . . .”

“No! You do not get to sigh my name and ruffle your hair and give me sad, sacrificial lamb eyes. You do not waltz into my life and run circles around me until I’m dizzy from you and then leave in the most horrific way possible. And you certainly do not get to serve yourself up to the bank robbers on a shiny platter with an apple in your mouth, roast-pig style.”

My mouth twists with each order she issues, until I’m wound tighter than a corkscrew, and when she calls me out on my plan so easily, I can’t stop myself from snapping, “Why the hell can’t I?”

“Because I love you,” she says, so crisp and sharp that the words will mark me for good and bad and doomed.

The tightness in my chest springs free in a second. “You . . .” And then I can’t say any more. I can’t even breathe. I’m dimly aware that Wes is chuckling next to me, like he knew it all along. Iris stares at me like it’s Truth and Dare entwined. And I guess it is, because that’s what loving her has been for me. I couldn’t deny the truth of it, so I took on the risk.

“Yes,” she says. “I love you, whoever the hell that happens to be. So no more lying. No more secrets. And no more running cons without including both of us.” She waves at Wes, who’s beaming like we don’t have about ten metaphorical anvils hanging over our heads. “Deal?”

It’s a fair deal, if you’re trusting. I’m not, of course. You don’t have to just be taught to trust, you have to grow up in a life with people who are worthy of it. And the tilting ground Mom put me on was not.

But I had to trust Lee. I chose to trust Wes.

And I risked everything to love Iris.