TWO MONTHS LATER

Like I have two names, I have two birthdays.

Clara’s—printed on a fake ID I bought years ago—is sometime in November, and really, I only use it when a clerk talks me into signing up for a rewards program at a store so I can save forty cents. I don’t need a birthday for any other reason. Joe pays me in cash. Before him, Bryan at the restaurant did. And before Bryan, there was Lisa at the salon where I worked as an assistant in Chicago, rinsing foils and prepping clients for blow outs. Any landlord I ever had never cared so long as I paid six months of rent upfront.

It’s not that I’m hiding from anyone. It’s more that I’m hiding from myself, or who I used to be.

But today, it’s Parker’s birthday. That doesn’t mean much either. No one has wished me a happy birthday since I turned seventeen. That was Fitz.

He also happens to be the first—and likely the only—person to say it to me today.

FITZY

Happy birthday, Montgomery.

I rub the sleep from my eyes as I type a response.

I can’t believe you remembered.

Fitzy

Nothing about you is so easy to forget.

I roll my eyes, pushing up on my elbows and scrolling upward in my thread with Fitz. It’s a long list of I’m sorry and I didn’t mean to offend you, I just wanted to help that began to come in two days after the Super Bowl.

I was over it. But I left him on read for three days to mess with him. And since then, it’s been a soft back-and-forth once a week or so.

Fitzy

I want to send you something. Can have it delivered later this morning if you give me your address.

Depends on what you’re sending.

Fitzy

Depends on how big your freezer is.

I call him.

“I thought it was your birthday, not mine. What a gift.”

After sliding out of bed, I stretch as best as I can with the phone still to my ear. “What does my freezer have to do with what you’re sending? Is it a body? Because I doubt I’d get a presidential pardon. Dad would send me right to prison.”

The thought of calling my family for anything—let alone help—is laughable, and Fitz agrees, chuckling. “No. But I’ve missed a lot of birthdays and a lot of cookie cakes. Did you know they still make those? The kind Honey used to buy.”

Anything Honey produced in the kitchen should’ve been discarded in a hazardous waste bin, so I never minded her outsourcing my birthday cakes. In fact, the cookie cakes she bought from the grocery store bakery were always my favorite.

“I didn’t.”

“It’s hard to buy thirteen. Apparently you need to order in advance,” Fitz informs me. “I charmed the lady into giving me all twelve. So I owe you one.”

The sleep disappears from my eyes. “Fitz…”

“I’m the body,” he says. “The body bringing you cake. Or cakes. I’m in Atlanta. Landed earlier this morning. Have a charity golf thing tomorrow in Buckhead, but I wanted to come today because?—”

“It’s my birthday.”

There’s a soft moment of silence.

“I feel awful about everything. I don’t want you to think I’ve become a big-shot football player and an asshole.”

I smooth out the wrinkles of my duvet. “Who said you were a big-shot football player?” I tease. He doesn’t say anything, and I worry the call dropped. “Fitz? Are you there?”

I’m about to hang up before his voice returns. “Yeah. Sorry. I was just making sure you’d miss me if I was gone.”

I snort even though I walked into that one.

Fitz takes a deep breath. “I asked for a day. Just one. I don’t get down here very often and?—”

“Fine,” I tell him. It’s Sunday, which means I should be heading out to the barn. But that muffler finally kicked the bucket, and until I have the cash for a new one, I’m going nowhere I can’t walk to beyond work for a shift. But I don’t need Fitz coming here . “Where should I meet you?”

“I have a rental. I’ll pick you up.”

“No.” I insist. “I’ll come to you.”

He sighs. “Parker, I wasn’t kidding about the cakes.” It’s only now that I make out what the background noise is. He must’ve gotten a broken cart at the grocery store. “Text me your address. I’ll see you in an hour and a half. Gotta drop my stuff at the hotel.”

I do and then throw my phone down and sprint to the bathroom. Today, there isn’t time to futz. I brush my teeth while showering, down my coffee after I pull a long-sleeved, fitted white t-shirt over my head, and slip on some dark-washed jeans that are so old they’ve grown unintentionally trendy holes in the knees.

I’m looking for my other black boot when I spot it peeking out from beneath the bed, and I drop to the floor. The leather shoe nudges against something.

It’s not that I forgot the box is under there. I just choose not to think about it as much as possible. Because the moment I do, I can’t not run my fingers across the tin lid and pry it open like I do right now, even though I don’t have time to let my fingers sift through the papers of one part of memory lane I’m so desperate to forget but can’t seem to let go of.

I’m always surprised by the weight of the tin box. But I shouldn’t be. My past is pretty heavy.

It takes a little effort to free the lid. Only papers are inside, mostly torn scraps and napkins, the only things I could get my hands on while at Horizons.

But there’s another thing too.

I lift the folded article I tore from a newspaper in a coffee shop nearly a decade ago, announcing Fitz’s declaring for the League’s draft.

ALL RHODES LEAD TO THE AMERICAN DREAM.

I bring my attention to the shading on Fitz’s face in the black-and-white photo taken so many years ago. But the aging of the paper doesn’t hide the solo dimple on Fitz’s right cheek. I don’t know why I was so relieved to see it still on his face that night at the club. It’s not like you can grow out of a dimple. And though he’s far from the teenage boy I left behind, as a man, Fitz unknowingly was a long, lost time capsule filled with familiarity, warmth, and comfort. Just a minute-long hug and I felt home . I felt like nothing changed, like nothing happened.

It was nice while it lasted, I suppose.

I return the article to the box, catching sight of a chapter of my story written on a napkin I had taken from the cafeteria.

“Dear Fitzy,” I begin to read, my normally easy-to-read writing nearly chicken scratch. But that’s what happens when you write on a napkin. That’s what happens when you write in the dark. “Today I’ve been gone 44 days.”

I won’t read further. I don’t need to. I carry these words and memories with me all the time. And the words on the napkins, the scraps of paper I had to steal, they were never for me anyway. They were meant for the only person in the world who would believe me.

I jump when the doorbell rings and quickly slide the box under my bed. Fitz said he needed an hour. It’s been just over thirty minutes, and not even thirty seconds after the bell rang, it rings again.

I creep to the peephole and then fling myself to the side of the door, trying not to jump when the guy on the other side with the radio wire curling out of his ear knocks.

“No answer, ma’am.”

My lip stings from how hard I bite it.

“Parker.” Knock, knock. “Open the door, please.”

My sister sounds the same but so different, as if the door buffering her voice brings me to a different time and place—back to when we were kids, and Madeline would call me in for dinner from the back deck while I was out playing with Fitz. Like now, I’d pretend not to hear her, desperate for just five more minutes. Even though the sun was setting and I knew dinner was on the table, I always wanted five more minutes.

Five more minutes to be pirates, soldiers, Peter Pan’s lost boys, to be rebels with Fitz.

“Parker.”

Against my better judgment, I undo my locks and open the door.

“I do have a phone.”

Madeline lets out a small huff. “You changed the number.”

I raise an eyebrow and eye her entourage. Not one but two Secret Service agents accompany her, as if Madeline deciding to visit her sister is a dangerous trek. “Has that stopped you before?”

I’ve heard from my sister on and off in the last few years of my father’s first presidential term. But I haven’t seen her in over five years when she tracked me down in Chicago and cornered me at work.

“Well, this isn’t exactly a phone type of conversation.”

“Oh. It’s a middle-of-my-hallway conversation then?”

“We need to talk, Parker. Come with me.”

“Like the three other times I’ve seen you in the last thirteen years, I don’t have much to say. Now get out of here before someone sees you.” I go to close the door, but Madeline stops me.

“Parker, I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t important.”

That doesn’t equate to if you weren’t important , I remind myself. Madeline wants something.

“It’s a bad time,” I tell her. “I have plans.”

Madeline doesn’t budge.

“Fine,” I say. “ You can come in for five minutes. I’m not going anywhere with you. If you have something to say to me”— like happy fucking birthday —“you can come in, say it, and go.”

“It’s not me ,” my sister tells me. “It’s Mom.”

Any other daughter might have the gut reaction to ask Is Mom okay? What happened? But I’m not any kind of daughter. Plus, I figure if the First Lady dropped dead, I would’ve heard about it by now.

“Tell me where to go,” I say. “And I’ll take an Uber.”

Madeline shakes her head. “You’ll ride with me.”

My eyes flit to the Secret Service agents.

“For god’s sake, Parker,” Madeline huffs. “If we wanted to kidnap you, I wouldn’t do it in broad day light.”

“I know. Last time it was the dead of night.”

My sister rolls her eyes and doesn’t budge. I know she won’t leave unless it’s with me.

“I need to be back in an hour,” I tell her. “Someone is expecting me.”

I say this because it’s true, and because I want her to know someone is expecting me to come back this time.

* * *

“Ma’am, would you mind spreading your legs?”

“I very well would mind,” I snap.

I’m not sure what I’m more annoyed about—the fact that I’ve been called ma’am two dozen times in ten minutes or that this female agent has the audacity to ask to frisk me.

I turn to Madeline. “You already made me leave my phone in the car. Is the pat down necessary?”

We both fling our heads to the double doors when they open.

“Oh, for god’s sake. Just let her in.”

Miss. Congeniality backs off at my mother’s order. It doesn’t even matter that she’s First Lady. Candice Montgomery could get a pit bull to drop a lamb chop with a simple, well-to-do scolding.

“Come in, darling.”

I wince.

Madeline enters the suite before me and sits on a couch. She motions for me to join her, but I don’t want to, which is wild considering there used to be a time when I was so in love with Madeline that I’d call for her in the middle of the night if I were scared of a sweeping shadow.

“Maddy!”

The shriek I hear in my head—the way my own voice pierces my ears—is different though. When I screamed her name like that , I wasn’t seven and afraid of a ghost. I was seventeen and afraid for my life .

Inside my boots, I curl my toes, trying to anchor myself into the plush carpet, as my eyes flit around the suite. The decor here reminds me of my mother, of the two grand sitting rooms in Captain’s Cottage I was only allowed in when invited. More often than not, it was for an interview.

Parker, what’s something you want America to know about your father?

My answer as a kid is far different than my answer now.

He’s a monster.

And if they asked me now about my mother?

She’s even worse.

I eye the fresh flowers on the coffee table. There’s another vase on the sideboard by the dining table. And another in the corner. Lilies have always been my mother’s favorite. It doesn’t surprise me to find them wherever she is.

“Who died?”

It’s a question Honey would never miss the opportunity to ask. Anytime she walked into a room at Captain’s Cottage and found a vase of lilies, she’d ask why my mother was so keen on turning the house into a funeral parlor. Honey never hid her distaste for anyone, not these kinds of flowers or her daughter-in-law.

“You’ve always looked like your grandmother. I see now you’re taking after her too,” Mom sneers before drifting her eyes up and down my body. “Though, I guess style-wise, you continue to be the captain of your own ship.”

I look down at my jeans. “I can’t stay very long, so go ahead and tell me why you made me come here.”

“Made you?” Mom laughs. “What goes on in that head of yours, Parker? No one forced you here. No one is holding you against your will.”

“You have before,” I remind her.

That’s the reason I’m here, looking at the woman I know is my mother, but who feels like the furthest thing from it.

“This is nothing but your own doing, Parker. You got yourself here. If you had just”—Mom twists her mouth in frustration—“if you had just...”

Followed the program.

Trusted the process.

Stopped fighting it.

These were all things that were repeatedly said to me over the course of my time at Horizons. The promise of home would be dangled in front of my face, like it was something I had to earn instead of my right.

I often think of my bedroom in Captain’s Cottage. After all these years, I’m still able to see it so clearly—the pale blue duvet, the striped sham pillows, the collection of trophies I earned from horseback riding. But what I really wonder about is how I left those things.

The duvet was tangled at the foot of the bed.

The pillowcase had been torn by my teeth as I fought against it pressed to my mouth.

The trophy I grabbed to use as a weapon fell to the hardwood floor.

There’s no doubt that when morning came, the duvet was straightened, the pillowcase changed, and the trophy put back in its place as if it had never moved. As if nothing had ever happened. As if I had never been there.

“Madeline, would you give Parker her present? Did you think I forgot your birthday? Never. Forty-six hours of labor, and you were born feet first. Twisted yourself the wrong way trying to find your way out.” Mom smiles tersely.

Madeline lifts a leather folder from the coffee table.

“Whatever it is, I don’t want it,” I warn them.

Mom sighs. “It’s already yours . It’s just been under our care,” she clarifies before opening the folder. “There’s five million dollars in a trust that’s available to you on your thirtieth birthday.”

I freeze and stare at the folder.

“Subject to,” Mom continues, but I’m quick to interrupt her.

“Don’t tell me. You’re going to say it’s subject to me being of sound mind and body, and then you’re going to tell a court I’m crazy and deny me my lawfully willed inheritance.”

Mom rolls her eyes. “You’ve been watching too much TV. No, Parker. The trust is yours as of today following a significant life event .”

“A significant life event?”

Madeline lifts the white ceramic teapot and pouring a cup. “Marriage. Or a baby.”

I can smell the chamomile. A better herb of choice would’ve been a hunk of sage I can burn in their faces.

“Since it’s an election year,” Mom continues, “we thought we might politely suggest you entertain the idea of courting one of Washington’s most promising. Camden Holdings.”

My eyes widen. “Cam Holdings? That douchebag from high school?”

“Camden Holdings is a congressman and will run for senate in a few years. Just like your father.”

“Also a douchebag,” I snap. “What makes you think I want anything to do with a guy like Dad? And what makes you think Cam would want anything to do with me?”

Mom presses her lips together. “Because you’re a Montgomery.”

That’s clearly the answer to both of my questions.

I point at the folder. “Is there anything in here that mentions you having to choose the person involved in said significant life event ?”

“No. There aren’t any tricks here, Parker. You can show that to any attorney, and they’ll tell you the exact same thing I am. Within thirty days of filing your marriage license with the court, the trust will be transferred to you.”

“Then why do I have to listen to you about Camden?” I reach forward and take the folder. “I can’t imagine you’re worried about the family’s political legacy ending.” I point at Madeline. “She’ll probably be attorney general one day after she’s done working for Dad. You didn’t exactly send her to Yale Law to be his secretary?—”

“I’m the White House Chief of Staff,” Madeline barks.

I plant a smug smile on my face. “Like I said. A secretary .”

“You know what, Parker?—”

“Oh, enough!”

“For once, Mom, you and I agree. Thanks for this.” I hold the folder up. “I’m sure I can find an attorney who can take care of everything for me.”

Madeline rolls her eyes. “Shouldn’t you start with a husband first? Or, at the very least, a boyfriend.”

I turn my head. “Who says I don’t have someone already?”

“Do you?” Mom asks.

“I’m seeing someone,” I lie. “And I’m sure you’ll be happy to know that he’s the furthest thing from a congressman.”

In my mind, I conjure up a biker with sleeves of tattoos who never wears a helmet and smokes Marlboro Reds, a guy who believes in government conspiracies and puts his elbows on the table and wipes his face with the back of his hand.

“Did you stop and think about why I was suggesting Camden Holdings?”

“You could suggest Big Bird for all I care,” I tell her. “It doesn’t matter.”

Mom smiles. “Oh, Parker, but it does. Because there’s something else I know you want that isn’t in that folder. But if you’re going to get it, you’ll need to get with the program. Sit down, there’s a lot to fill you in on. After all”—she takes a sip of her of her tea—“it’s an election year.”