I stopped when my eyes fell on a familiar name.

Kline.

It was an oddly formatted stack of papers, covered in plastic. Eli muttered something about tossing the condom and folded out of the car, but I kept on reading.

RULE 202 PROCEEDINGS IN AID OF

INVESTIGATION OF CLAIMS AGAINST KLINE INC.

Oral deposition of Florence Carolina Kline.

I turned the page. APPEARANCES, the new header read. FOR HARKNESS LP, ELI KILLGORE. I turned another, and another, and then more, until the text resembled something like a movie script. A list of Qs and As.

Q. Very well. And, Dr. Kline, when did you first meet the founders of Harkness?

A. I don’t see why this matters.

Q. Could you please answer anyway?

A. I’m not sure I remember. I probably met them all at different times, anyway.

Q. As far as you can recall?

A. I guess I first met Dr. Oka when she interviewed to become a postdoc in my lab, about twelve years ago. It would have been a phone call, because at the time she lived in Ithaca, and then we met in person when she moved to work with me. I believe I met Conor Harkness around the same time, when he enrolled in the PhD program at UT.

Q. You taught at UT at the time?

A. Correct.

Q. And Eli Killgore?

A. He was the last to arrive, so I must have met him . . .

Q. About a year later?

A. Yes, that sounds correct.

Q. Is it correct to say that you served as a mentor to all three of them?

A. Yes, it is.

“Rue?”

I looked up from the file. Eli was back inside the car.

“What is this?” I asked him.

His eyes fell on the papers in my hands. On the page to which they were open. “Fuck, Rue.”

“It was in your glove compartment.”

“Shit.” He sighed and ran a hand down his face.

“Shit.” “Eli, what is this?”

“It’s a deposition.”

“When was Florence deposed ?” I asked—then realized I could find out on my own. I checked the date on the front page and gasped. About two weeks ago. “Journal club. The day you were at Kline, and I . . .” I shook my head, incapable of making sense of anything. “Who—who gave you the right to depose her?”

He massaged his eyes. “State court. There were irregularities in the documents she turned over, and we asked for an oral—”

“It says here that she knew you, before. Ten years ago. Is it true?”

He hesitated. “Rue.” His tone was gentle. “It’s a legal deposition. She was under oath.”

“But she told me . . .” I shook my head, feeling as though the planet were spinning too fast for me. “Today she told me that . . .”

Eli’s expression softened. Pity, I thought. That’s what it was. “Let’s discuss this at home. I didn’t want you to find out this way. This is a very complicated—”

“No. No, I—Florence lied to me.” My eyes burned, and my chest was on fire. “And you—why didn’t you . . . Why did no one . . .” I shook my head and opened the door of the car.

Eli’s hand closed around my wrist. “Rue, wait—”

“No. I—no.” I freed my hand and wiped my cheek. My palm was fully dry. “I don’t want to—I’m sick of this. Do not follow me, or I swear to god—”

“Rue, let me—”

I got out of the car and let my fury swallow me.

26

TAKE STOCK OF YOUR SHITTY, SOLITARY LIFE

RUE

On Tuesday morning I called in, saying that I didn’t feel well and I’d work from home.

Tisha texted me at 9:00 a.m. (You okay? Also, did I lose Diego’s house keys in your car?) and I replied, Yes, and yes.

Florence texted me at noon (Hope you feel better soon), and I did not reply at all.

She was my friend, and I wasn’t going to write her off for lying to me. After all, I was a liar, too. I’d lied to Florence about Eli for weeks, even after she’d given me multiple opportunities to come clean, and I’d felt like shit every time. I’d had my reasons, and it was entirely possible that Florence had hers.

But I needed to understand what exactly she’d lied about. And it was obvious that both she and Eli had withheld the truth from me, and that neither of them could be trusted on this matter. It left me with limited options.

I decided not to bring Tisha into this until I had a complete picture, which meant that it would have to live exclusively in my head for a while. I had breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Wrote what felt like thousands of work emails. Worked on my patent’s paperwork. Noticed that some of my seedlings had germinated, and transplanted them into the hydroponic system, taking care to submerge the fragile roots with nutrients.

Then, around 7:00 p.m., there was a knock at the door. The super, I thought, checking on my AC vents like I’d asked. But a last-minute instinct prodded me to look through the peephole.

My brother was pacing outside my door, a stack of papers rolled up in his hand.

I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and stepped back as quietly as possible, ready to pretend not to be home.

“Goddammit, Rue, open the door. I know you’re in there.”

I covered my mouth and sank into a chair.

It was okay. The security chain was on. He was going to leave soon.

“Your new doorman told me you’re home.”

Shit. A new doorman. Had I known about him? No. I remembered no notices.

“We can make this as easy or as hard as you want, Rue, but I am going to be here until you agree to do this.”

I pushed the heels of my hands into my eyes, determined to stay quiet. But when Vince spoke again, his tone was much softer. Suddenly I was ten again, and he was seven. We hadn’t seen Mom in days. He’d been crying for hours, and all I wanted was to make him feel better.

“Rue, please. You know I love you and I don’t want to be doing this. But you’re being unreasonable. The money from this sale would be life-changing for me. The Indiana Realtor called yesterday—they have a buyer who’ll take the cabin as is, in cash. I get it that you want to know more about Dad, but how does that come before my financial security? You have your fancy job, but I didn’t get to go to college. I didn’t get tons of things.”

I wasn’t softhearted, but the least hardened spot in my heart belonged to my brother. It had taken me years and lots of therapy to stop myself from bailing him out every time he put himself in some shitty situation. I wasn’t going to start again, but the feeling that I owed him an explanation remained.

So I said through the door, “I’ve been looking for a lawyer who can help us figure this out. I don’t want to leave you in the lurch. My plan is to buy your half, but we’ll need to work out—”

“I knew you were in there.” Vince’s voice harshened. “Open up!”

“No.” I took a step back from the door and tried to sound stern. “I’m not going to let you in my apartment when you are being aggressive—”

“I’ll fucking give you aggressive—” The door shook within its frame. I leaped back.

What the hell—?

Another heavy thud. Vince was kicking my door.

“Vince.” My heart pounded. “You need to stop.”

“Not until you let me in.” He punctuated the words with another heavy blow.

Fuck.

I took a deep breath, trying to get my bearings. My door was sturdy, and he was unlikely to get in. But it wasn’t me that I worried about: if he continued, one of the neighbors would call the police. I should call the police, but as fucked up as it sounded, I was never going to do it. Vince had once stolen a box of Oreos from H-E-B just for my birthday, back when he was barely able to read and write. It had been the sweetest thing anyone had ever done for me.