Chapter 4

The door swung open, and Caleb walked in. He was dressed in soft, expensive clothes and had managed to make his face look pale and drawn. He was a true artist, and his medium was manipulation.

He stopped just inside the room, his eyes wide and glistening with unshed tears. He looked at me, then at my bandaged hand, and his lower lip began to tremble.

"Ethan," he whispered, his voice a perfect imitation of heartbreak. "I'm so sorry. This is all my fault."

It was a masterclass in performance.

Instantly, Eleanor and Olivia rushed to his side, flanking him like bodyguards.

"No, sweetie, no," Eleanor cooed, stroking his hair. "It's not your fault. It was a horrible, random attack. Don't you ever think that."

"But if I hadn't been so stressed about the scholarship," Caleb continued, his voice cracking, "Ethan wouldn't have been out so late. He was probably worried about me."

He looked at me, his eyes pleading for my complicity in his lie.

My silence was a rock in the middle of their flowing river of drama. I just watched him.

Eleanor turned on me, her face hardening. "Ethan, say something. Don't you see how upset your brother is? Tell him it's not his fault."

Her demand hung in the air, thick and suffocating. She wasn't asking me to comfort my brother. She was ordering me to validate their narrative, to participate in my own erasure.

Caleb, sensing his advantage, pressed on. "He hates me," he whispered to Eleanor, loud enough for me to hear. "I can see it in his eyes. He blames me for everything." He buried his face in Eleanor's shoulder, his body shaking with manufactured sobs.

"Of course he doesn't hate you, baby," Eleanor crooned. She shot me a look of pure venom. "Ethan is just... not himself right now. He's in shock. He doesn't know what he's saying. Or not saying."

I felt a profound sense of weariness settle over me. It was like watching a play I had seen a hundred times before. I knew all the lines. I knew all the stage directions. I was just tired of being in the cast.

I closed my eyes, hoping they would take the hint and leave.

It was the worst thing I could have done.

A sharp, sudden cry of pain filled the room. I opened my eyes to see Caleb stumbling backward, clutching his arm. A long, red scratch was welling up with blood on his forearm.

"He hit me!" Caleb shrieked, his eyes wide with fake terror. "I was just trying to get closer, to tell him I was sorry, and he lashed out!"

In his other hand, hidden from Eleanor and Olivia's view, I saw the glint of his own thumbnail, sharpened to a point. He had done it to himself.

But they didn't see that. They only saw their precious, wounded boy.

"Ethan!" Eleanor screamed, her face contorted with fury. She and Olivia surged forward, not toward me, but to Caleb, shielding him with their bodies as if I were a wild animal.

"How could you?" Olivia cried, her face pale with shock and anger. "He was just trying to be nice! What is wrong with you?"

Sarah, who had been standing by the door, rushed to Caleb's side. "Let me see, Caleb. Oh, it's bleeding. We need a nurse!"

They fussed over his superficial scratch as if he'd been stabbed. They completely ignored me, the boy with a shattered hand and a missing kidney, lying helpless in the bed.

In their haste to get to Caleb, Eleanor had knocked against my bed. The jolt sent a bolt of pure agony through my right hand and the incision in my side. I gasped, a low, involuntary sound of pain.

No one noticed. No one cared. Their entire universe had contracted to the single point of Caleb's fabricated injury.

As Olivia and Sarah bustled Caleb out of the room to find a nurse for his "wound," Eleanor turned back to me. She stood over my bed, her chest heaving, her eyes blazing with a righteous rage that was utterly terrifying.

"You are ungrateful," she hissed, her voice low and dangerous. "After everything we've done for you. Taken you in, treated you like a son. And this is how you repay us? By hurting the one person in this family who is truly vulnerable?"

She didn't wait for an answer. She just glared at me, her face a mask of disgust.

And in that moment, looking up at the woman I had called "Mom" for seven years, I felt the last, withered cord of affection for her snap. It didn't break with a loud, dramatic crack. It simply dissolved into nothing.

The space inside me where my love for them used to be was now a perfect, clean void. It was empty. And in its emptiness, there was a strange kind of freedom.

She turned and marched out of the room, leaving the door wide open. I could hear their voices in the hall, a symphony of panicked concern for Caleb.

From my bed, I had a clear view down the corridor. I saw Caleb, leaning heavily on Sarah, his face a picture of suffering. But just for a second, as he thought no one was looking, he glanced back toward my room.

Our eyes met.

And he smiled.

It was not a friendly smile. It was a smile of pure, triumphant cruelty. A victor's smile. He had won. He had taken everything from me, and now he was basking in the unholy glow of my family's love, a love he had stolen.

I didn't smile back. I didn't scowl. I felt nothing.

I looked at the white plaster cast on my hand, a tombstone for my artistic dreams. I felt the deep, internal ache where a part of my body used to be.

And all I wanted was for time to speed up. I wanted the next few days to pass in a blur. I wanted to sign the discharge papers, walk out of this hospital, and get on a plane to a place where the name Wilson meant nothing.

I just had to wait a little longer.