I had let my mother believe Niko advised contractors on logistics.

I had sat through a decade of Thanksgivings listening to them brag about Delphina and Cato’s money and their travel and their remodel, while I nodded and passed the rolls and said nothing about where I had actually been the month before, or what I had actually done there, or what it had actually cost.

The silence had a purpose.

The smallness had a purpose.

My family had never once, in my entire adult life, met the person I actually was — and that morning, standing in that cold kitchen, I understood that they were about to.

Chapter 7 — The Cover