slide away {lorenzo berkshire}

87. you built this cage

"I weep because you cannot save people. You can only love them"
- Anaïs Nin
~~~~~

Cassie Avery

For a second I just stared at him.

No. I must have misheard him.

"Wh- what?".

Lucius looked mildly irritated at having to repeat himself. "Your mother returned to the Avery estate last week."

My mother. Returned. As if she had simply gone on some sort of extended holiday and decided to come back again.

I hadn't heard anything about her since that day. Hadn't asked. Hadn't wanted to know. Every time my thoughts drifted anywhere near her, I buried them somewhere else before they could settle.

"She's... there?".

"Yes", Lucius answered immediately, like it was obvious, like I was asking if the sky was blue.

There. The house. The same one I'd spent years pretending didn't exist. The same one I hadn't set foot inside since I was seven years old. The same one that somehow still managed to appear in my nightmares anyway.

I tried to swallow the lump in my throat. "Why?".

Lucius raised an eyebrow. "Why what?".

"Why is she there?". The irritation in my voice surprised even me.

Lucius didn't seem to notice. He looked almost amused about the entire situation. "Because it is her home."

Home? That word made me feel nauseous.

Because all I could think was... why? Why was she there? Why was she anywhere?

Lorenzo wasn't.

Lorenzo was dead. And she had just... gone home.

Lorenzo was dead. And she was sleeping in a bed somewhere. Walking around. Eating dinner. Breathing. Existing. Like nothing had happened. As though she hadn't taken everything.

Lucius watched me for a moment before taking another sip of wine.

Something hot twisted low in my stomach. He looked so unbothered, so completely, utterly unaffected.

Eighteen years. He had known Lorenzo for eighteen years. He had raised him. He had watched him grow up.

And now he was sitting there drinking wine.

"She killed him."

The words came out before I could stop them.

I felt the tension settle over the rest of table. Nobody was moving. Nobody was breathing.

But Lucius's expression didn't change, not even slightly. "I'm aware."

Three syllables. That was all. Three fucking syllables.

The room seemed to tilt as something twisted violently inside my chest.

I'm aware. Like Lorenzo was an inconvenience and not a person. Not the boy who laughed too loud or the boy who never shut up or the boy who spent years pretending he couldn't tie his own tie or the boy who had loved me so much that it had terrified me.

"Right", I laughed once. "You're aware."

Across the table, Lucius remained perfectly composed. I realised all at once that he wasn't uncomfortable. He wasn't grieving. He wasn't even pretending to care.

Lorenzo had grown up in this house. He had spent eighteen years calling this man his uncle. Eighteen years. And Lucius was talking about him like he was nothing.