He reached over and gave his son a pat on the shoulder. I looked at David, and he stared back at me with a smile.

“He and I were able to get to know each other, after nearly a lifetime of not knowing each other at all. I feel like I don’t know you at all, either, Lisette. And for that, I am sorry.”

“Don’t be,” I said bitterly. “I’m very glad not to know you any better than I do.”

My father nodded his head solemnly. “I understand why you feel that way. It’s my fault.”

“Yes, it is.”

“And I know that I will probably never see you again after tonight,” he continued. “And I have no one to blame for that but myself as well. I can’t go back and change what I’ve done, but I hope you’ll accept a small token of what I’m about to do as a gesture of the father I would have liked to have become for you and didn’t.”

“I don’t want anything from you,” I said. “Keep your money.”

“Oh, it’s not money,” he said.

He handed me a thick folder that was bursting at the seams.

“What is this?” I asked.

“What you hold in your hand there is everything about all of the things I have ever done. Every ledger, illegal transaction, or execution order that has ever been given.”

“Why are you giving me this?” I asked in disbelief.

“I’ve decided I no longer want to do it. You can do whatever you’d like with it. You can turn it in to the police or burn it and know that none of it will ever continue here at Lineage again.” He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a set of keys. “These are the keys to the safe in my office. All of the access to all the money and assets that I have, that your family has had throughout the generations and that I have stolen from people; it’s all in there.”

I didn’t know what to say. It didn’t make up for ANYTHING. There was nothing that could make up for the murder of my mother, and nothing that could make me feel anything for my father, not even forgiveness.

The guys all looked at me in shock.

“You can leave now if you’d like,” he said. “Take it all with you. But if you’d be willing to stay, I’d like the chance to tell you a few things about your mother.”

“What could you possibly tell me about my mother that I don’t already know?” I asked. “I don’t want to hear any of your lies. You didn’t love her. You shouldn’t even speak her name on your lips.”

“You’re right,” he said. “I shouldn’t. But there is one thing that you’re wrong about. I did love her at one time. And then I stopped loving everyone. I still remember some of the things that I loved about her at the beginning, though. Those are the things that would keep me up at night when I realized how much I tormented her and how much she didn’t deserve it.”

“I don’t want to hear anything that you have to say about my mother,” I said.

I could feel myself starting to shake. I just wanted to take the papers now and leave. I wanted to go to the safe and take all the things out of it to return the money and the assets to whoever they rightfully belonged to, and then I wanted to leave. I should have said that right then, too.

I should have said that I wanted to leave.

Jack’s voice ripped me from my confused trance. “Then maybe you’ll let me tell you about how much David has helped me. I don’t think you two have had enough time to spend together.”

Ugh, okay. That is the reason I came here tonight at all.

Everyone looked uneasy. Everyone that is, except for David.

“Turns out your brother is an excellent scholar,” he said.

I wanted to correct him and say that David was my half-brother, but since I just wanted to get through the night and get back home, I didn’t much see the point in it.

“Oh?” I asked. “How so?”

“Well, for one thing, he’s read about the entire history of both colleges. Then he went back to the libraries and retraced his ancestry back for generations.” My father put a forkful of food in his mouth as he continued to talk. His eating habits grossed me out ever since I could remember. “Quite interesting stuff, I think.”

“Find anything interesting in all your research?” Michael asked as he looked across the table at David. I noticed something odd about the tone in Michael’s voice, something accusatory maybe.

“Not really,” David said.

He was sitting up near my father, who was at the head of the table. Michael and Adam were on either side of me, and Julian was sitting on the same side of the table as David.

“I did find a cool little tidbit about the Goldshire auditorium building, though,” he said as if it were an afterthought. “Did you know that there used to be an old underground library beneath the current auditorium?”

Julian and Michael stared at each other. I guess it was public information if someone went digging around for it, or if someone just happened to stumble upon it while reading up on the architectural history of the colleges.

I guess it wasn’t that unusual that David would know about it.

“No,” Michael answered. “Fascinating. I doubt it’s still there, though. I would have seen it.”

“Perhaps not,” David said. “The entrance is relatively difficult to find unless you know the layout. Maybe sometime prior to graduation I can swing by, and we can check it out together. If it does still exist, it would make a pretty cool place to host the graduation celebration.”

The hairs on the back of my neck suddenly stood up.

“I thought you said you couldn’t make it to the graduation celebration,” I said.

For a brief moment, David looked rattled, as if he had been caught in a lie. But just as quickly, he was able to toss up a believable explanation. “Oh, right, yeah. I thought I wasn’t going to be able to attend. I have a few post-college job interviews scheduled, and one of them conflicted with the grad celebration. But I was able to get it moved so that I could attend. I think I just forgot to tell you. It’s great, though because now we’ll be able to have another night to hang out before everything is over.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Great.”

I could feel Adam’s eyes boring into the side of my face. He knew something was definitely off.

“David,” Adam said. “I’m assuming you’re not going into the family business after all since your dad has essentially just handed Lineage over to Lisette. So, what kind of business is it that you’re planning on going into exactly?”

David subtly squirmed in his seat before pulling a smile on his face and letting out a laugh that seemed a bit forced. “That was just a joke dad made,” he said as he looked at our father. “We actually talked about that before dinner, thought it would lighten the mood a bit.”

How in the world would they think any of us would find that funny?

“But yeah, good question. So, I’m not really sure yet, but I think it’ll have something to do with being in finance. I’ve got a pretty mathematical brain. What are you going to do, Lisette?” David asked me.

“I’m not sure,” I said quickly. “I haven’t decided yet.”

“And all of you guys are going with my daughter?” my father asked. “Lisette, you’ll surely never have to worry about anything with three men surrounding you all the time.”

He laughed as if we had been friendly our entire lives. As if he had literally any right to speak to me about my life. I felt like I as in an alternate reality, and I just couldn’t take any more of it.

“Well, this has been great,” I said as I clenched the overstuffed folder in my hands and stood up from the table.

“You’re leaving now?” David asked.