Family Meeting
Aria
Don’t bring him.
I read that line three times and felt something cold settle in my stomach that had nothing to do with fear and everything to do with the specific, calculated cruelty of someone who understood exactly how to isolate a person.
David’s aunt. Sitting outside his apartment in a dark sedan, sending a message that excluded the one person in the room who had resources and security and the kind of protective instinct that made isolating me significantly harder than she probably expected.
“Who is she,” I said. “What’s her name.”
“Margaret,” David said. His voice had gone tight. “Margaret Ellis. My mother’s older sister.” He pressed his fingers to his eyes. “She’s not a bad person. Or she wasn’t, not really. She raised me after my mother got sick when I was
