“What does that even mean?” she asks, her voice raw. “We’re meant to be satisfied with lies, because they’re better for us?”

“No,” he says, shaking his head. “You’re right.”

Nons bites her lip, and he opens his mouth, then closes it again. He visibly twitches before speaking, freaking me out. “Your mom’s background was something we didn’t talk about, because … she didn’t want to,” he admits. He takes a tiny, tentative sip. “We never knew her family because your mom cut ties with them. She never spoke of them—never wanted us, never wanted you, to know them.”

“But why?” Noni asks, while I process what he’s said in numb silence, too hungover and frazzled to react.

Teddy scratches his forehead. “I … I think her parents didn’t treat her well, so she ran away when she was very young—I know that much. And she wanted to protect the myth she’d built about her childhood to—to keep herself together. I understood that. So I promised her so many times that I wouldn’t ask for more details. And I didn’t want to defy her by telling you before she had a chance, herself. I … We thought it was for the best. Parts of me have been in a holding pattern since she left, unsure of what to do. Deferring to your father, when maybe I shouldn’t have. I’m so sorry, girls.” He reaches for our hands, and I let him take my limp one. And I can feel it, his remorse, this undercurrent of an ache.

He’s a puppy dog of a man—devoted to Mama always. I can understand why he wouldn’t want to defy her, I do.

The rest of the car ride, I’m tingling with nerves, unable to break the silence. I’m still pissed at Teddy for not telling us the truth, but he’s right: Dad should have told us—could have told us.

Today I feel like I didn’t know either of them at all.

The last time I saw the Hero Pharm office, I was seven years old. It was a tower tall as the sky itself, its interiors a gleaming white. Some called it a blight; others, a marvel. Its sole personality was Dad, rendered in gold everywhere.

A gilt bust of Dad in a lab coat was in the entrance lobby, staring down at you while security checked your name. HËRÓ HAMMICK, etched in yellow-gold characters, in case you forgot.

Dad, unsmiling in a giant burnished gold–framed portrait in every hall, his hair jet-black.

Look up, and find his personal seal worked into the molding in gold.

But when Dad walked through the office with us, he didn’t notice these flourishes. When Noni whispered something along the lines of King Midas, he just blinked at her.