When Iris stands, tell her the first lie was not Jason’s.
A chill moved through me.
“The first lie?” Clara whispered.
Thomas nodded toward me.
“There is something else you need to know.”
I braced myself.
He looked suddenly older.
“The Mitchell Adaptive Port System—the invention Jason claimed, the one you designed—it wasn’t the first version.”
“I know,” I said. “I built prototypes before we married.”
“No.” He shook his head. “Before that.”
I frowned.
“Iris,” he said softly, “your mother had the original concept.”
The world became very quiet.
“My mother?”
“She was a nurse for twenty years,” he said. “She saw patients suffer through devices that were not designed for the lives they actually lived. She kept notebooks. Sketches. Ideas for a better system. When you were in graduate school, you found one of her old notebooks and improved on it. You didn’t steal from her. She was proud. She used to say the idea had waited for the right hands.”
