The thing about Pretends was that sometimes you could tell someone the absolute truth, and they wouldn’t believe it or wouldn’t listen to it. There was freedom in that. Jarod rarely told people the truth. It put people in danger and jeopardized his own missions. But sometimes he had the freedom to speak, and speak he did. There was freedom in pretending to be dying by inches, his mind slowly going, freedom to play Debussy’s “Clair de Lune” on the piano and ramble about the perfume he almost could remember his mother wearing. Freedom to be open. Freedom from lies.