The Becoming of Noah Shaw (The Shaw Confessions #1)(13)
She gave her life to give life, and not just to your children.
Don’t let her death be in vain.
I take the stairs up, bypassing the hall and doing my best to avoid absolutely everyone. My father had no love for what I am, for my so-called Gifts. Everything he’d ever done for me was actually for my mother, who loved the promise of me so much she was willing to sacrifice her future for it, for which he never forgave me. He’s the one who forced me to choose between killing the girl I love or her brother, more like family to me than he ever was, and he’s the one who walked away from us—not just me but Katie, and Ruth, never to be seen or heard from again. Until, of course, he turned up dead, having stabbed himself in the neck with a shard of glass. Officially, it was suicide. Unofficially . . . I suppose we’ll never know, and I can’t help but smile when I think of what my grandmother must’ve gone through to bury the scandal as deeply as she’s done. One would think a family would want to know the truth about how their loved one died, but the fact that my father was found on the anniversary of the date my mother was killed seemed to be enough for them. And the fact that there was, reportedly, a suicide note. I haven’t seen it, and honestly don’t care to. He deserved what he got, however he got it.
My mind skitters back to that letter. He couldn’t resist this one last fuck-you, could he? I can give away his money, I can burn down his life’s work, but he knew I wouldn’t be able to throw out this letter. Not till I find out what it means. And I can’t do that without digging through the past of House Shaw, and for that I wish for the first and only time that my father could be alive for one more moment—so I could spit in his face.
Part II
All houses wherein men have lived and died
Are haunted houses. Through the open doors
The harmless phantoms on their errands glide,
With feet that make no sound upon the floors.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Haunted Houses
9
THE WORST VICE BETRAYED
TWO BRUTAL DAYS PASSED BEFORE I was released from England. Family obligations kept me from spending any meaningful (and by meaningful I mean alone) time with Mara, and so I tried to spend the hours with Katie, but she wanted no part of me. She knew how I hated our father, and now she knows she’s been left out of the will.
“David had this all arranged for a long time, Noah,” my stepmother said when I finally got around to speaking to her about it. She’d flipped through the will and shrugged. “It’s classic him.”
“What’s that?”
“Even at university, it was so clear that he was trying to be his family and escape his family at the same time.” She’d gestured to the statues everywhere, the painting on the dome of the great hall. Scenes of angels and gods, Greek and Roman figures looming in every corner of the house and grounds. “Our house in Florida?” Ruth asked. “Notice any similarities?”
She was right, of course. Exactly, obviously right. He’d arranged it the same way—on a smaller scale, obviously. But the resemblance was clear. Painfully so.
“David doted on Katie when she came along, of course, but from the moment you were born, he treated you like a grown man, grooming you for . . . all this. Your mother,” her throat closed over the word. “Your mother drew that out of him like poison from a wound, rolled it up into a little ball, and threw it away. When she was—when she died,” she says, swerving away from murdered, “the poison crept back in again. Little by little.” She sighed. “He really should’ve been in therapy.”
If she only knew.
My stepmother and my sister were already well provided for through trusts established while my father was living—I had one myself, actually—and Ruth insisted that she didn’t want anything else, wouldn’t take anything else. The will was more symbolic than anything, she said—a passing of the torch and responsibility and all that, not so much a Gringotts vault full of gold. Pity me.
As Ruth and Katie had decided to live in Florida—my stepmother for her veterinary practice and my sister for, God knows why, honestly. Friends, a boyfriend, perhaps? Regardless, good-byes were said, our plane boarded, and then Mara, Goose, and I embarked for our return home, and Goose’s sojourn from his. I told Mara Goose would be starting off his gap year in New York. I hadn’t mentioned that I’d invited him to live with us, but what could go wrong.
She promptly fell asleep on my shoulder upon takeoff in any case, and we were all staying in hotels for the moment anyway, so. Plenty of time.
Throughout the seven-hour flight, plans spun through my head, and I began e-mailing with Ms. Gao. As Mara says, wanting something doesn’t make it real. But sometimes, money can. Today, it would.
Duffels shouldered, we three handed them off to the waiting driver when we landed at JFK, and Goose split off from us to the Gansevoort (“Spectacular pool”). Mara was visibly thrilled to be here—Daniel’s already in the city, creating some groundbreaking individualised study colloquium at NYU or something, lured by a full scholarship and the most posh room and board situation the American higher education system has on offer. As for the rest of her family, they’ve been planning to move back up to the Northeast with him, to be together after, well. After their Miami experience, shall we say. Long Island instead of Rhode Island, this time; her father’s found a job with one of his old law school mates, and Joseph’s enrolled at a private school, and as far as they know, Mara will be spending what should be her senior year auditing classes in the city and going to therapy to try and transition back to normalcy—is what Jamie told them. I think. We should probably get our stories straight. Or fuck it, hakuna matata.