The Becoming of Noah Shaw (The Shaw Confessions #1)(60)

So you see, Diary Dearest, this is the train of thought that won’t stop, the train that runs in my head at night, even after I fall asleep. I’d never tell David, but I think he suspects some melancholy beneath the surface, some vulnerability he’s just aching to soothe. He wants to fix me, poor thing.

I don’t know if I can bring myself to love him.

That’s the truth. It’s ugly, I know it, and despite his (many) flaws, it just generally seems a crime to marry not for love, but for purpose, even though I know it won’t be forever. Is that even worse? Marrying him, conceiving his child, knowing that someday I’ll die for it?

I’ve talked to Mara about it—she’s changed her mind, I think. Says she’s dreamt about my death “a thousand ways over a thousand nights” and that there’s no timeline in which I’ll have his child and live. It’s odd—I never wanted to be a mother before, but now that I know who my child will be, what he or she will do, become—I’m anxious. Ready. She says I might regret it, my choice, once I have that child in my arms. That being needed so desperately by something so innocent and good and pure, something I created, will change my heart and might change my mind, and by then it will be too late. I’m already in this.

As the professor says, every gift has its cost.





34


HIGHER LAWS

IT IS TRULY FUCKING JARRING, reading my mother’s journal. Perhaps the one bit of good parenting my father can be credited with is that he never let me know it existed. Maybe he even read that bit himself.

I don’t notice how much time’s passed till stompingly loud footsteps rattle the staircase and someone knocks on the door.

I snap the journal shut, along with the trunk. I open the door to find Jamie on the other side of it, and my promise to Daniel comes to mind, but at the moment I just need air.

“Didn’t mean to interrupt,” he says cautiously.

I brush past him. “Then why did you?”

“Your phone’s been buzzing with texts from Mara—”

“What?” I round on him. “She’s not with you?”

Jamie looks at me warily. “No . . .” He draws out the word. “That’s what the texts are about. She wanted to stay.”

“Why?”

“Maybe she texted you why . . . .”

“Is there something in particular you’d like to say to me, Jamie?”

“Not in your current state, no.”

I close my eyes and take a deep breath. “Sorry. I’m a prick.”

He smiles brightly. “You are. It’s nice to hear you admit it.” He airily walks past me and down the stairs. I follow.

“So what happened today?” I force the words out.

“With the Brownstoners, you mean.”

“Cute,” I say as he swings toward the pool table. Not green, this one; a dark teal setting off the copper rails.

He arranges the set. “Fancy a game?”

“You mock me.”

“Your friend Goosey’s rubbing off on me.” Jamie swipes one of the cues from the rack. “I wouldn’t mind if he actually rubbed one off on me.”

“Indeed?”

“Indeed,” Jamie says. He offers a cue. “Am I his type?”

Type. I literally can’t escape this.

“I’ve never known Goose to abstain from indulging in pleasure of any sort,” I say.

Jamie crouches into position. “Excellent news.”

“Pray tell.”

He calls the first shot. “Mostly what we expected—shit I’ve seen before. They’ve got the Doctor Kells: The Early Years stuff, her twin experiments, crap from Horizons like my generous psychological profile, yours, Mara’s, The List.” The cue ball spins and sinks the striped 6.

“The List?” I wonder how ignorant I can pretend to be. Daniel’s a known quantity to me, but the relationship between Mara and Jamie—I can’t be sure. Especially not after this afternoon.

“The Kells list.”

“Right. I’ve never actually seen it.”

Jamie looks up, sets his cue up right. “Shut up.” A lift of my eyebrows. “You’ve never seen that?”

“Am I going to have to bribe you with sexual favours in order for you to tell me about it?”

“Don’t you wish, love. But I know all the places you’ve been.”

“Did you take a photo?”

Jamie shakes his head. “But Mara took one.”

I race to check my mobile—there are indeed a thousand texts from her. Some pictures, some just blocks and blocks of text. She’s coming round to Leo, it seems. Even Sophie. And is sharing literally every detail with me. Well and good. I scroll through for images as I skim her texts. Finally, I see it—initials, our last names—

I walk back to the pool table, staring at my phone. “This it?”

Jamie takes it, swipes to zoom in. “Yup,” he says, popping the p.

Double-Blind

S. Benicia, manifested (G1821 carrier, origin unknown); side effects(?): anorexia, bulimia, self-harm. Responsive to administered pharmaceuticals. Contraindications suspected but unknown.

T. Burrows, non-carrier, deceased.

M. Cannon, non-carrier, sedated.