Pharaoh’s tomb – a shrine to a dead king. Everything and everyone inside made of shards of precious gems. Pretty to look at but broken, and liable to make you bleed.
I find my stepmother Grace in her drawing-room (she likes to call it that, says it makes her feel like the heroine in a gothic romance novel). She’s curled up in a puddle of mink blankets on the window seat, one of her romance novels clutched between her fingers. Around her, the buttercup yellow walls and pastel-pink furniture pulse in my vision. Today, even this cheery room has a sinister quality.
Grace reminds me so much of my mother, with her dark curls falling over her soft features in a curtain. It makes sense that she does, since she’s my mother’s younger sister. My dad married her only two years after Mom died. I might’ve been angry about that, like I’m angry about most things, but having Grace around is one of the only things that keeps me sane. Sometimes she smiles my mother’s smile at me, with the dimple in her left cheek, and the pain in my chest twists – a knife cutting deeper. I’d worry about it slicing out my heart, but I have no heart left.
I hover in the doorway, watching Grace read. I battle with the words I need to say. She senses my presence, looks up from her book. The smile that tugs at her dusk-pink lips is the only genuine thing in this house. “Noah, you’re home.”
I shrug off my backpack and slide in beside her, wrapping her into my arms. She’s so small, so fragile. It feels like she might shatter into pieces at any moment. In reality, Grace is the one holding things together – she pulls Dad’s rage and my darkness into herself, and gives back only light. But even her light gets lost in the void where my heart used to be.
Sometimes, I forget that Grace lost everything too.
“How was school?” she asks.
“Fine. Track trials are next Thursday. I’m going to work with Eli on my 400m every day after school.”
“You don’t have to make track, Noah.” She squeezes me extra hard. “You could go back to swimming—”
“No.” The word comes out harsh, final. I’ll never get back in the water again. Not after it took my mother.
“—or something different? As long as you have something on your college application. It doesn’t have to be track—”
“I enjoy track. Well, not the 400m,” I try to smile, but I’m pretty sure it comes out as a grimace. I haven’t smiled in so long I don’t think the muscles work any longer. “Don’t worry about me. I’m fine.”
“It’s my job to worry about you. Tell me something happy.” She peers up at me with my mother’s eyes. “Are there any girls after you?”
Mackenzie’s face flickers in my mind. I stiffen.
I swallow. “Is Dad home?”
She nods. “I saw him head into the reception room.”
Of course. The grand sitting room where Dad receives foreign dignitaries and state officials, where he introduced Felix to all the important people who were going to help him succeed. Dad’s never far from that room now. Sometimes, when I sneak down to his study in the night to steal his alcohol, I see him sitting on the sofa in his boxers, staring up at the portrait, mourning his shattered dreams.
I know I have to tell him. I don’t want to; fuck, I’d rather stick my hand on a hot stove than tell him. But if I don’t, he’ll find out anyway, and then he’ll be pissed at me for not telling him.
I slink away from Grace. I can’t bear to feel her warmth with Mackenzie’s face in my head. “I need to talk to him.”
“Don’t upset him. It hasn’t been a good day.”
I stiffen, my hand on the door. It hasn’t been a good day. I know what that means.
I’m worse than useless. I can’t help Grace. I can’t save my father from himself. Grief takes many shapes – Grace’s grief follows her like a friendly ghost, touching her hands with kindness. Mine is a noose around my neck and a red mist that shrouds my vision before I throw a punch.
Dad’s grief has transformed him into a monster.
I drag my feet as I approach the reception room. My fingers curl around the doorframe. Dad stands beside the fire, a whisky glass in his fingers. He grips it so hard his knuckles are white. He doesn’t look up when