The Becoming of Noah Shaw (The Shaw Confessions Book 1)

Part 2

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

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.

We’re dropped off at the Plaza Athénée at eight in the morning, blinking dully beneath the pink and orange sky. Mara is pale, exhausted—she slept on my shoulder on the flight as I typed, but fitfully. I watch her, the membrane of her eyelids a light purple, her dark lashes curled and fluttering with dreams. I wondered what was happening behind those eyelids, under her dark waves of hair, inside that head. She never did manage to get back to the ruins, and I never did manage to find out more about Sam, but it doesn’t matter.

I’m heir to the Shaw estate. Ms. Gao’s sole occupation is to take my orders as I give them. But my desire to give Mara everything is greater than hating myself for taking what my father made, and used to torture her.

The documents—his, my grandmother’s—I feel polluted when I touch them. But I can do things now that they never would, make choices they would never make. Try and fix what my father had broken, help the people he hurt. So sign the papers I do. In a week, the revolution would begin, and I can find out everything I never wanted to know about my family if I choose. But for now . . .

We’re whisked into the hotel, glimmering chandeliers above, the papered walls bursting with rich colours, and Mara hardly notices that we don’t formally check in. Everything’s been handled already.

“Oh my God,” Mara says, collapsing onto the bed, splayed out like a starfish. I unbuckle one of her boots, then the other, letting them drop to the floor. Peel off her socks. She flips over onto her back to watch me with artist’s eyes, then arches up so I can slide off her jeans, blinking dreamily.

I’ve seen her in the middle of the night and the middle of the day, with makeup and without, with her hair done up and when it’s been unwashed for days. I’ve seen her in jeans and in silk and in nothing. I would gladly spend the rest of my life just looking at her.

Thankfully, I’m allowed to do more than that. I climb up her body to take off her shirt, and the feel of her skin makes me ten times more awake.

And then I see what she’s wearing underneath. Her chest is cupped in black edged with ivory lace, her arse in cheeky boy-shorts that match.

“Do you like them?” she asks, her voice soft, her eyes closed now.

“Not enough to keep them on you,” I say, reaching to unfasten and tug, but she doesn’t move.

“Mara?”

No answer. Her breath is deep and even. I bounce lightly on the bed just to confirm it, and, yes, she is in fact asleep.

With a heavy, pathetic sigh, I get up to close the curtains so the sunlight doesn’t wake her, and pull the comforter up over her body. I bend down to kiss her cheek and whisper, “You’re a mean girl, Mara Dyer.”

She smiles in her sleep.