When I met him and found out he was gay, and that he’d been bullied for it in school, I immediately took a liking to him. But something always lurked in the background, something dark and feverish I couldn’t pinpoint.
He’d asked me a couple of times, while we were on vacation in the same city or island, if I needed some time off from Vaughn, if I needed him to babysit my kid. My answer was always no. But when I asked Vaughn about it, he was adamant everything was okay, that he liked Harry, and that nothing had happened in that room.
I believed him. After all, my kid had always been very much outspoken when things weren’t okay.
Now, as I walked aimlessly in my grand, empty house, my husband miles away in England on a business trip, I decided to occupy myself by cleaning a little. I discharged our staff early, surprising them with tickets to Hamilton in San Diego, and began to scrub the kitchen floors. It was weirdly therapeutic—maybe because I’d been used to helping my mother clean the Spencers’ grand kitchens when I was a kid and she worked for them.
After that, I took the trash cans out. I flipped them open to make sure nobody had put anything in the wrong place. California was big on recycling, but it seemed like our neighborhood was practically obsessed with it. I was, too. I’d always been frightened about the world we’re going to leave for our grandchildren.
As I peeked inside, everything looked kosher. In the brown trash can, appointed to recycling, lay the art magazine I’d never finished reading. I frowned. I didn’t remember throwing it away.
Something willed me to reach into the bin and take the magazine out. Confused, I began to thumb through it, my forehead so tight with a frown, my entire face hurt. It was unlike Ronda and Lumi, our housekeepers, to throw such thing away without asking me first. I wasn’t mad. I was curious.
I stopped when I reached the last page, in the section about new art deals taking place around the world. The page was more wrinkled than the rest. I skimmed through the text, my heart stopping in my chest.
The magazine dropped from my hands, and I felt my mouth going dry.
For all the things I’d missed throughout my life, which weren’t many—the occasional friend’s birthday, a wedding, and a couple charity events I couldn’t attend, I’d never missed something so big.
Fairhurst’s paintings had all been sold to a secret bidder.
Almost every one of them, other than mine.
I ran back into the house, up the stairs, and to the main hallway of the second floor. I stopped at my favorite of Harry’s paintings, the one in front of Vaughn’s room.
Heartless Prince
Fairhurst had told me he’d titled the painting that because it was a replica of the Death Mask of Tutankhamun. But the eyes were the real kicker. They looked so completely human, and deliciously frightened—shocked and panicked, ice-cold and blue as the brightest summer day’s sky.
Something dangerous began to hum in my blood. I stared at the painting, and before I knew it, my entire body was shaking with wrath, nausea coating my throat. I could feel myself breaking out in hives. I looked down, and my skin was patchy, red, the hairs on my arms standing on end.
My husband was in England.
The magazine was in the trash.
My son was different from other boys—always had been, but particularly since our trip to the Parisian gallery.
This is not a coincidence.
Vaughn, Vaughn, Vaughn.
My precious son who’d had to see this painting for months, day in, day out. Face it, brave it, overcome it. My boy, made out of frosty exterior, with fire in his heart. Just like his dad. I’d waited so long for him to fall in love, to blossom into the man I saw behind his anger and pain.
I’d never thought my predator son could be someone’s prey.
I pounced on the painting, ripping the thick canvas with my bare hands, feeling my nails breaking, my flesh bleeding. My fingernails ripped from some of my fingers, dropping to the floor, but I didn’t stop. Like a declawed cat, I persisted tearing at the fabric. I only realized I was screaming when my throat began to burn. Once the painting was on the floor, in tatters, I began to kick it.
Only when there was no way to distinguish what had been in the painting, when the eyes were completely gone, did I ball on the floor and began heaving and crying. When I could, with shaky fingers, I withdrew my phone from my dress’ pocket and booked a ticket to Heathrow, a red-eye flight taking off in less than an hour.
My son was not a heartless prince, placid and beautiful and lifeless.