CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
He met Antoinette at the entrance to the old park, the place where his father had debuted so many of his tricks, out on the large stage that stood in the middle, and where he’d been so abusive and cruel about everything. Where Antoinette had been, too. That was why she was here now:
To pay for it.
“Wow,” Antoinette said. “When you said you wanted to meet here, I wasn’t sure what to expect. This is… so run down.”
It was. Once, the park had been bright and vibrant, well cared for, even an attraction. Once, families had come there to sit on the grass, walk between the trees, and watch the shows put on there.
Now, the park was an overgrown skeleton of what it had once been. The foliage had grown out of control, while chains hung across the paths at intervals to try to keep people out. The whole place had changed beyond recognition.
Antoinette looked the same, though. Well, more or less. Older, certainly, but still as slender, still with bottle blonde hair and a tan that had been worked on in a salon. Still with those cold blue eyes that had always looked through him before like he was nothing. She’d obviously had work done, a facelift, perhaps, maybe a little Botox, but the beauty mark on her chin was still there, as if she saw it like some badge of honor.
“It’s good to see you again, Stephen,” she said, throwing her arms around him as if there had always been affection between them. As if she hadn’t seduced his father and gotten between them so that any hint of love he had for his son disappeared. She held him out at arm’s length. “It’s still amazing to believe the man you’ve become. I remember when you were just a boy. You look just like your father.”
Those words were almost enough to make him lash out at her blindly, but he forced himself to hold back. He had already decided how Antoinette was going to die, after all.
“While you look exactly the same,” Stephen said. It wasn’t a compliment, but Antoinette appeared to take it as one. She’d always been vain.
“You’re very kind,” she said. “But why invite me here, of all places? We could have met up for dinner somewhere nice. I know you have the money for it these days.”
No thanks to her. She’d been the one left everything when his father died. Stephen had been the one who’d had to rebuild his life. He’d found success, too, until things had fallen apart. His marriage, his company, all of it gone.
He’d run back to Las Vegas to find out if it held any answers for him. It turned out that it had. He’d stood in the middle of his father’s workshop and known what he had to do. He’d had the space and the money for it. He’d just needed to act.
“We can go to dinner another time,” he lied. “For now… well, I found some things that brought back memories. I thought you might want to see them.”
“Here?” Antoinette said.
“Just trust me.”
“Ok,” Antoinette said, although she didn’t sound as enthusiastic about it as she had about the prospect of dinner.
Stephen moved towards the park, leading the way under the chains.
“It’s just this way,” Stephen said. The interior of the park was kind of a maze, the chains and the overgrown plants cutting off some paths, forming others.
The whole place was lit now by candles Stephen had put in place in lanterns, each one throwing strange shadows over the surrounding parkland.
“Do you remember the shows we put on here?” Antoinette asked. “I remember once we did the sword box, and your father almost stabbed you.”
“He did stab me,” Stephen corrected her. It had been meant to be Antoinette in the box, but she’d complained of a pulled muscle before the show, so he’d been the one who’d had to go in, regardless of the fact that he hadn’t memorized the positioning required to stay safe quite so thoroughly.
“Oh, it was just a graze,” Antoinette said. “Don’t be so dramatic.”
He’d needed seventeen stitches, but Stephen guessed that Antoinette wasn’t interested in that. She tended not to be interested in anything other than herself.
“Talking of dramatic…” Stephen said instead as the two of them entered the heart of the park.
This was the spot where the stage stood, dilapidated as the rest of the place, but Stephen had done his best with it. Stephen had dressed that stage carefully. He’d picked out tricks that had hurt him over the years deliberately, from the vanishing doors to the dekolta chair, the rope trick to the knife through the hand. Every one of them was a reminder of the lengths his father had gone to for fame.
The box and the saw sat at the heart of it all, carefully lit by spotlights Stephen had put in place for just that effect.
“What is all of this, Stephen?” Antoinette asked, as if she didn’t know.
“Can’t you guess?” Stephen countered, trying to keep his voice genial.
“These look like a bunch of your father’s old props. Why these ones, though?”