Harrison
Going through your dead parents’ things is an edifying experience. Strange how processing a person’s belongings is shaped entirely by your memories of them.
Those memories have changed shape and color since last year.
Growing up, I swore my parents had all the answers. Until they started arguing at night in hushed tones. I challenged them to leave the business they were in and start fresh on their own. When they died, the guilt crippled me. It was my fault they’d left.
Finding them dead only made it worse. The people I loved and admired were gone, and Sebastian would grow up without parents, and every time I closed my eyes for years, I saw their still, slumped forms and blamed myself.
Now, learning they hadn’t really been trying to leave, I should feel as if a weight has been lifted. They weren’t innocent. Some people might even go so far as to say they deserved their fate.
Except my need for vengeance on the man who killed them has grown—not because they were saints, but because when Mischa burned Kings to the ground. It wasn’t only about them anymore.
He attacked my business, the one I built from nothing with my own hands.
The Ivanov family molded my past with cruel, greedy hands.
They won’t touch my future.
I’m in the third-bedroom closet, surrounded by boxes, unpacking photos and other items that have sat here since I had them shipped from London.
Some items I toss in a pile to get rid of.
I can’t sell their things, so I’ll donate them.
When I spot a slim, black lacquered box, my chest tightens. Inside the lid, there’s a photo of Ash as a baby. Me holding him with a put-upon smile. I would’ve been fourteen, I think, and home from school on a break.
My mother never kept her things in a safe. She wouldn’t let my father convince her, no matter what beautiful trinkets he bought her. She wasn’t a suspicious person. Once she said, “If someone cares enough to take them, they need them more than I do.”
The exception was her wedding ring.
I lift it from the case, the gold band slim and smooth in my fingers. There’s an inscription I never noticed before. Through everything.
I’m surprised it’s here. When they passed, I had the funeral home dress them in clothes as different as possible from what they were wearing when I found them. Anything to clear that awful image from my mind. I told the funeral home to bury them with their rings. Yet this one’s here.
Footsteps in the hall have me glancing up. As they approach the half-open door, I call, “Natalia. Could you—“
“Not Natalia.” Sebastian steps inside. His shorts are forest green, his favorite shade as a child, and his polo shirt is a few shades lighter.
I set the ring back in the box and rise, the box still in my hands. “What are you doing here?”
“Rae told me what happened last night at the bar. The woman who overdosed.” His eyes search my face.
“Don’t do that,” I say, irritated.
“What?”
“Try to see if I’ve lost it. I’m your older brother. I’m supposed to make sure you haven’t lost it.”
His lips curve, the ghost of a smile.
“Did you talk to the police?” I ask.
He crosses to the bed, the only place to sit, and sinks into the bedspread uninvited. “Yes.”
I clench the box harder. He shouldn’t be keeping secrets from me. I’m his damned brother.
“When did I let you down, Sebastian?”