Chapter 30
THIRTY
Nash
This room is cold and empty. A queen-sized bed sits at one side of the room, covered in plain white bedsheets, and a small bedside table which matches the Victorian paneling on the walls sits next to it with a single lamp on top. I don’t like this room. I don’t want to be in this room.
Mother and Father are already gone when I look out of the small window to watch for them on the drive.
They left me. They really left me here.
Perching on the side of the bed, I scrub my knuckles against my eyes with a loud sniff.
My suitcase lays open on the floor in front of me and the few pieces of clothing that Mother and Father left with me are folded inside of it.
A Bible and my rosary sit on top of the small pile, staring at me. Mocking me.
My grandfather heaves a sigh as he takes a seat next to me, resting his hands on his knees.
The wrinkles between his eyebrows pinch together as he looks down at my belongings, and he offers a shake of his head.
“Tomorrow, Orla will fetch you some proper clothing,” he tells me.
“What kind of bedding would you like for her to bring you? Silk?”
“I want my bed with my bedding,” I tell him. “I want to sleep in my own room. I want to go home.”
“You are home.” Bending down, he flips closed the lid of my luggage. “This is where you live now.”
“But I didn’t mean to!” I wail. “I tried to fix it. I promise, I tried. I confessed, I prayed and I prayed, but God didn’t fix me. I can do better, I swear, just let me go home!”
My grandfather sits with my words for a moment with his wrinkled lips pulled into a tight line across his face. I sniffle and wipe the back of my hand against my nose, and he pulls a handkerchief from his breast pocket, handing it to me.
“God didn’t fix you because He didn’t need to,” he tells me. “So you like boys. Plenty of other boys do. Your parents…they’re only able to see in black and white. Does God not create all of His children in His image?”
I know the answer to the question; I’ve studied the Bible every day this year and I’ve meditated on all of the scripture that the priest told me to, but I only shrug in response to his question as my tears roll down my face.
I can’t stop them. My skin burns and my eyes are swollen, my throat feels as though it’s been clawed apart and my head is throbbing, but I still can’t stop.
My eyes move to my hands, where my fingernails are broken at the ends from trying to pry my suitcase from my father’s hands and from trying to force the car door open as we drove here. It hurts; every part of me hurts, inside and out.
“Look at me when I speak to you, young man.” I turn my attention to my grandfather, who smiles warmly at me and continues.
“God created people who work in science and will cure cancer. God created the doctors who heal our sick and wounded. God created people with a talent to give us music, like He gave to you; and He created you to like boys. He will forgive you for any sin that comes from that, because He made you.”
“I don’t want Him to forgive me, I wanted Him to fix me.” I wrap my aching hand around the golden crucifix that hangs from my neck and yank as hard as I can until the chain snaps, then I throw the jewelry onto the floor. “I hate Him. I hope He dies! I asked Him for help and he forsook me!”
“Orla,” my grandfather calmly calls out as he bends down to pick up my discarded necklace. A tall woman with ginger hair pulled back into a sleek bun steps into the room with her hands held behind her back. “Have the jeweler replace Nash’s chain while you’re out tomorrow.”
“Of course, Mr. Montgomery,” she says with a small bow as she takes the jewelry from him. Her accent is thick, somewhere between Irish and English.
“I don’t want it back,” I tell her, and my grandfather reaches for my knee.
My skin is sore, callused and inflamed from months of kneeling on the carpet to pray.
I kick my foot against the side of the luggage as hard as I can with a loud sob.
“I just want to go home. Edie’s crying, I know she is.
We’ve never been apart and she needs me.
” Standing from the bed, I pick up the suitcase from the floor and throw it against the wall, screaming. “I want to go home!”
The case falls open as it makes contact with the wall, its contents spilling out and littering the floor of the room.
My rosary lands at my feet and I pick it up, pulling it in two directions and snapping it apart with another anguished scream that rips through my throat.
The beads fly in every direction, making a mess.
Orla steps away from me as if she’s frightened of me, but she keeps her hands clasped behind her back and her expression neutral.
My grandfather presses his hands to his thighs and stands, taking a step toward me.
His silver hair shines against the artificial light in the room as he looks down at me.
He looks so much like Father; older and more wrinkled, but all of his features match.
The only thing out of place is the empathy behind his eyes.
“Leave us,” he orders her, and she complies immediately. With his hand coming down on my shoulder, he tells me, “You need to gain control of yourself.”
“Mother said—”
“I’m not interested in what your mother had to say,” he says. “When I’m gone, an empire will be dropped at your feet and you will be expected to know how to hold it. What will you do with the life that you will inherit from me? What will you accomplish?”
I don’t want to accomplish anything. I want to go home to my family and feel my parents wrap me in a warm embrace, and I want to have breakfast with them, and I want to stay up until two o’clock in the morning laughing with my sister and my brothers. I want to be normal.
“I want to go home,” I echo for what feels like the hundredth time, my voice raw and thick with exhaustion.
“It’s time to be brave now, Nash.” My grandfather reaches up to brush my hair away from my face. “Build a mask on the inside. Build several. When you don’t feel brave, put one of them on and pretend. Use that fire inside of you to push yourself forward.”
·
Present Day
Whoever invented the idea of a launch party was a complete blubbering idiot, and If one more person smacks me on the shoulder to congratulate me, I might have their hands removed.
I don’t know any of these people and I don’t give a singular fuck about any one of them.
It’s only been twenty minutes, I haven’t even cracked open the first bottle of Montgomery Estate Bordeaux, and I want this to end.
Standing at the back window of my home, I look out at my beautiful backyard.
Frost coats the grass as the first sprinkle of snow falls to the ground.
The pool will freeze over soon, taking with it my personal slice of heaven and the only place that feels anything like peace.
Maybe it’s juvenile, but it feels like more than just a piece of me now; watching the surface ripple as water falls from the rock above it, I can’t help but feel the presence of the one person I wish were here tonight.
I slip my phone from the pocket of my suit jacket and I scroll through my contacts list to find Emmett’s name.
I should have deleted his information, and the memories right along with it, but I haven’t been able to bring myself to.
Each time that I’ve tried, something burned behind the wall of my chest and I felt like I might be sick.
“Mr. Montgomery, they’re ready for you.”
“Right.”
Tucking my phone back into its place, I follow my personal assistant back into the heart of the party.
Strangers mill about my house, drinking my booze and using my home as their personal networking venue.
More than a few of them are here solely to say that they visited Nash Montgomery’s house and brag about it on their social media pages. Fine, let them.
I take my position at the top of the stairs, drawing everyone’s attention so that I can make a speech which I’ve run through so many times, I have it memorized down the appropriate facial expression.
All that I want to do is slip under the villainous mask that had become so comfortable to me and tell them all to fuck themselves, but I wish them well and thank them for coming instead as I open the first bottle and pour the first glasses of the Rose Noire line.
More performative cheers and pats to the shoulder find their way to me as I make my way down the stairs and to the one group of people who look vaguely familiar.
I think our grandparents may have worked together while they were still alive.
I can smell the old money running off of them, just as I’m sure that they can smell it on me.
If Henry Montgomery were here, he would tell me to schmooze and work the crowd, seek out the business owners among them who might be willing to sign an exclusive deal with me after a few glasses.
He would tell me to put on a friendly mask and make some new connections; but I can’t be bothered.
As I glance back through that same window and into the pool that will have to wait for me, I think about the pretty boy who made me fix my own cocktail not all that long ago.
The only person who’s ever asked me about my faith and if it remained; and maybe the only person who could understand how complicated a question he’d asked.
My grandfather would have loved him.
“This bordeaux is fantastic,” one of the attendees says to me. “What an incredible flavor profile.”
I hope you choke on it, I tell her in my mind.
“Yes,” I settle on saying instead, “it’s very rich. If you’ll excuse me.”
These people have no substance, they’re all just vapid wastes of flesh and wealth that they don’t deserve.
Some of them are only rich because they’re attractive, others have earned their fortunes by embezzling or blackmailing their way to the top.
Only very few and far between have worked hard to get where they are – and even I don’t fall under that umbrella.
I was born into money, and when my grandfather died, I may as well have inherited a kingdom; and what have I done with it?
I’ve used it to indulge in everything that I was raised against: lust, avarice, pride, wrath, gluttony. I suppose that my parents might even consider a swimming pool to relax in to be sloth.
Envy.
Slipping past my guests, I move to the lounge to find Moose. He always tucks himself underneath the piano when too many people try to pay attention to him at once; it’s why we get along. We enjoy the company of each other, but not that of other people.
“Moose, walk,” I tell him, inclining my head toward the door.
Obedient as he is, he approaches and I take hold of his tactical collar to walk him out into the party, where we find my butler near the kitchen.
“We’re leaving,” I tell him with a hand on his shoulder.
“Let them drink until they all piss themselves, I don’t give a shit.
Just don’t let them up the stairs and keep them away from me. ”
“Yes, Mr. Montgomery, of course.”
The two of us move through the back of the house and wrap around to the front, sneaking past both my guests and the paparazzi outside waiting to take more photos of those guests.
Normally, I don’t mind the pictures. I grew up with cameras in my face and that only became a more frequent occurrence after my grandparents took me in.
A swarm of them waited outside of the prison both for my intake and my release.
When my short-lived marriage ended at twenty-seven, only six months after we’d said ‘I do,’ they swarmed again outside of my attorney’s office.
They’ve become something like mosquitoes; if you’re familiar enough with their presence, you can hear their buzzing when they’re close by.
That familiarity also grants you a certain immunity from being bothered by them.
A threat here or a check there, and they tend to leave things be.
Swat one insect, and watch the others scatter.
I settle on a bench near a tree roughly a mile from my house, where I find a stick and give it a toss for Moose.
There are three hundred bottles of wine at my house, which means I’ll likely be out here for another four hours – maybe five, if my guests are imbibing in moderation, which I sincerely hope that they aren’t.
As Moose returns his new toy and I throw it again, the two of us repeating the process until he’s exhausted, I run through Beethoven’s Sonata No.
14 in my mind, tapping the fingers of my left hand along my thigh as I would the keys on my piano.
My mother taught me to play when I was only four years old; she and my father had hoped that I would play at my uncle’s church and eventually grow up to become a concert pianist.
Look at me now, aren’t you both so very proud of your eldest son?
“Moose,” I call out, and my faithful companion rushes toward me, stopping only to sit at my feet. “Let’s go home.”