Forty-Four
On the jet to Boston, Julian’s father was silent. As soon as they reached cruising altitude, his father took out his phone
and stared down at it with an expression that Julian recognized as business. The expression defied anyone to interrupt him.
For want of something to do, Julian retrieved a bottle of champagne from the galley and poured himself a glass.
At that, his father looked up and arched a brow. Julian shrank in his seat. He pushed the glass away.
His father returned to his phone and several minutes went by, the only sound the low hum of the engine and the plane’s slight
jostling.
“Did Fikret tell you?” The words escaped Julian’s mouth before he could stop them.
“I let Fikret go a month ago.”
“Oh.”
A month ago—as soon as Julian had enrolled at Valeran. Which meant Fikret was no longer being paid to look after him. He had
agreed to come of his own volition. Out of genuine concern.
Julian turned and stared out the window. The view was black as they flew over forests and farmland. His stomach felt hollow
and he wished he hadn’t pushed away his glass.
“What’s going to happen to her?”
“Who?”
“Klaudia.”
His father looked up again. “She’ll be taken back to Valeran, I imagine. She’s still a student there, under Dr. Iver’s supervision.”
Back at Valeran. Julian swallowed. There was an odd tenor of familiarity in his father’s voice when he spoke of Dr. Iver.
He considered it for a moment.
“You’ve been in contact with him,” Julian said. “For how long?”
His father put his phone down and gave a slight sigh. “For as long as you’ve been there. I made a generous donation. Dr. Iver
has kept me informed of your progress.”
Julian’s heart skipped a beat. His father hadn’t left him to the wolves. He may have been an embarrassment and a disappointment,
but he was still a Joyce-Young. And his father’s only living son.
“Thanks, Dad,” he whispered.
“Well,” his father said, “your mother was distraught.”
Stomach hollowing again, Julian nodded. The rest of the plane ride passed in silence.
It was midnight by the time they arrived in Back Bay. Darkness lay over the city. The air was heavy. Wind howled as Julian
emerged from the car, rustling the trees that lined the street with an eerie, almost supernatural sound.
His father brushed past him to open the door. With a hum and a click it swung open, bathing Julian in a warm, familiar light.
Relief overwhelmed him as he stepped through the threshold. He breathed in the scent of polished mahogany and listened to
the crackle of the fireplace in the parlor. And then his mother was rushing toward him, crushing him into an embrace.
Julian collapsed against her, burying his head in the crook of her neck. She smelled like Chanel and Chardonnay.
His mother pressed her face to his chest and, wordlessly, she sobbed. He didn’t realize he was crying, too, until he tasted
salt on his tongue.
After a long moment she pulled away, reaching up to clasp his face. He felt her wedding band graze his cheekbone.
“You’re home,” she whispered. “You’re home.”
He swallowed. “I’m home.”
There was a shuffling sound. Julian looked over and saw Olivia standing in the doorway to the parlor, wearing pajamas patterned
with ballet slippers. Her eyes were pink and puffy.
“Are you back?” she asked in a small voice.
Julian nodded.
“For good?”
He nodded again.
She crossed the room, bare feet pattering on the floor, and threw her arms around his waist. He went still, shocked by the
physical contact. Olivia hadn’t hugged him in months. After the kids at her school began circulating the videos of his arrest,
she had insisted that he had ruined her life.
Chest aching, Julian hugged her back. The three of them huddled in the foyer while his father looked on from a distance, expression
unreadable.
Julian’s bedroom had been left untouched in his absence. His lacrosse stick was leaning against the wall and his debate team
trophies were gleaming on the shelves. A fine layer of dust coated every surface. His mother had not even allowed the housekeeper
in to clean.
Julian walked around the room as if in a trance.
He riffled through the papers on his desk, half-finished bill proposals and drafts of speeches.
His fingers ghosted over the Polaroids pinned to the corkboard.
A blurry shot of him and Landon at summer camp, shirtless, their bare chests glistening with lake water.
Him accompanying Christabel to the debutante ball.
Aurelian wading into the ocean at Martha’s Vineyard, his back turned, silhouetted against the sunset.
A tightness formed in Julian’s throat and he turned away.
In the alcove, his chessboard was still unfolded on the table, pieces arranged in their starting positions. It was a vintage
set that had belonged to several generations of uncles and grandfathers.
Julian picked up the black queen and turned it over in his hand. He thought of his and Klaudia’s chess match, interrupted
in the middle game. But she’d had him pinned.
He dropped the piece quickly and turned off the alcove light. He swallowed the pills his mother had given him and lay down,
welcoming the relief of oblivion.
Julian woke slowly and groggily the next morning, as if hungover. As he stood, his heart thumped with a residual, entirely
somatic terror. He had grown so used to having his life either directly or implicitly threatened that it was a shock to his
system to be able to rise of his own accord, to a soft carpet under his feet, to bask a moment in the warm yellow sunlight.
When he had shaken off the prickling dread, he went to the bathroom. The first thing he did was dig through the drawers for
his contact lenses and solution. With no small amount of relief, he slipped off his glasses and put in his contacts instead.
He hadn’t been allowed to bring them to Valeran, one of the many small indignities he’d suffered during his time there.
Julian blinked. The world clarified, but his eyes stung. He’d been wearing his glasses for so long that he had forgotten the
slightly irritating sensation of having his contacts in.
He would have to adjust to that, too.
Once he had dressed, in a pale blue button-down and khaki pants, Julian ducked back into the bathroom and regarded himself in the mirror.
Here was a version of Julian Joyce-Young III that he recognized.
Well-outfitted and well-groomed, leaner and narrower in the shoulders than he would’ve liked, but still polished. His exterior was faultless.
It was something beneath the surface that felt wrong. Not just the residual fear that Valeran had instilled, not just grief
for his brother—it was something more fundamental and base. It shifted in him, like a dark shape under ice.
Julian switched the bathroom light off.
When he came downstairs he was shocked to find his mother in the kitchen, humming as she stirred a pot on the stove. He could
not remember the last time he’d seen his mother do anything more elaborate than pour wine into a glass. Olivia sat at the
island, absorbed in a book.
It looked like a scene from a commercial, so perfect it acquired a glaze of absurdity. Some shadowy parody of his old life.
“Good morning,” his mother said. “You must be hungry.”
He wasn’t really, but he sat down anyway. His mother placed a glass of juice and a plate of eggs and toast in front of him.
At the sight of it, Julian realized he felt not only not hungry but vaguely ill. His mother watched him with a hopeful, tremulous
smile. Reluctantly, he took a bite of the toast.
His mother beamed. Olivia giggled at something in her book.
“Where’s Dad?” Julian asked.
“Office,” Olivia said, without looking up.
Julian glanced at the oven clock. It was nine in the morning and, if he recalled, a Saturday. His father was making a point
to be absent.
“Eat,” his mother said, rushing to fill the silence. “I already made us plans for tonight. We’re having a dinner party to
celebrate you being back.”
Julian choked on his toast. “No. God, Mom. Please, no.”
His mother’s face fell, and instantly he felt awful.
“I just wanted to do something special,” she said softly. “It’s been so long. . . . What about just the Downings and the Cabots?
Would that be all right?”
A small gathering of close family friends was easier to swallow. “Okay. Yeah.” He let out a breath. “It’ll be great.”
His mother beamed again, but a heaviness had settled in the pit of his stomach. Julian pushed his plate away and stood up,
mumbling a half-hearted excuse before ducking out of the room.
After working up the courage, Julian stood outside his father’s office door. His fingers hovered an inch from the wood, quivering
in hesitation. More than once he considered giving up and just shuffling away, like a dog with its tail between its legs.
In the end, he steeled himself with a breath and knocked.
Silence. It went on for so long that Julian prepared to knock again. But just as he lifted his hand, his father’s voice called
out, “Come in.”
Feeling both relief and dread, Julian pushed open the door. His father’s office was precisely how he remembered: gleaming
wood and overstuffed leather, his Harvard degree framed on the wall. Shelves of antique books, unread. No family photos.
His father sat behind his desk, staring intently at his computer. He barely looked up as Julian entered.
After several more moments passed in silence, his father let out a breath. “Yes, Julian?”
All the eloquent words Julian had prepared seemed to escape him. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt. I . . .” He swallowed.
“I just wanted to ask you something.”
“What is it?”
His father, too, was precisely how Julian remembered: crisp blue eyes, a sharp-edged, patrician face.
What little hair remained on his head was wispy, closer to silver than to blond.
His father had been balding since his late twenties, a fact that Julian often considered with deep and abiding concern.
Nothing about his father’s face ever changed. Not even when his son’s corpse was being cut down from a tree.