Page 31 of Dearly Departed

It’s hot in the cabin.

I didn’t expect it to have central air, but it’s so hot.

The heat creeps up slowly, like a rising tide, and by the time it gets to my knees, there’s no hope of getting out. Rolling over is a pipe dream. All I’d do is get a faceful of sand, and what good is that? Sand isn’t edible. It’s not breathable. It won’t do anything but melt my skin off.

But—

I don’t recall lying down on a beach. A beach wouldn’t feel smooth, like sheets.

There must be sheets. A pillow. The blankets must be the problem. My mother always traveled with an electric blanket to fry herself in, though she never seemed to get warm. For some reason, she’s covered me in one of her blankets and set it to broil.

It’s hard to move my foot.

I persevere.

Nothing changes. I’m not under any blankets. I’m not even under any sheets. It’s air on bare skin, so it shouldn’t be unbearable.

Unless someone’s planned this.

Lots of terrible things don’t happen by accident. Did you know? They happen as a result of meticulous prearrangement. Niceties take less planning, I’ve found. Counterintuitively, profound evil is more difficult, especially if you want to cloak it in a veneer of civility, if not goodness.

Have you spoken to him? I don’t know who that is, and then I do. It’s my father. His game room—the one with low lights in sconces and a custom-build card table—blinks into existence. Ah—it’s my clothes that are burning me alive. Funeral clothes will do that. I must’ve left them on after I went to the funeral for Gabriel’s parents.

“No.” Hurts to talk. Is that because I didn’t cry at the funeral? It’s not as if I didn’t cry at all. I’m not made of stone. But the grief in that room was so intense that I wanted to sob and couldn’t. It wasn’t my parents who were dead. My parents were still alive.

“Best if you don’t,” Bettencourt says from the other side of the card table, his cards a neat fan in his hands.

“There are better options when it comes to your future prospects,” my dad agrees. I can’t see him. He must be sitting back from the table, in the shadows.

“I don’t know why you’d say that.”

“Because he’s ruined already.” Samuel Newhouse lays down a card. It’s hearts. Or diamonds. The corners are all smeared with blood that makes it impossible to be sure which. “You know that, Jacob. You’ve always known what it means to remain above reproach.”

I laugh out loud, but it hurts like knives, or a lump full of dry sand and shards of glass. “Is that what I’m supposed to do? Remain above reproach?”

Bettencourt looks me up and down. “You’ve grown out of your suit.”

“I haven’t.”

But then the waistband’s cutting into me, and the cuffs on the jacket are so tight my hands are swelling, and I can’t breathe. I undo the top button on my shirt. It doesn’t help.

“I’m not doing that anymore.” Bettencourt can think whatever he’s going to think about me. I’m done with all my old methods. “And you’re dead.”

Bettencourt lays down his cards and cocks his head to the side as if I’ve said something he’s never considered before. He opens his mouth to speak and keeps opening it, wider and wider and wider like he’s trying to chew the air and chokes, his breaths crackling and curling into a wet, nasty struggle. His face goes pink and then red and then purple. He puts one hand to his chest, clawing at his shirt, and then he whimpers, holy fucking Jesus Christ, he whimpers like a beaten animal and slumps back in his chair.

“Jacob. How could you?”

I finally locate my father. He’s in a chair set back a few feet from the table with his hands cuffed behind his back, dressed in a jumpsuit the exact color of a grapefruit.

“I’m not angry, son.” His face folds into a frown I’ve seen deployed at infinite black tie events and more than a few white tie galas. “I’m disappointed.”

“I didn’t do that to him.”

“Him?” My father raises his eyebrows. “I’m talking about you.”

“There’s no need for this conversation, then. I know you’re disappointed. Where is my sense of family? Where is my loyalty?”

“You could at least look the part. I know I raised you better than this. Always have a plan in place. That goes for your personal well-being as well as your professional pursuits.”