Page 77 of State of Ruin

Then I give him a little nod and head back inside to my people.

CHAPTER 40

Elyse

November 28

My darling Elyse,

Being alone might be the healthiest and most terrifying thing I’ve done in a long while—besides falling, heart and soul, for you, of course. I went swimming in the Sound this morning, and it was fucking freezing. You would have laughed at how long it took me to get my whole body into the water. I hated every second of it… but afterward, I felt almost alive.

I’m definitely doing it again tomorrow.

I might even lean into this whole Wim Hof thing I have going on and grow a beard. I keep wondering if you’d approve of it.

Confession corner:

My family has been covering up every crime and wrongdoing and scandal for generations. Anything that could cast the lightest smudge on our reputation gets erased. And you know why we do it? Because we can. Because every time we get away with this shit, it makes us cockier. It’s the absolute opposite of courage.

During the building of Fairwater in the 1890s, one of the contractors died. He fell from the scaffolding while tiling the roof. My great-great-grandfather paid off his family to keep quiet and had him buried in a grave in the southeasterly corner of the estate. You wouldn’t find it unless you knew where to look, because the small cedar cross that marks it is overrun with ivy. The money that man’s wife received was nowhere near the equivalent of what a wrongful death suit would net her these days, and my great-great-grandfather knew it.

The man’s name was John Donnelly, and he had three children.

That’s the first documented case I know of where the Vosses threw money at a potential scandal and got away with it scot-free. When I say documented, the details are sealed in the family safe, right here on site. And when I say first, it’s the first that I know of.

But it sure as hell isn’t the last.

Today’s jobs have been hacking away at all the ivy and ordering a proper marble gravestone for John. God knows every last person in my family could use a more visible reminder that every cowardly choice that we make to erase our crimes and edit our image in real time has a price.

That’s why I fell so hard for you, I think. You’re the purest, truest person I’ve ever known. Like I said, your face has nothing on the beauty of your heart.

My courier tells me your cherry pie was delicious.

More tomorrow, my darling.

Yours always,

Sinclair

My eyes are wet, and my chin is trembling. I fold the letter back up and sit quietly on my bed for a while, taking a moment to give thanks for the too-short life of John Donnelly. His poor, poor wife. His poor kids. I think back to the gracious, symmetrical splendor that is Fairwater, and my stomach turns. What a price for all that beauty, all that excess. What an awful, terrible price.

I’m not religious in the slightest, but I make a quick sign of the cross. I hope he’s resting in peace. I’m glad Sinclair is choosing to finally honor him in the way he deserves, even if his actions are, ooh, one hundred and thirty years too late.

He’s really going for it with this radical transparency thing… But I assume the statute of limitations on poor John Donnelly has long gone. If he’s gonna put his money where his mouth is, then the true test will be whether he’s willing to incriminate himself beyond how he already has.

I’m still feeling shaken up about John when I head outside to see the messenger, whom I now know is reporting back to Sinclair. It shouldn’t surprise me, and it doesn’t. What surprises me is that I don’t mind. It’s a strange feeling, but somehow having Sinclair know these tiny details is its own kind of reply, and I don’t hate it. It’s the flimsiest string binding us both to what we once had.

I hold up a cup of coffee and a brownie and tell him, “No reply today, thanks.”

December 3

God, therapy is brutal. Brutal, and endlessly fascinating. Elizabeth—that’s my therapist—is very stern. I think you’d like her. She chides me a lot, which you’d enjoy, though, oddly, she chides me hardest of all when I want to beat myself up for something she believes to be my parents’ fault. That’s one of the reasons I haven’t written you about the therapy stuff yet. I needed some time to process all these “epiphanies” before I could write about them in a remotely coherent way.

Confession corner:

I’ve used my fixer more than once to dig up dirt on an employee I wanted to get rid of, just so I could fire them for cause and save the firm their severance. Worse, it’s always felt like nothing more than smart thinking.

And it’s never even about the money.