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I want to kiss her again, pull her into my arms, and wrap her up safe and close to my heart forever. I’ll weather the gloom of Wainscott Hollow if it means we can stay together.
Chapter Four
Heath
Maybe this patch of sea and sky is indiscriminate when it comes to parents. It doesn’t just steal mothers, it takes fathers, too. Less than four years after my mother abandoned this earth, Mr. Shaw is taken from us too. It’s sudden, though not a surprise. He’s been unwell—blood pressure high, immune system weak. Life has taken a toll on him, and he hasn’t been the same man I met when I walked through these gates for a while now.
But it still hurts to lose him. Shaw believed in me, and he loved Katelyn like no one else. The report cards full of straight A’s were achieved so I could see him beaming with pride when I unveiled my grades to him.
It’s Kat who finds him face down on the floor of his walk-in closet. He was clad in boxers, and a button-down, halfway through tying his tie when he went into cardiac arrest. We’d been at school all day. Henry was home, but he was too hungover or too negligent to check in on his ailing father, who lay for hours, dying and alone.
Poor Katelyn is heartbroken, I’ve never seen her so bereft, and Henry is ecstatic, barely able to contain his joy at the passing of his father, the man who gave him life. I’m not related by blood but my loss is tremendous. Shaw was a good man, and he took care of us all.
I hold Katelyn while she sobs, and it’s all too reminiscent of losing Mom a short while ago. I wipe her face with a tissue and brush strands of hair back from her temple.
“You know what this means, Heath?”
I could mean a lot of things—one being that I have to leave Katelyn and Wainscott Hollow. If Shaw made no provisions for me, I’m penniless once again. I’ll have to drop out of Fairmont and get my GED or enroll in a public high school for my senior year. But the question is, where? Back in the South Bronx? I’ve got nowhere to go and no source of income.
“We’ll be okay,” I whisper, assuring her. Though I’ve never been more unsure of my future or hers. We will probably not be okay, but that’s the last thing I want to tell her.
“Henry will be in charge. He’ll be the man of the house. We’ll have to live under his thumb, and he hates us both.”
I want to say it’s not true or tell her he won’t, but we’ve already been under Henry’s rule since Shaw took ill and stood by helplessly as he made the worst decisions. His method is to run off anyone who threatens him. Henry is a coward and a narcissist—the worst combination.
“I’ll never forgive him for cremating him. Dad told us so many times to bury him next to Mom,” Katelyn laments. “He wanted to be close to us, close to Mom for eternity.”
I’d heard Shaw say it myself, his wishes to be laid to rest next to his loving wife. But he didn’t make provisions with his lawyer, so Henry did what he wanted, which was forgo the ceremony in lieu of a quick cremation, and signing of papers. Katelyn was horrified. She begged her brother to at least scatter his ashes in the sound. But Henry refused and keeps his father’s remains in an urn on his dresser like a dark overlord controlling the man posthumously. Henry wants power, and his father’s death has emboldened him.
“Ah, there you are. Heath, you shouldn’t be in here,” Henry scolds upon entering Kat’s room. He’s wearing Shaw’s clothes which drape and sag on him. making him look like an angry little boy playing dress-up. “The lawyers are here to read the will, down in the den. Wash your face and come down, Katelyn. You won’t be needed, Heath.”
When he exits, Kat looks at me with her blue eyes round with fear. “Father loved you, Heath. Of course, you should come to the reading of the will. He considered you his own. He was so proud of all you’ve accomplished.” Kat hangs on my chest, so ragged with grief she can barely stand on her own. “We’re both orphans now. I’m not dumb, Heath. I know minors can’t be emancipated from a dead parent. Henry will become my guardian, and he’ll do everything in his power to make my life a living hell!”
She’s not wrong. But I refuse to live in fear of Henry fucking Shaw.
“We’ll leave together, Kat. Run away with me and we’ll make a new life for ourselves far away from Henry and Wainscott Hollow,” I tell her.
