Total pages in book: 63
Estimated words: 58883 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 294(@200wpm)___ 236(@250wpm)___ 196(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 58883 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 294(@200wpm)___ 236(@250wpm)___ 196(@300wpm)
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 found 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, he was the only father figure I’d ever known.
I hold Katelyn while she sobs, and it’s all too reminiscent of losing Mom. 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?
“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 kept 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.
A few minutes later, we descend the grand staircase and make our way to the den. Our journey there feels like a funeral procession. We hold hands and walk the plank together.
Inside Shaw’s den decorated with dark woods and gold upholstery, three lawyers appear to be in deep conference with Henry Shaw, who still looks like a snot-nosed kid in grown-ups clothing.
His face falls when he sees us, his disappointment at my arrival apparent. But perhaps some of Shaw’s decorum did wash off on Henry because he doesn’t ask me to leave in front of the executors.
“Condolences, Miss Shaw and Mr. Clifton, I presume,” the balding lawyer in wire-framed glasses says, offering us his hand. “Mr. Shaw was a pillar of the community on the sound, and Wainscott Hollow is an iconic estate that was cared for so beautifully.”