The Becoming of Noah Shaw

  Daniel lifts his eyes to the ceiling, nodding. “Fine.”

  Because it works.

  “All right, then,” I say, reluctantly abandoning Duck Hunt. Jamie makes a sad face. “I’ll go up and look for the correct paperwork,” I say, improvising as I go. “I want to change the key code for the building and make sure there are safeguards in place so you’re not followed, or anything like that. Want to take over for me?” I ask Daniel, indicating the gun.

  “I’m gonna go to Sophie’s. But I’m going to text you every day—multiple times a day—until you get it done. Bye, sister,” he says to Mara. She lifts her hand in a limp wave, and Daniel walks out.

  It takes Jamie less than a second to do the same. He stands, the plastic gun clattering to the floor.

  Mara arcs an eyebrow. “Where are you going?”

  Jamie looks from her to me. “Elsewhere. Rapidly,” he says, already backing out of the living room.

  “Because?”

  “Because I’m abstaining from this particular argument. You kids have fun, though!” He whistles the Hunger Games theme as he climbs the stairs.

  “Ass,” Mara comments. Then, “What’s going on with you?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”

  “I’m sure you do, but, fine, I’ll play. One: Why don’t you want us in the archives? Also, you didn’t tell me you had your mother’s stuff sent over from England.”

  “That’s not a question.”

  “Seriously?” She looks murderous, and I have to work not to laugh.

  “All right, in reverse order: I don’t tell you everything, and because nothing good will come of anything my father was involved in.”

  “You’re not him, you know,” she says, her voice softening.

  Sometimes I wonder if she can read thoughts. “I know.”

  “No, you don’t. But, Noah, that research, it’s not like the One Ring.”

  “Not where I thought you were going to go, but, all right.” I take a step toward her, winding a curl of her hair around my finger, then tugging it. Two little lines appear between her brows, and she bites her lip. A few minutes ago I would’ve attacked her. But now . . .

  “I should go and do what I promised Daniel I’d do.” I move to leave, but she doesn’t let me off that easily. She never does.

  “You think that even if we try to use that stuff for good, it’ll end up corrupting us somehow.”

  “And how exactly do you know what I think?”

  “Because I know you.” She searches my eyes. “And I know my brother. And I know you know my brother. You trust him with that stuff, but you don’t trust yourself.”

  “What about you?” I ask, aiming my voice at her as I ascend the stairs. She slides away from it even before I ask my next question. “What if there’s something in there that you could use against someone you think deserves it?”

  A look, direct, unyielding. Honest. “I wouldn’t do anything without asking you first. I promise.”

  The thing is, I’m not sure I believe her. Not anymore.

  25

  CONFIRMED DESPERATION

  I CLOSE THE DOOR BEHIND me when I get to the office. Just looking at the boxes from my father’s solicitors and accountants brings not only his will, but the letter he included with it to mind.

  Don’t let her death be in vain.

  Those fucking words. My father is dead, entombed an ocean away, but his efforts to twist my life into one after his own image live on. The professor alone, I could’ve ignored, and have ignored, but my father worked through him or he worked through my father or—

  I kick over a banker’s box of documents, and just barely resist the temptation to trash the room. Mara’s downstairs, but I can feel her presence there; that watchfulness, those expectations.

  The air is close and stale in here, tiny motes of dust visible in the shaft of light from the room’s only window. It looks over onto the cobblestone street below. I desperately want to walk out, and just keep fucking walking.

  Nothing good can come of anything my father wanted, and he wanted me here, looking through these boxes, somehow living up to the potential my mother literally died to give me, and all of it whittles away at any ambitions I might’ve had to find out more about Sam and Beth. I did want to help the helpless. Fight for those who cannot fight for themselves, as my mother put it. But were those really her words? Just as likely that her beliefs were manipulated by the professor as well.

  If you don’t fight, you will grow lazy and discontent under the guise of wanting peace, she wrote.

  You will acquire money to acquire toys but the biggest ones will never be big enough.

  You will fill your mind with trash because the truth is too ugly to look at.

  And maybe, if you were another child, someone else’s child, maybe that would be okay. But you aren’t. You are mine. You are strong enough and smart enough and you are destined for greatness. You can change the world.

  Brilliantly, perfectly vague, isn’t it? Destined for greatness. Change the world. As if it isn’t hard enough just to make myself want to exist in the world. I’ve seen the truth; I looked straight at it when my own father handed me a syringe, a knife, and a gun, and forced me to choose between killing the person I love most or killing the person she loved the most. I’ve never seen anything uglier than that. Why should I have to keep looking?

  Maybe Mara and Daniel are right, and there’s something worth finding amongst these boxes and trunks and whatever else my father’s got stored up in his archives. But I’ve seen enough of the truth at this point to know the answers to the questions we want answers to won’t be handed to us by anyone else. We have to be the answer. Ignore the past and just keep going.

  My mobile vibrates in my back pocket. It’s Daniel.

  Update?

  Horrid. I set the phone down on the desk and crouch amongst the trunks and boxes. My mother’s, battered and beaten and ugly, taunts me silently a few feet away, and my father’s paper empire has me surrounded. I can’t leave the room without seeing Mara and I can’t look at my phone without seeing Daniel’s texts, so I rise up, open the desk drawer for the envelope of keys, and shake out a few at random. Let fate decide, if it exists.

  One of them is a tiny, polished silver skeleton key, and there’s only one trunk it seems like it would belong to, the walnut-wood, silver-edged one with all of those women’s names engraved in silver. I move over to it and pick it up; it’s quite heavy, and without any obvious lock.

  Opening it again, I look for a compartment inside, sifting through the letters sent to one E . S. by the various women he seems to have fucked, which at least makes me grin. The bottom is red velvet, like the rest of the lining, but—

  The top of the trunk is a half cylinder. And hollow.

  Maybe it’s a piece of priceless history, who the fuck knows, but I take my house key to it and tear the fabric anyway. There’s a silver keyhole beneath it.

  My Dearest Wife,

  I have found it. I cannot express my joy in words—it is beyond measure. I am eager to return home to you and the boys, but I do not know when I will be well enough to make the journey. Do not worry—I am being expertly tended to and have been given all manner of treatments—traditional and . . . much less traditional. But I am compelled to discuss a matter with you if—if, against all odds, I fail to return.

  There is a thing I must ask of you, a thing I must beg of you. There is a girl—she is orphaned and alone, but she has the most exceptional Gifts—my darling, I want to take her in as our ward. She would come to London with me and live in our home and be raised as our niece, despite—well, despite her differences, which are not insignificant.

  I regret having to ask this of you in a letter. But I cannot bear to see her Gifts wasted—I wish I could explain my reasons, but I fear that our correspondence might be intercepted and I cannot risk it. But do know that though I want this very much, I would never make such a decision without your blessing. I eagerly
await your reply.

  Your Loving Husband,

  S. S.

  18. March

  My Darling Husband,

  I wish you were alive to see how the plain ward you have sent me has blossomed into the most exotic flower.

  You begged me to treat her as if she were our niece, but the girl has become more like a daughter to me. She is as gifted as you promised, with more talent and accomplishments than I could have imagined. It took her mere days to learn to paint the most beautiful portraits. I wish you could see her, what she has become. Her dark hair is luxurious enough that she need only adorn it with a single flower. And though she is not gifted musically, she has the voice of a lark. When she enters a room, she draws everyone present like moths to her flame.

  She is as demure and elegant and humble as she is accomplished, and she shows no signs of self-interest and has no ear for gossip; for that, I am afraid she lacks for friends. The latest crop of London society girls whisper and swoon over the slightest things; and I am most proud that she is not inclined toward that behaviour.

  She is inclined to remarkable studiousness, however, and I know that you would delight in her curious mind, though I admit I find it a bit unusual. The tutor you’ve arranged for her is rather queer himself, as is the fact that she has a tutor rather than a governess, which as you surely knew is generally regarded as inappropriate, and yet I have been assured you desired that he, and only he, be charged with her education. I don’t even know his name; Mr. Grimsby calls him the professor, and everyone seems to accept that.

  The doors are always open during their sessions, of course, but somehow I can never quite hear what they’re studying together, and though I have searched her room out of curiosity, she doesn’t appear to have taken any notes. I shouldn’t be so distrusting; she has proven herself to be honest and kind and generous, mostly with me. I believe she knows I am lonely and indulges this poor old widow accordingly. When I remember that she is even more alone in the world than I, than anyone, in fact, my heart breaks for her all over again. But seeing her, the way the candlelight sets off the fire in her skin, the way she commands a drawing room conversation with just a few words—she is dear to me, Simon. A greater blessing than I could ever have imagined.

  Your Faithful Wife,

  Sarah

  26

  THE DEVIL GOES ON

  THE SOUND OF MY MOBILE vibrating on the metal desk gives me a start. When I look up from the letter, the sky beyond the window is dark.

  I stand to pick up my phone—hours have passed. Worse, there’s another text from Daniel. I turn the phone off without reading it and nudge the lid of the trunk shut with my foot, leaving the letters, the keys, everything on the floor.

  I desperately want it to be a coincidence that a nineteenth-century letter, written by one Sarah Shaw to one (apparently deceased?) Simon mentions “the professor.” Surely there were many professors in Victorian or Georgian England or whenever the fuck they were written, the ink on the dates is smudged.

  But it’s him. All roads lead to him.

  Enough. I’ve had enough.

  I cross the room to leave, but as soon as my palm touches the knob, it twists and—

  Mara’s on the other side of it.

  “Did you hear?”

  “Hear . . . ?”

  She seems a bit jittery. “Daniel said he texted you.”

  “He did,” I say. “Asking for an update.”

  Her eyebrows draw together for a moment before she shakes her head. “Check again.”

  “I’ve turned it off,” I say, rather bitchily. “Just tell me.”

  “Stella’s missing,” she says. “Apparently.”

  “What do you mean, missing?”

  “Daniel said Leo texted him, and he thinks we should go over there. And that we should bring Goose.” She rushes out, her footsteps echoing in my skull. I shake my head, rub my temples. My body feels heavy, as if I’ve been sleeping for days, and Mara’s voice sets my teeth on edge.

  “Come downstairs!”

  I follow her slowly, not sure how to process this news, trying to will myself to stop ruminating and drag my mind back to the present. Jamie’s voice carries from the first floor.

  “What do you think?” I hear him ask Mara, but her reply is muffled. Walking downstairs feels as though I’m wading through mud, as if it’s sucking at my trainers, making every step aggravatingly slow.

  She and Jamie are standing together in the living room when I get there, while Goose is in the kitchen, slicing at something.

  Not ready for Mara just yet, I turn to Goose instead. “What’s all this?”

  He separates two translucent slices of meat. “Prosciutto.” He holds a paper-thin slice up in offer.

  “Pass.” The smell of it turns my stomach for some reason. I twist to look at Jamie and Mara. “Have you heard anything new?” I ask him.

  Jamie glances at Mara before answering me. “What?” I press.

  “She’s not missing,” Mara cuts in. She’s standing on the balls of her feet, her body taut, brimming with energy.

  “You seem quite confident,” I say.

  “I am.”

  Because she doesn’t trust Stella, for obvious reasons?

  Or because she knows where she is?

  I don’t even think I want to know, at this point.

  “But we’re going anyway,” Mara says with a sigh. “Daniel’s on his way there.”

  Daniel’s waiting alone, standing at the cross streets by the house. The neighbourhood balances on the knife-edge of gentrification, and he looks rather relieved to see the four of us, assembled as instructed. We walk to the house together, no one saying much of anything because, I imagine, none of us is quite sure what’s to be said. Daniel’s the one Leo texted, so he’s the one who knocks.

  Rolly’s head pokes out from the gate below the stairs, as out of place as a hard-boiled egg. His eyes sweep over us before he pops back inside just as Leo opens the door.

  “Thanks for coming,” he says. “We really appreciate it.”

  It’s a damn sight harder to get a read on him today, as I’m not at all up to scratch.

  “What’s with that guy?” Mara mutters.

  “Rolly?” Leo asks, waving us inside. “It’s his house.”

  “You rent it?” Jamie asks.

  “Not . . . quite.”

  Jamie and I exchange a look. “He doesn’t let you live here rent free . . . ?”

  “Like I said when we met, you’re not the only one with a gift for persuasion,” he says to Jamie.

  “I’d like to meet the others,” Jamie says.

  “Help me find them before they kill themselves and maybe you will.”

  Off to a rather rough start. “So what happened?” I ask him, forcing myself to scrape this afternoon from my mind.

  Leo sits down on the leather chaise, and the rest of us crouch/drape/lean on whatever other surfaces are available. I take the ottoman opposite him.

  Leo bends forward, elbows on knees, and rubs his forehead. “Stella didn’t come home the night before last.”

  Bloody hell. “That’s all?” I ask, feeling annoyed and superior until I realise that the night Stella went missing is the night we last spoke.

  “It’s not like her,” Leo says, eyebrows knitted, talking to himself. “She always comes home.”

  Home. I take in the brownstone again, the shabby, abandoned look of it.

  “Thanks for coming,” he’d said. “We really appreciate it.”

  Home to whom? Stella’s missing, Felix is dead—who’s we?

  Mara almost seems as though she knows what I’m thinking. “Was this house always like this?”

  Leo shakes his head. “A lot of people come and go.” He pauses before saying, “Came and went, more accurately, I guess.” His expression darkens, and if I hadn’t been watching him so closely I’d have missed the way his eyes flit to Mara.

  Fuck this guy. “Let’s skip the bullshit, shall we?” I
say. “Why did you want us to come?”

  He raises his chin, turns to Mara. “Because I think you know where she is.”

  “You’re mistaken,” I say for her.

  “Am I?” He’s still talking to her. She doesn’t respond. Doesn’t defend herself. So of course, I do.

  “I don’t know what Stella might’ve told you—” I start.

  “Everything,” Leo says. “She told me everything.” He looks at Jamie then. “Which makes me pretty wary. And she’s not here to read your minds to tell us whether you’re lying or not.”

  “Why would we lie?” Mara asks, but her voice sounds strange.

  “Why would Stella leave you and be willing to go back home to a stepfather who abused her?”

  My conversation with her bobs up in my memory like a dead fish.

  “Leo found me, told me I had a choice—he’d help me get home if I wanted to go, but also said I had a place with them if I ever wanted it.”

  “So you went home with a perfect stranger?”

  “Safer than staying with my so-called friends.”

  “And your family?”

  “Not everyone has a perfect home life.”

  Fuck. Fuck.

  But Mara’s voice is even, not the least bit thrown. “Because she disagreed with a decision I made.”

  “To kill people.” The words slither out of Leo’s mouth.

  Mara simply shrugs. All the jittery chattery energy she’d had in our flat is gone. She’s completely calm.

  “Right,” Leo says derisively. “Forgive me if I’m kind of concerned that you might not have her best interests at heart.”

  Mara’s face is stone smooth, expressionless. “I wouldn’t kill Stella, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  I try and listen to Mara’s heartbeat—it seems loud, clear, steady. She’s not lying. I’m surprised—and disturbed—by my relief.

  “We want to find out why this is happening as badly as you do,” I say.

  “Really?” He rounds on me. “How’s that?”

  Forget this afternoon. Forget the professor. Forget my father. “Because every time one of us commits suicide, I fucking feel it,” I say, aiming my mind on that. “Their suffering and regret and fear. You think that’s fun, do you?”