by Brown, Tara
I hurried into his closet, touching his clothes and surrounding myself with him. The smell of deodorant and Lucas and cologne wafted about. I closed my eyes and brushed my fingers against a shirt, almost feeling him in it.
Tears poured down my cheeks, a flood I’d been waiting for. I fell below the clothes and leaned against the closet wall. I squeezed and wished he was there, squeezing back.
He wasn’t haunting me.
Had he left, not bothering with the effort of haunting?
Maybe he was with his mother.
I dragged several dress shirts down and curled up in them, closing my eyes and letting myself feel everything all at once.
I hoped the pain would end my life, seizing my heart.
But it didn’t.
Instead I cried myself to sleep.
Chapter 25
Saturday, August 3
I woke with a start, Alice was sitting next to me in the closet. It was dark except for a crack of light coming from under the door. She lifted her finger to her lips.
Footsteps in the bedroom brought the fear and hurt back instantly.
“Who is it?” I whispered.
“His mom,” Alice mouthed back.
“My poor sweet boy,” Gertrude mumbled, sounding drunk. The dogs were likely with her, their little feet scratching on the wooden floors. A smell caught my nose. It was familiar, like a hug from my father.
It was a cigar. “I’ll see you soon,” she laughed like a madwoman.
I grabbed the shirts I’d been laying on and stuffed them along the bottom of the door. We lost the light, but the smell of cigar faded. I moved to the back of the closet, sitting as far from it as I could. Alice crawled with me.
“What’s happening?” she asked.
“She’s smoking the poisoned cigar that was meant to kill Claudius in some ironic death.” The sound of Gertrude coughing joined my words. “She’s committing suicide.” The dogs whimpered and I fought the urge to cry. The scene was playing out in my head. Her and the three little dogs, smoking the cigar. Skipper the border collie who was old, so old. He had to be fifteen and was blind in one eye. Princess the Chihuahua, a toy apple head, with a bit of a biting problem. Simon, the pug. He loved sweaters and snorted like a pig everywhere he went.
“Oh fuck.” Alice crept to the door and stacked more clothes against it before coming back to me. “If the poison gets in, which I don’t think it will, but if it does, I want you to know, you’re way cooler than I thought.”
“Thanks.” I almost smiled at that. “And you are the most badass chick I’ve ever met.”
“I know.” She nodded.
The coughing in the room was joined by a wheeze and a thump. The dogs continued to whimper, and I hoped maybe they were okay. Maybe she hadn’t killed them.
Alice and I turned to each other, neither making a sound but I felt her delicate breath on my lips.
Silence followed the wheeze.
We held our breath, both motionless as we listened.
She was dead.
Gertrude Jacobi was dead.
My heart tightened with suspense and loss. She’d been Aunty Gertrude when I was little. She made me feel like a little princess. She had loved me in her own way, far more than my own mother had ever. She had spoiled me and caressed my hair when the boys wouldn’t play with me.
There was a small loss in her death. It didn’t compete with the loss of Lucas or my brother’s betrayal, but I felt it, nonetheless.
A noise I didn’t know tiptoed into the silence. It was soft at first, a tapping. No snapping.
My stomach joined my heart in the vice as I realized I was wrong. It was crackling.
“Fire!” I jumped up.
“The cigar.” Alice grabbed a shirt and wrapped it around my face. “Try not to breath until we reach the hallway. In case the poison is still there.”
Smelling Lucas on the shirt, my insides tugged, begging me to lie down and let the fire take me.
But I couldn’t.
Somewhere inside me lurked a type of self-preservation I’d ignored the existence of. Or rather I’d misunderstood.
As Alice opened the door, I caught a glimpse of a sweater I’d seen Lucas wear a lot. It was folded neatly on the shelf. I grabbed it and ran after her.
Gertrude was dead on the floor, her face twisted from the coughing and her dogs dead next to her. She’d done the same thing to them. It broke my heart to see it.
The fire was coming up through the floor, the vents. Smoke was billowing in. Her cigar was out and hadn’t caused this.
We rushed into the hall.
“This way,” I whispered and led her to another set of stairs that led down to the prep kitchen. I hated the hallway and was convinced it was haunted when I was little. Now I wished it were.
We rushed down the stairs, not being as quiet as we should. When we reached the back door, there was no one. The guards were gone. I dashed away from Alice, heading for the music room. I ran on my toes and tried not to make sounds. When I got to the great hall, it was empty. No one was here. No voices. Just a bloodstain. I hurried to where Lucas lay in the music room, but he was gone, his body taken.
The smoke was filling up this room too.
“We have to go,” Alice said as she came into the room behind me.
“I have to see one thing.” I hurried to the hallway with the gallery and stared at the portrait. It flashed for a second, death warning me again. Charred faces in a beautiful gilded frame. It switched back and one face stood out more than the others. I stumbled forward, crying again as I made my way to him. I reached up, touching his face, squeezing his sweater, and wishing to everything that granted wishes, every god, every bit of magic the world held, to bring him back.
My heart ached in a way I hadn’t known it could.
“Ophelia!” a voice I would know anywhere called to me.
I dropped to my knees, preparing for the shot in the back.
“Come on, you can’t stay here. You have to leave,” Laertes said quietly. He was close enough that he put a hand on my arm. I spun, swinging at him. I hit him in the chest and the arms and the face, my hands flying.
He didn’t fight.
“How could you?” I screamed at him, my voice ringing off the walls. “He loved you like a brother.”
He grabbed me at that moment, sliding a hand over my lips. His eyes were wide with tears and fear. “It was you or him,” he whispered. “I chose you.”
I had no response for that.
“This was the only way to save you. Alice has everything. Go to her now. Take the tunnel, no one knows about it. Run.”
It was the fourth time someone had said that to me. Run.
He hugged me once, forcing the embrace. I was lost and confused and worried. He kissed me once, a sob escaping his lips. I wondered what piece of himself my brother had traded for this mysterious plan he had. He kissed me again and spun, pushing me away. “Run!”
And I did.
I hurried away to the door where Alice was waiting. The smoke was thicker and the flames were beginning to show. We pushed past it all, hidden by the dirty air. When we had made it into the tunnel, she locked it again. But this time, we ran back to the entrance.
A new vehicle was waiting.
Alice jumped in the driver’s side and I the passenger.
She sped away, driving to a hilltop in the suburbs of the city where the viewpoint of the mansion was the best. She stopped the car and we climbed out, staring at it.
The sun was setting so it wasn’t easy to make out the black plumes of smoke rising above the old place. We couldn’t see the fire, but it seemed bad enough that I suspected there would be nothing left.
The Jacobis were gone.
The kingdom was in ruin.
And I alone was the only one to escape this all.
My brother had survived but at what cost?
He would work for Fortinbras, his soul sold to the devil he didn’t know.
Or did
he?
I wondered if I would ever get answers or if I would live in a ball of confusion.
We fled the city, driving to Boston in silence as I relived a life I’d not spent enough time cherishing. Alice parked at departures at Logan Airport. I wore my wig and glasses, a disguise she’d had ready. My brother had packed us each a bag.
“Goodbye, Princess Ophelia,” Alice said with a wry grin as she walked around the car to me. “It was an honor saving you.”
“Thank you isn’t enough but I’m afraid if I say anything else, I’m going to fall apart.”
“Everyone always discounts the tiny threads holding us together. But those small, trembling strings are the strongest. They’re the last ones holding on when everything else falls apart.” Tears flooded her eyes as she embraced me, whispering into my hair, “You are the most badass chick I’ve ever met.”
Her words destroyed me, but like the trembling string, I held on. One more day and I’d be in London, away from this. I could fall apart safely there.
We kissed and hugged and I left her behind. I left New York and New Denmark and the United States. I left them to kill each other. I chose the black-and-white card.
I understood it now. It was heartbreak and the survival that comes from losing everything. Emptiness.
My entire family was gone.
My friends were dead.
My love that never fully blossomed into anything more than a seedling was dust. Killed by a winter no one saw coming.
No one but death.
And in some twisted fate, I was alive. Death had spared me. Cruelly.
And I didn’t understand why.
But I would.
One day.
Chapter 26
Sunday, August 4
The plane ride was exhausting and painful. It was too quiet and private in my pod. The flight attendants were too efficient, always checking on me, never allowing me a minute to lose myself.
I opened the backpack Laertes had given me and really examined it. There was a burner phone. A flash drive. The passport he’d given me with the name Paige Lansbury, a British citizen who lived in Oxford, and her plane ticket home. A wallet full of cards and identification matching Paige Lansbury along with a couple of thousand in cash. There was the sweater I had stolen from Lucas which I’d stuffed in. A single change of underwear. I’d already removed the glasses and wig from the bag and was wearing them. A book about Oxford with an address printed inside with a date. I assumed it was my brother’s old Oxford guide.
Finally, there was a small picture of my horse from when I was a kid, Hamlet. Mother let me have him for a year and a half before she took him away. She said he became ill and needed to be put down. The time we had together were some of my best memories. He was why I’d gone to the stables the day I tried to kill myself. I needed to be with him. More so I needed someone who loved me.
The realization hit that she let me have him so she might give me something to take away. I wondered if the horse had truly been put down or just given away.
I was numb by the time the plane landed, repeating Alice’s words about tiny strings to keep my eyes open. I rushed through security, with nothing but my small bag. I didn’t have anything to claim. I hailed a cab to the Lanesborough Hotel near Buckingham Palace. It was not where we normally stayed in London, since our family had a gorgeous townhouse in Kensington. But a bed and food and a place to cry alone for a few days didn’t sound so bad.
When I finally stepped into the room, I let it happen. I let my guard down and let the flood gates open. I unleashed my fury and aching and distress. Collapsing onto the floor, I wept until there was only sound, no tears.
It was impossible that any of this was real.
But it was and I needed to know why. I stood up and walked to the bed, grabbing the backpack and taking out the phone. There was a single number with a code name, his from when we were small kids. I dialed Laertes who would be known as Dark Wing, apparently.
“How was your flight, senator?”
“Fine,” I lied, taken aback by the greeting.
“And you’re satisfied with everything?”
“No, I want answers.”
“Can we schedule something for this afternoon? Perhaps around four my time? That’s one in the afternoon for you.” He was really throwing it off by saying I was on California time.
“Fine.” I hung up the phone. There were no texts or anything else. Just his number and contact name as Dark Wing.
I grabbed the USB and took it to the TV, hooking it up as he had done, only it involved Google for me.
It was a single video.
I started it, bringing my brother’s face to the screen. “Hi, O.” He waved. He wore a white shirt and a nervous look. “I guess if this is playing, I am either dead or Lucas is. I really hope Alice was able to get you out of Fortinbras’ penthouse.” He furrowed his brow, laughing bitterly. “You really are predictable. I’m going to miss that until I can take care of things here.”
He swallowed hard, pausing.
“So from what I’ve managed to figure out, we were pretty correct on a lot of things. Mother and Claudius murdered King Hamlet. Paige knew about it. She wanted to blackmail Mother into letting you come to Brown with her. I think she saw it as your ticket to freedom. She didn’t tell you because she didn’t want you ruining it with your shit lying.” He laughed.
I laughed too, wiping tears from my face.
“Paige had been following Mother for a while and happened to catch her discussing killing Hamlet with Claudius and she had recorded it. That meeting between Mother and Paige, was mother responding to the blackmail threats Paige sent. Mother was trying to buy her off. Half a million dollars for the evidence and to leave and never see you again. I suspect Mother lowballed expecting Paige to turn her down because she showed up there intending to kill Paige. In the same way I suspect Paige believed the docks were so heavily recorded, Mother wouldn’t dare commit a crime there.”
I nodded, seeing it. That made sense.
“Mother was going to leave Father for Claudius. She was seeing a lawyer in New York and about to ask for the divorce and take her share first. I don’t believe she would’ve ever told anyone I was Claudius’ son. It would have ruined her chances at getting her portion of the estate. I honestly believe we all ruined the plan. Us, Paige, Lucas, and Horatio. She panicked and killed Father and burned the house down, hoping to kill us in there too. But Horatio—” He didn’t finish the thought.
Instead, he took a deep inhale and rubbed his face.
“I’m tired, O. I’ve been up for days, trying to do all the things I now see need to be done. Finish the work Father was doing.” He nodded though I didn’t know what he was talking about. “I’m going to bring them all down. I’m going to end this. I hope one day you can forgive me for how this had to happen. I really hope you know I love you so much. And all I want is to keep you safe and as far from this as I can get you. Your new email is California girl forty-two at Gmail dot com. The password is the place we met Mr. Dupree. Seemed fitting.” He waved his hand once and the video cut out.
I lifted the phone and logged into my new email account.
There were ten emails from Dark Wing. I almost rolled my eyes but the business was too grave, and my eyes were already burning from crying for weeks on end.
The first email was an itinerary. I would leave London tomorrow and take an arranged car to an estate purchased by multiple layers of shell corporations and finally a Mrs. Lila Jennings. She was the owner of the estate and the bottom layer of the companies.
He explained the estate was a fifteen-minute bike ride through beautiful country to Oxford. A city he and Lucas had loved more than anything. In his deepest fantasies he imagined they might stay there and hide out forever. He was gifting this to me. His dream.
The second email was a list of things people had to do to survive. It made me smile but also realize how short I was on experience. Pay electric bills and phone bills
and register for mail and see the accountant he would arrange for me. He listed websites for salaries for cleaners and cooks and groundskeepers. How to find good ones. It was silly things like lists of pantry items and books to learn to cook.
Curled up in my comfy bed, I made my way through the emails, drowning in the common sense I didn’t understand and reading it in my brother’s voice.
I didn’t forgive him.
I couldn’t.
He had taken something from me that I would never get back. And then he didn’t answer the question I had about why. Why kill Lucas?
The very last email was a video link. I clicked it, cringing when the screen flashed as a grainy, shaky video played of my mother and Claudius kissing on what Horatio had called Dock 86. I recognized some of the cargo, it was the same as when Paige was murdered. The angle wasn’t the same as the other camera’s. I assumed this was a cell phone. And I would bet my money it was Paige’s.
Clearly, unaware they were being filmed as Claudius didn’t keep his back to the camera. Mother asked something quietly. He laughed, the sound was hollow and tinny. “Of course, I’ve turned off the cameras.” It was the perfect thing for him to say. “Why did you want to meet here? It’s too soon.”
“We need to talk about how badly Hamlet’s death went yesterday. Killing the dog with him is suspicious as hell.” Her voice made me cower.
“I told Gertrude it was a broken heart. Romeo died from watching his master dying in front of him. I have the coroner taking care of it. We can’t take risks meeting this way. Not until your divorce is settled. You have to distance yourself from me while I take over the kingdom. Then you can be my queen.” He kissed her and lifted her onto the hood of his car and began undoing his pants. I was about to avert my eyes when the video changed.
The TV dulled and the image changed to Paige’s murder. The gunshots still made me jump and the sight of my dead friend brought tears to my eyes.
The next part of the video was paperwork, someone holding a phone over a desk I recognized from somewhere. The papers were a DNA test, confirming my brother was not my father’s son, but in fact Claudius Jacobi’s. The table was my mother’s desk in her parlor. Had she done the test? Was this her video from the phone my father took off her? It didn’t matter now.