Chapters 1 and 2

I edited a bit of Chapter 1 and decided to post that as well. If you've already read it, then go ahead and scroll down to Chapter 2. If you need to be reminded of what the hell is going on in the story, or if you hadn't read it yet, then go ahead and start with Chapter 1. Let me know what you think! Enjoy!

Chapter 1

            It was never my intention to return to my father’s house. The old mansion was filled with bad memories and ghosts of a past long forgotten. I lost so many things in there, so many precious belongings. It was there that I had lost a piece of my heart.

When I left for the last time, or what I thought would be the last time, I stormed out of those massive oak doors without ever glancing back, not even for a second. I was seventeen back then, a mere child, alone and frightened. Now I’m twenty-five, a man, still alone, still very frightened.

            The cab driver at the train station didn’t believe it when I first told him. “108 Pleasant Valley Road, please,” I said as I slammed the door shut behind me. The car’s interior was warm but not warm enough. I rubbed my palms together, trying to ebb the winter cold from my hands. When I left Queens, I was overcome with the dreadful suspicion that I had forgotten something. It’s a normal fear, one that I believe everyone experiences before departing on a long trip. This time though my emotions spoke the truth. I had forgotten to pack my leather gloves, a horrible thing to forget in the middle of January. Fortunately, I had a pea coat and beanie, both of them black and woolen, to shield the rest of me.

            “108 Pleasant Valley Road?” The driver turned to look at me, one hand glued to the wheel, the other around the back of his passenger seat. He was an older man, probably in his late 60s, with coarse stubble running along his jaw, cheeks, and upper lip. Long, gray hair protruded from underneath his red beanie, which was pulled down to bushy eyebrows. Dark bags sagged below his eyes, and in his breath were faint traces of rum. The stench should’ve sent me running, but I remained in my seat. “Is this some sort of joke?” he asked, scowling. There was something in that deep, gruff voice of his, some unidentifiable factor, that told me he was uneducated.

            “What’s so funny about it?”

            “Well…nothing. But you said 108 Pleasant Valley Road.”

            “Yes. That’s where I need to go.” ‘Yes.’ Never ‘Yeah.’

            The man gave a brief pause. “Why?”

            Again, I should’ve exited the cab. The man was boorish and intrusive, but instead, I chose to counteract his rudeness with patience. “I live there.”

            The driver wrinkled his red nose with confusion. I felt certain that alcohol was the catalyst for its color, not the cold. “You?” The man looked me up and down, from my beanie to my brown leather boots. “OK, seriously. Is this a joke?”

 “No. It’s not a joke.”

“How the hell did you afford it?” The way he said “you” was so condescending that I felt as if he had spat the word in my face. He took a second to ponder the logic. “Well I guess after what happened, the price must’ve gotten knocked down a bit. But still. It can’t be that cheap. By the way, you do know what happened there, don’t you?”

            His questions were leading to a conversation that I didn’t want to have. My identity was something that I had always sought to stray from. It was like a very dark, very large shadow, constantly shrouding me in its shade. My name was just one of the reasons I left home. But in this case, I decided to make an exception. I needed someone to bring me to my destination, and this was the only taxi at the train station. “I didn’t buy it,” I explained. “I inherited it. Can we please just get going?”

            “Inherited it?” A mixture of understanding and intrigue suddenly illuminated the driver’s face. “You’re related to Charles McCormick? Who are you, his son?”

            I sighed and reached numb fingers for the door handle.

            The driver lifted his hands into the air, as if conceding.  “OK, OK, I get it. No more questions. No need to get feisty. I’m just curious, is all. Just sit back and relax. I’ll bring you to the house.” And so I withdrew my hand from the door handle and away we went.

We traveled in silence, though it was never truly quiet. My head was buzzing with troubled thoughts and agonizing memories. From the darkest corners of my mind, I could hear my father’s voice bellowing at me. I could see the shadows lurking in the halls, always shifting, always present. I spent the entirety of the trip staring out my window, but every now and then, my peripherals would catch the driver glancing at me from his rear view mirror. I’m sure his head was buzzing noisily as well; buzzing with questions and curiosity. Thankfully, he never spoke. The next time he did was to tell me that we had arrived. But I had already known that, ever since we made the right onto Reid’s Hill. Whenever I glimpsed that street sign, I would get a horrible, sinking feeling in the pit of my chest. And then I knew…I was on my way home.

After that right turn, my stomach contorted until it felt exactly how Reid’s Hill looked. We followed the street’s twists and curves, winding this way and that. There were times where I was certain that the rum would cause the cabby to veer off the path and into the trunk of a tree. Luckily, we managed to avoid that potentially fatal scenario.  

The road, which was as narrow as a road could possibly be, was in the boondocks, in a desolate, wooded area that sat on the outskirts of town. It was, quite literally, in the middle of nowhere. The nearest store was a thirty minute drive, though cars were seldom seen here. The road spanned approximately twenty miles and held only five houses, all of them humongous. And one of them now belonged to me. Besides that, there was very little life on Reid’s Hill, save for the abundance of trees that ran along either side of the street. Back here, there were no neighborhoods, no street lights or traffic lights, not even a stop sign. The only other road in the area was the one to which I was now heading. There were no cyclists or joggers, no neighbors on an afternoon stroll, no children playing in the street. Every now and then, we would pass the opening of a driveway, which eventually led to one of the mansions. Other than that, it was a dead, vacant place, especially during winter. Without the greens of a summer forest, the area appeared dreary and foreboding. The trees reminded me of black skeletons, their empty boughs reaching out like gnarled, groping fingers. Growing up in this area, I felt as if I had been shunned from society, like my family and I had been exiled into the forest for some ghastly crime.

Up ahead, on the side of the road, I spotted the decaying carcass of a male deer. Presumably, most people would turn away, too disgusted to look on, but I was infatuated by the sight. One of the animal’s legs had snapped clean off, as if it was more no more than a brittle twig. Its mouth was gaping; but not as much as the enormous hole in the deer’s torso, where it was rotting from the inside out. I absorbed it, engraved the image into my memory for the entire ten seconds that it took us to reach the carcass and drive past it. Perhaps I would use the visual for one of my stories. The next sight to meet my eyes, however, was one much more unsettling: the end of Reid’s Hill. Straight ahead lied only a blockade of woods. There was only one way to go now. Left would lead me to my destination, carrying me back to the hell that I had escaped several years prior…

Pleasant Valley Road, they called it. How ironic; living on this street had been anything but pleasant. Nevertheless, I was home.

The driver turned left onto the street, though I had never really thought of it in that way. This path took you directly to the front gate, to the only house on the paved trail. My house. Because of this, I had always perceived Pleasant Valley Road as a continuation of my driveway, not as a street.

It was at this point when the cabby said, “Well, we’re here.”

And so we were. It was another narrow path, straight but precipitous. The taxi climbed up the steep hill, up to where the only thing that awaited me was a dead end. The mansion lingered ominously in the distance, while at the same time looming closer and closer with every second. Even from the bottom of Pleasant Valley Road, the house was still in scope, its many towers and spires reaching for the darkening sky above. My body shuddered, though not from the cold.

The cab slowed to a stop before the main entrance. For most people, this was the barrier, the spot where Pleasant Valley Road ended and the driveway to McCormick Manor began. It was a fifteen foot tall, wrought iron gate, as black as the approaching night. Its bars were twisted extravagantly into a sea of iron swirls. On the left door was a large, golden “C” imbedded into the iron, on the right a golden “M.” It was the original gate of Charles McCormick I, my great, great grandfather, with a few technological features added by Charles McCormick III, my late father. The gate was stuck in between two stone columns, each of which was topped with a black lamppost and security camera. The lights wouldn’t flicker on until 7 PM—that was how my father had set it—but the surveillance cameras were always on, always watching.

The columns on either side of the gate stretched out into walls, stretched and stretched until they enclosed the entire estate, as if being in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by a gigantic forest, wasn’t reclusive enough. In the right wall was a second wrought iron gate, a significantly smaller one that bore a keyhole. This was the entrance to the gatehouse. There, the guards would wait and watch for approaching visitors. Or at least they used to. The gatehouse had been empty since my early adolescence. That was before my father decided to fire every worker and servant on the grounds, before the guards’ jobs were made obsolete by the innovations that were flaunted on the left column: a key pad and an intercom.

When I glanced into the rear view mirror, I could see the astonishment in the driver’s eyes. “So what now? You got to enter a code or something?”

“I do. Hold on.” I reached a hand into my left jeans pocket. My fingers groped a set of keys, approximately two dozen of them, one for each car in the house. But the most significant of them all was the master key.

“I haven’t been this close to this place in about…” The cabby took a second to reflect on his last visit to McCormick Manor. “…forty-five years.”

I rummaged through my pocket a bit more until I felt the icy touch of some forgotten loose change. Slightly irritated, I withdrew my hand, empty. “Forty five years? What brought you here?”

“Curiosity, I suppose. Me and a few of my buddies would sneak over here, just to get a look at the place. We were only dumb kids back then, ya know.” He gave a tight-lipped smile as he recalled younger days and blithe times. “But still…” His voice trailed off as he absorbed the sight before him. “…it would amaze us every time.”

I stuck a hand into my right pocket and groped another set of keys. I smiled. These keys opened the door to my Queens apartment, a small, one bedroom space that cost a mere $1000 a month. The other set unlocked my multi-million dollar mansion. It was as though each pocket represented a different world, a different life. Most people would probably toss away the former keys for the latter. I, however, didn’t plan on staying at McCormick Manor for very long. Or at least, so I hoped.

At last, I found what I was looking for, buried beneath my leather wallet. My fingers closed on the slip of paper.  “I don’t suppose you ever got past this gate?” I asked.

“No, no. We didn’t dare climb the walls. Too high.” After a brief hesitation, the cabby added, “And illegal too, of course. Besides, if we ever got caught, old man McCormick—I guess that was your grandfather—would’ve hung us by our feet from the highest window in the house!” His grin became reflected in the rear view mirror, permitting me a glimpse of grotesque, yellow teeth. “There were always the craziest stories about old man McCormick.”

A grimace found its way upon my face. I, too, had heard the stories about Charles McCormick II, most of them from the lips of my own father. There wasn’t a snippet of truth to any of them. I knew my grandfather, perhaps better than anyone else, but I wasn’t about to delve into that now, with a slightly drunken stranger. My father on the other hand…he was the tough one.

“My grandfather was a tough man from what I’ve heard” was my only reply. I retrieved a clenched fist from the depths of my pocket and climbed out of the cab. The cold bit into my flesh and made me shiver. I sprinted to the main entrance. Just to appease my curiosity, I grasped the iron bars and pushed. The doors moved an inch before clanking to a stop. The gate’s lock was as secure as ever. My neck craned back so that I could glimpse the top of the gate. It towered a good ten feet above me. Well, nine feet and three inches to be exact. Even if the gate was unlocked, I doubt that I possessed the strength to push it open.

I hurried to the left column, where the intercom and key pad awaited. I could sense the security camera watching me overhead. It was like the eye of my father, glowering down at me with typical disapproval. I glanced at the piece of paper clenched in my fingers. 0523, it read. With trembling fingers, I punched the digits into the keypad. It felt…odd to hit those numbers. The code had always been 0124, my mother’s birthday. But that was eight years ago, before I vacated the premises and vowed never to return. Never truly isn’t long enough…

The sound of slow, steady creaking drifted into my ears as the gate doors pushed open. It was then that I came to a sudden realization. I gaped at the paper, no longer aware of the cold, no longer in touch with my emotions.

From behind me came a loud honk. Startled, I spun around to find the cabby waving me impatiently into the car. I followed his gesture and climbed back into my seat.

“Are you alright, kid?” He hit the gas, propelling us through the gate, bypassing the vacant gatehouse, a brick shack that was probably nicer than most people’s homes. “What were you doing, just standing there?”

 I could hear the gate creaking shut behind us. Once the code was punched in, the visitor had about fifteen seconds to pass through the gate before the doors automatically began to close. “Yes. I’m fine.” But that was a lie. I felt befuddled, lost. My father had never shown any indication that he loved me, not even a shred of concern for my existence. That’s why, when his lawyer gave me the gate’s code, it never occurred to me that its numbers coincided with my birthday. As disturbed as he was, my father loved my mother, there was no denying that. He adored her, worshipped the ground she walked on. And so, in her honor, he made her birthday the entrance code to McCormick Manor. It was almost poetic in a way. It was as if he were trying to say that she had been the code, the gateway, to his blackened heart. So what did this mean for me? Did this miniscule detail imply that my father did in fact care for me? I stared at the slip of paper in my hand, as if I were expecting to find the answer scribbled somewhere upon it. Perhaps it would come to me during my stay in the old house. Frustrated, I shoved the paper into my pea coat pocket, along with my confusion.

“Holy shit. This place is huge!”                     

Huge was an understatement. I lifted my eyes to observe the land that I had never expected to see again. The driveway was long and wide, wide enough for two cars to drive abreast, and was comprised of red and grey pavers. But there was one thing that it sorely missed: the cherry blossom. My mother’s favorite tree. Any other season, the cherry blossoms would stand on either side of the driveway, from the front gate all the way to the house. Their boughs, normally covered with gorgeous pink flowers, would stretch overhead to create a sort of canopy. The trees were almost like a welcoming party, ushering the guest toward McCormick Manor. Their beauty seemed to promise the visitor happiness and good tidings. Unfortunately, the house had never given me much of either. But during winter, the trees were skeletons, bare and dead. There was a foreboding eeriness emanating from their black trunks that made me feel like a trespasser in my own home. And beyond these trees was nothing, nothing but acres among acres of brown grass, long and unkempt.

Finally, my eyes settled on the main attraction. I didn’t want to see it, but we were now so close, or maybe the house was just so big, that it could no longer be ignored. The mansion had been in my view since the bottom of Pleasant Valley Road, like a permanent fixture in the horizon. Why anyone would want a house so large was beyond me, though I did know the who, how, and when of the story. Built in 1907, the mansion was the birth child of a lucrative oil business, a monument that was erected by Charles McCormick I. The establishment stood daunting and humongous on approximately 3,000 acres of wasted land. The amount of trees that had to be chopped down in order for this monstrosity to exist is both astronomical and ungodly. The house was constructed in a chateauesque style. Its steeply-pitched roofs and towers were grey, its walls a stucco beige. Its plethora of windows was dark as pitch, making the house seem even gloomier than usual. But its most enormous attribute was its absurdity. Beautiful though it was, the house was a colossal joke. It was too huge for any normal mind to fathom, which would adequately explain my cab driver’s amazement.

“This is...I mean …excuse me, but holy shit…wow…” He shook his head and chortled, too flabbergasted for words.

The dead cherry blossoms dwindled away as we reached the end of the driveway, a giant cul-de-sac with a fountain standing at its center. I’ve always found this fountain creepy, especially now, without any water streaming down it. At the very top sat a little cherub figure who was anything but adoring. He bore a mischievous grin and eyebrows that were as steeply-arched as McCormick Manor’s roofs.

The cab swung around the fountain and halted at the front doors. I stared at them, reluctant and wary. I couldn’t see his face, but I knew that the driver had joined my gaze. “This is really some place you got here. I can’t even imagine having something like this. You’re a lucky man. Hell, you must be one of the wealthiest people in the country!”

“I suppose I am.”

His eyes were now on my face. The envy inside of them burned into my flesh, while the faint stench of rum wafted into my nostrils. “Well, that’ll be $44.75. I bet that’s nothing more than a penny for you, huh?”

I retrieved the wallet from my jeans. I pulled out $100 before returning the leather item into my pocket. “Don’t tell anybody that you took me here today.”

He instantly snatched the money. “Kid, I don’t even know your first name. What is your name anyway? You another Charles?”

His unsavory assumption prompted me to say, “No. I’m Andrew.” The greatest gift my father ever gave me, one far better than this oversized mansion, was not making me Charles McCormick IV. Although, I suppose I should really be thanking my mother for that. Apparently, she had despised the name Charles.

“Well Andrew McCormick, you have nothing to worry about. I won’t tell no one that I brought you here, not a soul. You have my word on that.”

I thanked him, even though I knew he was lying. I was just about to exit the vehicle when the driver cried, “Hey, wait! How am I supposed to get out of here? I don’t have a code or anything.”

“The gate opens automatically when someone approaches it from the inside.”

The cabby seemed both impressed and enlightened. “Ohhhhh. Got ya.” After wishing me good luck, and being sure to mention “If you ever need someone to housesit, or if you ever just want to give away a million dollars, call me!” and then handing me his phone number, I climbed out of the taxi and closed the door. I walked to the rear of the car to find the trunk already jutting open. I retrieved the navy blue suitcase, set it down on the red and grey pavers, and shut the trunk. Almost immediately, the taxi took off. It went around the cul-de-sac, up the driveway, and through the dead cherry blossoms, shrinking into the distance.

I turned to confront my old nemesis. I was now alone. Alone with the house and all of the memories we shared together. At least for the time being. The weather was cold but not cold enough to hurry me into McCormick Manor. Instead, I stood there gaping at those immense oak doors. They were like the jaws of a predator waiting to swallow me whole. Four stories of windows glared down at me, balefully. The old beast had probably gotten a whiff of my scent, both familiar and new, coming down the driveway. Its jaws were most likely salivating, starving for a new soul to consume. I pulled up the retractable handle of my suitcase, my grip on it so tight that my knuckles began to blanch. With a deep breath, I took my first step forward, and then another, and then another. Before I knew it, I was walking, walking toward the entrance. My heart thundered loudly in my chest, as though announcing the onslaught of a vicious storm. I only hoped that I could survive it. I knew what awaited me inside, and I was uneager to confront it. But I had to, needed to.

I had stormed out those doors eight years ago, absolutely certain that I would never return. And now here I was, about to walk through them again, almost as if I had never left.

           

           

           

Chapter 2

            It was a golden afternoon, but you would never know it. The maroon curtains were drawn together so tightly that not even a ray of sunlight could shimmer through.  The children’s laughter resonated throughout the enormous foyer. They were only two boys, but the way their howling echoed off the dark yellow walls, you would think there were more. They ran gleefully down the stairs, one boy a few paces ahead of the other. Coated with a maroon carpet, the staircase was wide with an iron railing on either side. Step after step after step, the boys descended; the staircase felt endless, until finally they stepped onto sleek, gleaming marble tiles. Most of them were white, some black. If you peered over the second floor railing, the one overlooking the foyer, you would see a giant, black swirl in the center of the white floor. It was like a massive serpent. Its head started out small and narrow, but its tail grew thicker and larger as it twisted around and around the room. Looking down, you would also glimpse an array of ostentatious items, the sort of things that you would come across in an antique store but wouldn’t touch for fear of accidentally breaking them. There were vases, big ones and small ones, oiled paintings, wooden furniture, and farce plants that looked so real, one would think they had been placed on the wrong side of the house. Hanging from the ceiling, high overhead, were iron chandeliers, their lights encased in a dozen glowing orbs.

“Time out! Hold on a second!” exclaimed the boy who was lagging behind. He slowed down his running so that he may catch his breath. He bent over and grasped knobby knees, his chest heaving.

The boy in front spun around. He crossed his arms and shook his head, staring at his friend in disapproval. He was just as exhausted, his breaths just as heavy, but the child tried to conceal it. “Come on! I thought you said you were fast!” he taunted.

“I am!” snapped the one who had halted the game. Breathing deeply, he feverishly sought to calculate his opponent’s next move. His eyes darted to the massive oak doors that stood to his left. No, he thought. He won’t go through there. The doors are too big and heavy to waste time opening. His gaze dashed into the dining room, into the billiards room, into one of the living rooms. The foyer led to them all, through large arches adorned with extravagant molding.

It was when the boy looked into the music room that his eyes met those of a servant; a man whose name he did not know, though he saw him nearly every day. The butler spoke to him, not with his lips but with his expression. It warned him, pleaded with him, not to run through the house.

“Are you almost ready?” asked the second boy, arms still folded. “I’m getting bored.”

Suddenly, the laggard smirked. He had just conceived a brilliant idea. “No. I’m not rea—TIME IN!” Those last two words seemed to come out of nowhere, blurting from his mouth, meshing with the ones that preceded it. He lunged forward, hands outstretched. But the other boy was too quick. He whirled out of reach and ran through the foyer, chuckling merrily as he did. “You’ll have to do better than that if you want to catch me!” he called back.

Frowning, the boy chased after him. Around and around the foyer, the duo went. The sound of their thudding footsteps filled the room. The laggard’s agitation pushed him forward, motivated him to go faster. He had to catch his friend, he just had to. The boy grew closer, closer, so close. His foe was only a few inches away now. He extended a hand, his fingers, reaching out for his enemy’s shoulder, reaching, reaching…

And then his hip collided into the edge of a table.

When the glass shattered, the noise that came was catastrophic. The boy in front skidded to a stop and whirled around. His friend was already at a standstill, both hands clutching an aching hip. But what filled his eyes wasn’t pain. It was fear. Together, the two friends gaped at the fragments sprawled across the floor. The foyer’s high walls had amplified the noise, making it sound as if a glass statue had tipped over and broken. But judging by the scarce bits and pieces, it had only been a small item. The glass shards gleamed as brightly as the marble tiles beneath them. A minute ago, these two boys had been the only souls in the foyer. Now, half a dozen servants were suddenly materializing, summoned there by a mess that demanded cleaning.

            “ANDREW!” Stern and dominant, the voice boomed angrily off the walls. There was only one Andrew in the house, yet everyone glanced up when they heard the name.

            The speaker continued down the staircase. With each declining step, the tension in the foyer escalated. Every pair of eyes was on him, following him down, down, down to the marble floor. But his own eyes, hazel, glaring, and fierce, were meant for only one person. The man’s footsteps were slow, torturously slow, but the fury emitting from his body could’ve caused the ground to quake beneath them. His brown hair was slicked to the side and glimmered beneath the chandelier’s lights. He was a tall man, not handsome but not homely either. His suit was a charcoal gray, matched with a black vest and a white and gray striped tie. Both arms were behind his back, his right hand clasped around his left wrist. He was well-groomed and finely polished, from his recently trimmed fingernails to his neatly parted hairstyle. His lips were pursed unpleasantly, a thin moustache hovering above them.

The man stepped onto the marble with shiny, black leather shoes. His heels clicked loudly against the tiles. The sound echoed throughout the foyer, piercing the tension that hung somberly in the air. He weaved around a butler and a maid and walked right through the mess, his feet crunching over broken glass. Not once did his gaze leave the boy’s face.

The man stopped before the boy clutching his hip. For a moment, the two stared at each other, one pair of eyes glowering, the other wide and frightful. “Andrew, did you do this?” The man’s voice was cold, deep, like a chasm in a glacier.

            Eight-year-old Andrew lowered his head shamefully. His hands dropped hopelessly at his sides. His hip was still aching, throbbing, begging to be rubbed, but he was no longer worried about that. “Yeah.”

            “‘Yes’,” corrected his father. “Never ‘Yeah.’”

            Andrew gave a solemn nod of his head to show that he understood.

             “Not to worry, Mr. McCormick. I’ll clean it right up.” A butler—the one who had warned Andrew not to run through the house—rushed over with a broom and standing dustpan. But the disdainful look he received made him stop dead in his tracks.

            “That won’t be necessary. My son will do it. Now leave us. All of you. And leave the broom and dustpan too, Gerald. Martha, come collect your son.” Everyone did as they were told. The servants vacated the foyer. Gerald leaned the broom and dustpan against the wall and then vanished just as quickly as he had appeared. Martha wrapped an arm around her son’s shoulder and led him from the room. The boy gave his friend one last fleeting look before he, too, disappeared. But Andrew was too busy staring at the floor to notice.  

            They now stood alone in the giant room, father and son, with nothing but tension to accompany them. “Tell me. How did you break it?”

            “John and I—”

            “Look at me when you speak.” His father’s voice came as a dangerous growl.  

            Reluctantly, Andrew lifted his gaze to the stern face of Charles McCormick III. “John and I were playing.” His words were as soft and meek as a mouse’s footsteps.

            “Playing what?” Charles demanded.

            “Tag.”

            “Tag? So then you were running through the house?”

“Yea—I mean, yes,” Andrew corrected.

            “‘I’ve told you several times before not to run in the house. You remember me telling you that, don’t you?” The boy said nothing. He hoped that silence would remedy the situation, that in time, the problem would just resolve itself and he would be spared any punishment. Instead, his father brought his hands from behind his back and rested them at his sides, which only made Andrew feel more frightened. Charles took a moment to absorb his son’s shame and fear. For the briefest of moments, the left side of his lip twitched into a smirk. “Do you even know what you broke?”

Andrew bit his lip. He squinted at the glass shards on the floor, trying to piece them back together in his mind. When he couldn’t, he looked at his father with melancholy eyes and shook his head.

“So you broke one of my belongings. And you don’t even know what it was. Do you have any idea what my father would’ve done to me if I had done such a thing?”

Again, the boy shook his head, dreading the answer. Andrew had heard a number of stories about his late grandfather, and none of them were very pleasant. His eyes, wide and anxious, flicked from one of his father’s clenched fists to the other. Charles opened his mouth to speak, but the voice that came was not his own. “That will be enough,” it said.

            Both father and son turned toward the speaker, Andrew looking left and Charles glancing right. “Kaitlin!” The coldness in the man’s voice suddenly dried up and withered away. He gaped at his wife, an appalled look etched into his face. “You should be in bed!”

            “I feel fine, Charles.” Kaitlin McCormick’s words were soft but firm. Ever graceful, she drifted toward her family, her footsteps noiseless in soft, fluffy slippers. She was a slender woman, as beautiful as she was elegant. She was petite, especially beside Charles, yet there was an aura of dominance that hung about her. Her lips were full, her eyes a wondrous amber. Her complexion had always been fair, but today, it looked pale, even sickly. The bags below her eyes spoke of her exhaustion. Though it was only the afternoon, she wore a nightgown, one made from silk as white as her skin. Her hair hung to the mid of her back in brown, natural ringlets. On her body was the most extravagant jewelry that a McCormick could afford. There were diamonds in her ears, golden bracelets clasped around her wrists, and a diamond pendant hanging just above her breasts. Her right hand rested atop her stomach, which was practically bursting through the seams of her nightgown. Kaitlin stared at the broken glass scattered on the floor. “Did you do this, Andrew?”

“Yes.”

She lifted the other hand and placed it gently upon her son’s shoulder.  The large diamond on her ring finger gleamed beneath the chandelier lights, boasting of its immense wealth.  “It’s alright,” she said, soothingly. And with those two little words, all of the fear and tension inside Andrew evaporated, and everything became a bit brighter. It was as if his mother had drawn open the curtains, welcoming sunlight into the foyer so that it could wash over him.

Outraged, a vein bulged from Charles’ temple. “It’s not alright! Look what he did!” He pointed at the mess, as if his fervent wife had somehow failed to see it.

            “It’s only a little bit of glass, Charles,” she said calmly. “And whatever it was, you have the money to buy another.” She squinted curiously at her husband. “Do you even know what it was that Andrew broke?”

            Charles grimaced and heaved his chest defiantly. His cheeks flushed, though whether it was from embarrassment or rage, Andrew could not tell.  “Well, that’s not really the point, is it? Your son was running through the house!”

            “Our son,” she corrected scornfully. “And I’m sure he won’t be running through the house anymore. Isn’t that right, Andrew?”

            The boy adamantly shook his head. “No, I won’t.”

            Kaitlin’s lips curved into a satisfied smile. “See? There you have it. No harm done.”

            Meanwhile, Charles’ own lips were pursed unhappily. “Fine.” He shot Andrew a menacing look, as though blaming him, loathing him, for evading punishment. “But I want this mess cleaned up!” he demanded. And with that, Charles McCormick III stormed away, fists clenched tightly at his sides. His heels clicked raucously against the tiles, but as the distance between he and his family grew, Charles’ footsteps grew fainter and fainter. Before long, there was nothing left to hear.

            Andrew immediately reached for the broom and standing dustpan against the wall. But Kaitlin stole them both from his grasp. “No,” she said pleasantly. “I’ll clean it. I don’t want you to hurt yourself.” She wandered to the mess and began to sweep.

            Andrew watched his mother, admiring her, loving her. Even the way she moved the broom against the floor was so elegant. “I’m really sorry about the mess,” he apologized sincerely.

            “It’s alright, Andrew,” she assured him, her gaze fixed on the broken glass. “But you have to follow your father’s rules. Please, please, please, don’t run through the house anymore.”

            “I won’t.” He watched a fragment of glass get brushed into the dustpan. “For a minute, I was scared that…” He bit his lip to contain his words. He couldn’t speak his mind. He wanted to, but he couldn’t, he shouldn’t.

            Kaitlin’s amber eyes raced to her son’s face. “You were scared that what?” she asked, her tone deathly serious.

            “I shouldn’t say. It was a stupid thought. I was just scared.”

            “Tell me,” she insisted.

The young boy sighed. Somewhere in that deep breath was the courage he needed to finish his sentence. “I was afraid that Dad was going to hit me.”

The broom and dustpan suddenly fell to the floor with a clatter. Dust and glass skittered out of the pan, but Kaitlin didn’t seem to care. She hurried to her son. One hand gripped the side of his face, the other ran through his dark brown curls. She stared deep into his hazel eyes, those eyes that reminded her so much of her husband’s. “That will never happen,” she told him. “Do you understand me? I will never let him hurt you. You or your little brother.” Her eyes dropped to her swollen belly. Then she gave Andrew a smile of compassion, of love, a smile that only a mother could produce. “As long as I am here,” she began, “he will never, ever hurt you.”