All was in place for a cheerful family gathering in the living room, beneath oil paintings of the generations of Croft men whose predatory assaults on the natural resources of British Columbia over the past 150 years had yielded the family wealth. One of the portraits was so large it had a set of drapes that could protect it from sunlight so that the oils wouldn’t sustain cumulative damage. On this morning, the drapes were bunched open, revealing the original Albert Croft.
“Shall I ring for more tea?” my mother asked, sitting neatly on the couch with her knees pressed together and slightly sideways. Behind her, from the massive portrait, Albert looked sternly down, as if assessing whether her social niceties would reach his standards. “Winchester?”
I held back a sigh. My life—from the oil portraits to the little silver bell she held ready to summon a maid—was a cliché. Hypocrite that I was, I sipped at a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice from the breakfast tray that had just been delivered.
My father shook his head and refused to sit. He paced behind her couch. “I’m not interested in wasting much time this morning. Whatever Jace has called us to discuss needs to be finished by…”
He made a show of extending his left arm from his perfectly tailored suit so that he could look at his Daniel Roth Ellipsocurvex Tourbillon watch. All $150,000 worth of it. The semioval case was distinctive enough that anyone familiar with the world’s most expensive watches would understand immediately what he was wearing. That excluded more than 99 percent of the population, which was one of the reasons to wear that kind of watch. Insiders liked having ways to signal status to other insiders, because that was the ultimate type of status: walking around with something so exclusive that the peasants couldn’t understand how exclusive.
“This won’t take long,” I said. “It starts with asking why Mother would send me an anonymous email directing me to ask questions about what happened at the hospital when Bentley was born.”
“What?” Mother said. Her voice held alarm.
“What?” Winchester said. His voice held anger.
I was sitting in a leather chair off to the side. I didn’t want to be opposite Mother on the couch and my father pacing behind her. That would put me in direct line with my imperious ancestors and their misguided attempts at immortality via the oil paintings, and I was tired of seeing those ancestors and their smugness.
“Mother,” I said. “It wasn’t difficult to track down the source of the email. Heard of something called an ip address?”
“No,” she said.
“Exactly,” I said. “There’s no doubt it came from your computer, but what I can’t figure out is why you wanted me—or anyone—to dig up what happened at the hospital.”
“Perhaps we do need tea,” she said.
“My question is not going to go away,” I said.
Winchester had stopped pacing and was staring at her with a peculiar intensity. It was obvious that he too wanted the answer.
She spoke in a brittle voice. “I’ve hated your father for a long time. That’s no secret in this household. But divorce was not an option. There’s a binding prenuptial in place, and without sufficient cause for divorce, it would have cost far more than I wanted the Croft fortune to lose.”
She made sure to focus on me as she spoke, as if pretending Winchester wasn’t in the room was a way to pretend he didn’t even exist. “Your father is a clever, clever man. He’s always had his eye on the bigger prize—the Croft fortune and all that it gives him. I’m sure he’s been tempted many times to have an affair, but he knows that would trigger one of the clauses in the prenuptial agreement, and I’d be able to divorce him without a huge settlement.”
Her smile became as brittle as her voice. “Ever since I was little, I was taught that the most important thing in my life was the Croft fortune. That nothing I did should ever threaten that legacy.”
This was no surprise to me. I’d been taught the same thing.
“Another reason for a low-settlement divorce was if he committed a criminal act,” she said. “Which he did at the hospital when Bentley was born. At the time, I didn’t hate your father the way I do now. So I went along with it and was bound by a confidentiality agreement.”
Understanding washed over me. “But if someone else revealed the criminal act, and it couldn’t be proved you had led that someone else to knowledge about the crime, then you wouldn’t be in legal trouble for breaking the agreement, and your divorce wouldn’t drain anything from the Croft fortune.”
“I don’t deserve that scorn in your voice,” she said. “Your life and Bentley’s life would be much better without him in our lives. I have been a much better mother to you than Winchester has been a father. I refuse to ask forgiveness for sending that email and trying to expose him without it looking like I was behind it.”
Just as I would refuse to ask her to apologize. We weren’t that type of family.
“Then your tactic worked,” I said. “Yes, I know what happened at the hospital. But did you know that Dr. Evans has been blackmailing Father all these years because of it?”
Mother waved it away. “I suspected, but all I cared about was that the amount never increased. Evans didn’t get greedy, and I was fine leaving that can of worms unopened. Instead, I’d rather hear from you what you discovered.”
“Of course you would,” I said. “It’s going to save you about half a billion dollars.”
“Think of it instead as taking that half billion away from your father,” she said, as if he wasn’t in the room. “Doesn’t that make you feel better? So go ahead. Tell both of us what you know.”
“How about we spare ourselves the dramatics,” my father said as he reached into his suit jacket. He’d stopped pacing behind Mother. “Yes, after he was born I tried switching Bentley for another baby. It was obvious that he wasn’t perfect. As I said then, I was just doing it to spare both of us. If I hadn’t been caught, you would have never known. Just like the first time. Instead, we were saddled with Bentley for the rest of our lives.”
Even after learning the truth from Dr. Evans, I still hadn’t gotten over the emotional shock waves. To make sure the world believed his life was perfect, Winchester was willing to discard his own son and switch a baby at birth.
I was struggling to find a way to express my rage at this when, in one swift move, Winchester pulled out a hypodermic needle and jammed it into the meat of my mother’s shoulder. With the sureness of the physician he was, he thumbed the plunger and injected her.
“Winchester,” she said, slapping at her shoulder, “whatever are you expecting to accomplish with…”
Mother didn’t get farther than that. She slumped to her side.
“I knew you’d found out,” my father said to me.
“Yes,” I said. “The detective. I have one question for you. Whose idea was it to put curling irons in my hands?”
“Curling irons?” He was obviously puzzled.
I detested myself for my relief. It told me that I still badly wanted a father to love, and that at least the man in front of me had not been willing to torture me.
“He tried to torture me to find out what you wanted to know,” I said. “You should be more careful about the people you hire.”
“As should you,” he answered.
Touché.
I nodded. Or tried to nod.
He smiled at my slowing reactions. “Evans is a petty man. He took great satisfaction in calling me to tell me about your discussion with him. Instead, it served as a warning. I’ve been prepared for a meeting like this. Needle for your mother. Drugs in the orange juice for you.”
I was fading fast.
“Night-night,” my father said to me. “With both of you out, I’m sure I can rig some kind of accident that will take away all suspicion about your deaths.”
I fought hard to remain conscious. I succeeded just long enough to see Bentley slip out from behind the drapes, holding a baseball bat.
That was ironic. If Bentley were any bigger, he wouldn’t have been able to hide there.
With a mighty swing, he took out the side of my father’s knee. Father screamed and fell sideways, clutching the shattered bone. No way would he walk without major surgery.
“Wow,” Bentley said. “That felt good.”
Then I was gone.