We Fell Apart: A We Were Liars Novel(42)
In the bottom tray is a set of keys.
As quietly as I can, I put the box back where it belongs. Then I unlock the Oyster Office and pull out my computer.
I start by searching for Kingsley Cello Prince of Denmark. The first things that come up are some of the negative reviews June mentioned, from when the painting was displayed at the Whitney Museum. “The painting’s needless gore is not going to be elevated by Cello’s name-check of Shakespeare’s most famous play.” “Better suited to a splatter film.” “Cello imagining himself as both the villain of Hamlet and as victim at the hands of an Asian prince is a strange ploy with unpleasant racial undertones.”
I switch to an image search.
Kingsley’s gallery lists the painting. And even though I’ve played a zillion first-person-shooter video games and watched a good number of horror films, there’s something about the violence in it that makes me catch my breath.
* * *
—
Prince of Denmark shows a scene that Shakespeare never wrote.
It is set in the present day.
A young man with
long black hair and a round face
kneels on a bed covered in indigo linen.
He is shirtless, and his arms are covered in what look like tattoos.
Lying in the bed is a bearded man, presumably Claudius, the king.
He looks like Kingsley.
Hamlet’s knife is raised—
but his victim is
already dead.
Blood soaks the sheets.
Stab wounds cover the king’s chest.
Hamlet is Meer.
And he has killed our father.
* * *
—
The painting is recent. Meer looks just like he looks now.
And Kingsley painted himself as a victim.
Is there something wrong here at Hidden Beach, something far beyond sloth, decay, and neglect—something that would lead Kingsley to paint his son as a murderer?
I make notes in my sketchbook, searching for a connection between the violence attributed to Meer in the painting and the eight million dollars Kingsley doesn’t seem to want. I try to draw connections between the sedative June gave me and Holland’s great-aunt Tipper knowing Kingsley, Meer and Tatum’s reluctance to leave Hidden Beach after high school, Kingsley’s impulse to see me and then his sudden departure.
But I come up empty.
I begin opening the cabinets in the office. I’ve been in this room many times, and I’ve stared at the books and the objects on the shelves, looking for clues to my father’s character, but I’ve never searched behind the closed doors. June has always been downstairs when I’ve had access to the room, or the boys have been sitting here with me, staring at their devices.
I don’t know what I’m looking for. Anything that will help me understand the situation. Maybe a letter from Gabe’s law firm about a pending separation between Kingsley and June, or a receipt for some enormous expense that would explain why there doesn’t seem to be any money. Something.
I’ve been through the cupboards and now I’m shining my flashlight into drawers filled with paper clips and sticky notes.
Nothing important.
I am down on my knees to look in the lowest drawer, which holds mailing labels and spare manila envelopes, when I see the edge of a fat spiral notebook that’s gotten shoved under the desk. I pull it out.
This isn’t Meer’s sketchbook, which is hardbound and basic black, covered with stickers of sharks. And it’s not one of mine, which have graph paper because I like drawing maps. This book has a clothlike brown cover. In block print, at the bottom, it says Cello, Summer 2012.
It is Kingsley’s sketchbook. But why is it shoved under the desk? Did someone hide it here, or did he just drop it before he left town?
I have never seen any of my father’s drawings. He always presents as a skilled, meticulous technician, working in oil paint. He has never offered the media any access to his preparatory materials or to any work that’s not fully finished.
The pictures in the first half of the sketchbook are fairly ordinary: pencil drawings of Glum, asleep, with imagined monsters looming over her. Sketches of trees that are probably somewhere here on the property. Some drawings of Brock, in profile, laughing—maybe studies for a second painting of him.
Then there are pictures of the teenagers who died in the fire. Drawings of Mirren, her cousin Johnny, and Gat, their friend. The first sketches are based on a photo that I saw when I looked up online articles about the tragedy. Kingsley has captured the way Mirren tucks her hair behind her ears, the way Johnny squints into the sun, the way Gat smiles like he has a good secret. Later drawings of the same people deviate from the photograph. Kingsley puts the three of them lying on the beach, their hands across their chests like they’re lying in coffins. Then he tries them on the widow’s walk of an old New England house, all with their backs to an enormous dragon, who curls herself around the house, her mouth open above them.
Then, surprisingly, there is a series of drawings in Sharpie. The thick nib of the permanent marker gives these sketches a much bolder, more cartoonish feel, though the line still looks very much like Kingsley’s. He’s drawn some monsters, some castles—elements of the fairy tales and classics he uses so much in his paintings.
And a piranha plant. With spiky teeth.