I carefully rise, lifting the shovel and heft it in both hands.
* * *
The sitting room looks different when I enter: the log fire roars on, the Christmas tree lights twinkle in hazy halos, and beneath, brightly wrapped presents silently wait, but now all of the furniture has been moved to the edges of the room. All that remains in the centre is a rug, wet with gasoline, and two armchairs facing each other.
In the armchair facing me sits an unconscious Robert Davison Holbeck, his head peacefully resting against the high back of the chair. Beside him stands his son, Edward. If Edward did not have a shotgun pointed directly at Robert’s head, the scene might easily resemble one of the family’s historic oil paintings.
‘Harry,’ Edward says, with an oddly welcoming tone, as he takes in my blood-and mud-smeared appearance. ‘It’s been a long night, hasn’t it? But you made it.’ His voice has a sardonic lilt to it that I do not recognize, which gives me the distinct impression that I’m meeting this man for the first time.
There are a million things I could say to him, that I want to ask him, but only one question really matters.
‘How long did you know?’ I ask, careful not to play the idiot. ‘What I was?’ I’m pretty sure we both know what’s going on here; I just need some of the gaps filled.
‘Very early,’ he says gently. ‘I had you vetted the day after we met. A week later I had everything. But in a sense I knew from the beginning. I felt it. Your strength, your loyalty, your love. I loved you the night I saved you but by God did I love you more when I found out what you were capable of. How you responded under pressure. That man took from you, but you took straight back, without hesitation. What you could do for love, what you had done—’ he breaks off with a shake of the head. ‘I spent a lifetime looking for you. Looking for someone I could be honest with, finally be myself with.’
Robert stirs slightly in the seat beside him, but Edward’s focus is on me. I don’t know what his plan is, but I know I need to keep his attention.
‘But you weren’t honest,’ I nudge gently, careful to stay the right side of empathetic. ‘All this time you knew about me, but you said nothing. Why?’ I ask, and in spite of everything I hear the rattle of emotion in my voice, because however twisted his thought process was or is, I loved him.
‘I wanted you to tell me first. It might seem childish, but I wanted you to trust me enough to show me who you were,’ he answers. ‘Then I would know what I felt was real. But you never said a word, did you?’
A sickening wave of guilt hits me in spite of what he has done, and who I have found him to be, because he is right: I have never, in my life, trusted anyone with my truth. Least of all the people I have loved. I feel myself bristle at the accusation.
‘I was scared you wouldn’t love me. That I’d lose you if you knew,’ I tell him honestly. ‘Isn’t that what you felt too? You didn’t trust that I could love you. The real you. If I knew what you had done, that you had killed Bobby and Lucy, and Alison, and Gianna. And all the others.’
He looks away fleetingly. ‘I didn’t kill Bobby.’
‘You had something to do with it.’
‘Yes,’ he says, taking the hit with a strange, disarming honesty. ‘He wasn’t taking Adderall. I was slipping it to him, in his meals back at the apartment. I found a way to make the drugs interact. He would never have taken a stupid drug like that. I think they all knew, afterwards. Dad knew. He was pulling away from what Dad wanted. He would have taken the company, everything, in the wrong direction. I wanted to take him out of the game, that’s all. I wanted to force him to step aside, for his health; I wanted to break him. But it went much further than I anticipated; he had a mind of his own and I lost control of things. I tried to stop him that day; I told him it was all in his head, what he was feeling wasn’t real, but it was too late. He wasn’t listening. It was my first time and I made mistakes. I didn’t mean to kill my brother. He did that to himself.’