Colin’s mind churned the same thought, over and over, as he navigated the crowded stairs to his mother’s bedroom.

It’s all just such a goddamned shame.

Four

Bury, New Hampshire

People assume I’m of Irish descent because of my green eyes, reddish-brown hair, and skin that will burn if I as much as look at a postcard of the beach. I’m an anomaly; the rest of my family appears as WASPy as the Yates family name implies. We are a small, Protestant family destined to keep our numbers low and our wealth growing.

I’m thankful to be the black sheep.

My mother is dead, a victim of a pulmonary embolism when I was only three. I hardly remember her, but in every photo I have, I see Grace Kelly. Elegant even in her most casual of poses. Lithe, willowy. She was a model, and I have a handful of magazine ads to prove it.

My father never remarried. All those years, and he never found the right person again. Or perhaps he was thankful to be out of his marriage and vowed never to repeat. But I hate to think that way. Despite all that is cold and calculating about Logan Yates, I like to think he’s capable of love. But unlike with my mother’s magazine ads, I don’t have anything to prove that.

We had the Disney family, where the mom died young and the dad raised the kids. The deviation from the Disney story was we were raised by nannies and my father slept with as many women as his schedule would allow. This did not exclude the nannies.

Women buzzed in and out of our lives like mosquitoes over the years, attaching themselves to my father and sucking as much blood as they could until he grew tired and swatted them away. It wasn’t uncommon to find a statuesque blond sipping coffee in our kitchen as my sister and I prepared for school, nor was it rare I’d never see that person again. Dad preferred blonds, but rarely the same one twice.

As for the rest of my family, there’s only my older sister, Cora. She has my mother’s looks and my father’s venom. Cora still lives in Bury, and as with my father, she’s part of why I left this place without any intention of ever coming back.

Still, two decades later, here I am in this house. What happened here is why I became a novelist after all.

I push bad memories away and focus on unpacking the three bags I brought. The rest of our things are in storage back in Wisconsin, hastily crammed in a small unit after I broke the lease on our apartment.

“This house is too big.”

I turn and find Max standing in the doorway of my bedroom, which was a guest room when I was growing up.

“Hey, buddy. I thought you were reading.”

“I finished it.”

“You finished the second Harry Potter book?”

“Third. The Prisoner of Azkaban.”