Honestly, lying here in Kiera’s living room, staring up at the ceiling as I listen to her breathe through her dreams down the hall, I could go for that life. One where I leave the family name and the expectations that come with it behind. Forget the power I’ll have. And the money that will flow. Because that’s what it does when you already have it.
It just flows.
I could leave behind the family estate, like Kiera did. Even though she says she was cut out. I still find that hard to believe. Something weird is happening there.
Maybe I’ll make things up to her and figure that shit out. Give her back the family estate.
It’s not a big estate. The land is there. And the lake view with a boathouse and a dock. But the house is modest by my family’s standards. Five or six bedrooms. Four or five thousand square feet. This cottage. And all of it’s old, but not the same way that our estate is old either.
It’s the Vermont side of Lake Champlain, for one thing. And it’s not made of stone, or brick, or gold, for that matter.
Our mansion is so well maintained, our lawns and gardens so well kept, our stables and outbuildings so well updated, you’d never know the entire place was built over a hundred years ago when our old money was still nouveau riche.
The Arlington name is synonymous with wealth, and power, and privilege.
Bonnaire, on the other hand. Who are the Bonnaires, anyway?
I know Kiera was on some kind of free-ride scholarship. And it makes sense. Her family must’ve all gone to Essex over the years. This house is one ferry ride across the lake away, after all. But she never did explain her status.
By the time the game ended we’d pretty much figured things out. It was about controlling us. I know that for certain. Forcing us to understand that we have a part to play in the world and this book we were writing was… what do they call it in those secret societies? Oh, yeah. Mutually assured destruction.
We knew why we were playing, what it all meant, and who was who.
Except for Kiera.
We accepted her as the outsider. The necessary impartial observer who kept us in check. She wrote our fates in the book.
But we never looked too close, did we?
We saw what they wanted us to see.
A girl from a respectable family who could wordsmith. And standing next to just about anyone Kiera Bonnaire looks like a shiny new thing, doesn’t she?
But standing next to us… she is dull, and small, and average.
I like that about her.
Not that she is those things, but that she’s not. Not in the real world. It is only our surreal fantasy life that makes her look like second best.
I get up off the couch and walk over to the book shelf, randomly pluck one out, and take it back to the couch, switching on the little lamp on the side table as I sit.
Disappearing, it’s called. I read the back cover to get a sense of the story. It’s not a kidnapping book, like I first thought, but a story of a girl who slowly goes crazy when an unseen tormentor takes over her life, but she later falls in love with him.
It’s just another metaphor for what happened that year, isn’t it?
So typical of her books. Why does she write this shit? And I’m not talking about the sex, even though flipping to a random page gives me enough pornographic entertainment I feel myself getting hard after reading a few paragraphs.
I’m talking about the theme. I might not have read her books but I saw them on the internet. I understood what they were. Her body of work is all darkness and secrets. It’s all rough sex and no fairytale endings. There are no princes, no castles, no fireside declarations of eternal love.
It’s nothing but villains, and dungeons, and cold stone walls that mutter, This is what you deserve.
But the answer is obvious. She, like all the rest of us, pretends none of it mattered when in reality what we did that year as the Dirty Ones has shaped us into the people we are today. And she is these characters. They are her, inside and out.
Who would I be if that year never happened? Would I be better? Or worse?
I decide… I’d be my father. I’d be my brother Jack. I’d be my brother Stenton. And while I love them all in a son and brother kind of way, I don’t really like them in the way that counts.
Worse, I decide. I’d be a worse person if I was never a Dirty One.
Who will I be when this next mystery sorts itself out? Better? Or worse?
Remains to be seen, I guess.
I could give up the opulence of Long Island’s North Shore. The lavish parties and extravagant charity functions coordinated by useless housewives to help them feel whole again. I could walk away from the expectations and political aspirations. After all, being a US Senator wasn’t my fucking dream, was it?