Father (Blood Brotherhood 1)

At the borders of the outer grounds, which are better tended than the overgrown cursed courtyard, there is forest. Old growth. Oak trees and other species I don’t know because I don't know enough about this world or the things in it. I have this odd feeling, like a tingling in my brain. It’s like I know something, but I don't know it. Being at Direview is making me feel that sensation more than ever. I wonder if Jonah is feeling the same way. Probably not. He never seems to feel any particular way. Our parents died when we were eleven and since then he’s been a hellion. It’s not his fault. It makes things easier when you don’t care.

Bryn’s insistence we don’t go out keeps me from going out and walking in the gardens that are obviously maintained to keep up appearances. This entire place is like a big dark secret shrouded in a veneer of respectability. I can practically feel the secrets seeping from every gothic pore of the place.

Thanks to the weather, there is hardly anything that would make someone want to go outside here. The vast lawns are beset by a near constant drizzle, and the trees beyond them can barely be persuaded to hold onto their leaves. Winter is coming, but not with any real haste.

I end up standing at the window, looking out over the dull British moors and wondering how my life has gone so very wrong. Indulging in melancholy might be one of my favorite things to do. It’s very British. My mother used to do it from time to time, but only when she didn’t think we were looking. Jonah never noticed, but I did. I notice everything.

I’ve noticed, for instance, a slight glimmer in the window, a shadow passing behind me. It’s Bryn.

“Hello,” I say.

“Hello,” he replies. “I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

I turn to look at him. “I’m not disturbed.”

“Then you are one of the very few things in this house that is not.” He smiles as if it is a joke, and for a brief moment he looks so incredibly handsome I forget how to breathe. There’s something melancholy about him too. I don’t think he can help it. It’s part of living here, being one of these things. These people inhabit a world that is only barely solid.

I smile and lean back against the window sill. “It was very kind of you to allow us to come and stay here. I did not enjoy your prison system.”

“It was,” he agrees. He’s blunt, but there’s a charm to that.

“Why did you let us come? We are strangers to you, and Jonah is annoying.”

“I knew your mother well. I know she would not have been pleased her only two children were incarcerated.”

“She would not have been pleased at all,” I agree.

There is something smoldering about this man. Something intense and more than a little frightening if I look at him too closely. He's handsome but in a deliberately understated way, wearing a chunky knit sweater in purple, pink, and sky blue, no doubt designed by some well-meaning parishioner. It obscures the lines of his body, but I suspect that is as hard as his jawline.

His lips twitch as if he has something else to say, but then he just nods, turns, and walks away.

I am curious as to how he knew my mother. She was an incredible creature. So beautiful. People would never believe she’d married my father. He was average in every way. She loved him for that.

This man seems more like her match. He’s brooding. He’s deep. He’s British, basically. I wonder what happened between them. Something tragic, I imagine. My mom specialized in a very particular brand of tragedy.

I’m not sure how I am supposed to fill in my time here. I do know that I am not supposed to go outside, but that potentially leaves a lot of avenues for exploration because this is a very big house.

I begin to wander.

Most of the rooms are empty but dusted. This was clearly a home built for a large family. It feels hollow and sort of empty, but also in some strange way, not empty? It’s almost as if the energies of those who dwelled here in the past are still here, walking the halls, living their lives after their lives are over.

I open the door to Jonah’s room by accident. He looks up from the bed and scowls at me. “What do you want?”

“Just looking around.”

“Right. Leave me alone.”

He’s in a bad mood for a man who just got bailed out of prison by a complete stranger. I leave him alone. Talking to my snotty twin is not my idea of a good time.

The interior of the house has four great wings. I am not sure where I am among them all. It’s not a complex layout and yet there’s a certain disorienting element to the place, possibly because one corridor looks very much like another. I’m not familiar enough with the house to recognize the little subtleties in heavy wood interiors. There are no houses this old in America, though we like to pretend we have old and haunted places. Hundreds of people have inhabited this place before me, and it feels as though there are echoes of them all trapped in these walls. I’ve always been given to flights of fancy, and this old abbey generates wild imaginings at an astonishing rate. Shadows seem to have human form more often than not, melting away when I get close enough to look at them.