Mara is flourishing under my care. Becoming more beautiful, more powerful by the day.
I’m doing this. I’m changing her.
“You like it,” Mara says. “You can’t get enough of it.”
I seize her face and force her to kiss me, pulling her eyes away while the car flies along the road.
She gasps as I let go of her, gripping the wheel tight once more.
“At first it was against my will,” I tell her. “But now I’m all in. I have to have you. Even if it blows up my life.”
Mara pulls into my driveway, the towering facade of Seacliff looming over us. The weathered dark stone is cave-like, as if the house is just more of the cliff, jutting up against the sky.
“Do you like this house?” I ask Mara.
She tilts her head to the side, examining it anew.
“It suits you,” she says. “On the outside: stark and intimidating. On the inside … surprisingly beautiful.”
“You haven’t even seen all of it yet.”
“I know,” she says, looking at me, not the house.
I take her hand.
“Come this way.”
I lead her around the side of the house, on the stone path that winds through thick hedges of wisteria long past their bloom. The private entrance is sheltered from all sides, so no one but my father could see who was coming and going.
I open his office door.
Mara steps inside first, looking all around her.
I follow her in.
The office has been destroyed. Books torn down from the shelves, their pages ripped out and scattered all around. The desk hacked to pieces with a hatchet. The artwork smashed where it hung on the wall. Even the sofa and chairs slashed open, stuffing hanging out like entrails.
Mara stares, mouth open.
Hesitantly, she approaches the desk, drawing her fingertip across its scarred and broken top, leaving a trail in the dust.
“Did you do this?” she asks.
“Yes. The night my father died.”
“Did you … were you the one who killed him?”
“No. That’s why I was angry. He was gone, with too many things left unsaid and unanswered.”
“What happened to him?”
“He had a degenerative kidney disease. I knew it was coming, but it happened sooner than I expected. Then I was angry at myself. There’s no closure from the dead.”
Mara gazes at the photographs hung on the wall, the images distorted by the shattered glass in each frame.
Unerringly, she finds the one of my father. He’s standing on a windswept hilltop in New Zealand, wearing his hunting jacket, his rifle over his shoulder. His black hair and beard immaculately groomed despite the rustic setting.
Mara is drawn to the figure next to him. A man with hair and eyes as dark as my father’s, but a much more youthful face.
“Is that …” Mara squints through the spiderweb of glass. “Do you have a brother?”
“That’s my uncle. He was twelve years younger than my father. Almost as close to me in age.”
Mara turns, understanding that this photograph is the reason I brought her in here.
“He looks just like you.”
“That’s not the only thing we had in common.”
She crosses the detritus blanketing the floor, her boots crunching on splinters of wood and glass. Sinking down onto the slashed sofa, she says, “Tell me everything.”
I sit next to her, my weight causing her to slide closer until her thigh rests against mine.
“My uncle Ruben was the only person my father ever loved. My grandparents had him accidentally, late in life. He was wild and unruly, and they didn’t know what to do with him. My father was the only person he would listen to, at least some of the time.”
Mara sits up straight, hands clasped in front of her, eyes fixed on my face, like a child enthralled by a fairy tale.
“My family’s money came from hotels and breweries, but by the time Ruben came along, most of it had been parceled out or frittered away, so the Blackwells were no longer truly rich. Meaning, my grandparents still lived well, but there was only a modest trust fund waiting for their sons. My father used his to start his venture capital firm. He offered Ruben a job, but Ruben didn’t want it. He waited till he turned twenty-one, got his money, then fucked off to LA to spend it. Around that same time, my father married my mother.”
Mara interrupts, “How did they meet?”
“Have you ever read The Great Gatsby?”
Mara nods.
“It was like that. She was from a level of wealth that made the Blackwells look poor. My father wanted her from the moment he laid eyes on her. She was very beautiful, but innocent and sheltered. Her parents had full control over her. My father had to impress them first to get access to her. When his company went public, he donated six million to the Bay Area Youth Center, her mother’s foundation. That’s how he got an invitation to one of their dinner parties, so he could start the process of seducing their daughter.”
“Do you have a picture of her?” Mara asks.
“Upstairs. There’s none in here.”
I can’t hide the bitterness in my voice. Mara presses her lips together, understanding.
“My father wanted anything he couldn’t have. I guess that’s the one thing we shared. He had a chip on his shoulder and wanted to prove himself to anyone who’d ever looked down on him. But he was petty and vindictive. He didn’t just want acceptance—he wanted to rub their noses in it. That extended to my mother. He had to have her, but once they were married, he treated her like she had been the enemy all along. Like she was the one keeping him out of the Pacific Union Club.”
“She told you this?” Mara asks, brows drawn together in sympathy.
“I read it in her journal. She was confused how the man who wined and dined and complimented her could turn into a completely different person the moment they were alone in his house.”
I close my eyes, quoting from memory the words she wrote out in her delicate script:
“It’s like he hates me, and I don’t know why. I don’t know what I’ve done. He used to kiss my fingertips and tell me I was the most exquisite thing in the world. Now he snarls if I even touch him …”
”Why did he change?” Mara asks.
“He never liked anything once he actually had it. It took him years to get this house—he had to bully and threaten the old woman who owned it. Had to fight with the zoning commissioner and the society that was trying to get it named a historic landmark. Once he moved in, he never stopped complaining that it was cold and drafty, and the wiring was ancient.”
“You’re not like that,” Mara says.
“No. To me, something has value if it’s rare.”
“I value things if they make me happy,” Mara says.
“But why do they make you happy?”
Mara considers. “Because they’re beautiful or interesting. Because they make me feel good.”
I put my hand on the nape of her neck, rubbing her gently. Making her purr. “That’s because you’re a pleasure kitten. You like anything that feels good.”
Mara cuddles up against me, comfortable even in this destroyed space.
“That’s true,” she says.
I continue the story.