26. Just a House

Leonie

The last time I was here was three days after my father’s death. I’d grabbed the necessities, Issy and Ivan at my side. I’d only gone up to my room, loaded their waiting arms with ridiculous things like half-finished homework assignments and left.

At that point, I had cried so much my eyes were permanently dry.

Mum went back once she was discharged from the hospital, claiming she was fine. It hadn’t helped her mental state.

That was before her most detrimental psychotic episode.

In all my years there, I had only opened the door with a key once or twice. We had around-the-clock security, two full-time housekeepers and other staff. The door was always open. Or I would sneak in through my window like Dom would sneak into my room.

He held my hand, rubbing his thumb into my skin. My palms were sweaty, but I knew he wouldn’t let me slip from his grip. Not when I needed him so badly. If only he had been like this ten years ago.

The opened door revealed the foyer, marble floor and the circular entry table just before us. Mum always had pink and white lilies in a large vase resting upon it, but instead now it was just a white sheet. A grey-white sheet.

A beep thundered next to the door but my feet refused to go further and, with a cautious glance my way, Dom removed his phone from his pocket, pressed a few buttons and the beeps stopped. “I’ll get this downloaded on your phone, too,” he said softly.

This man. He had once been my complete and utter future, every daydream, every wish on a star, eyelash, birthday cake.

He wasn’t anymore.

But I was so grateful to have him with me. We weren’t the same as we had been or could have been, but this was enough. This was us.

I lead the way to the kitchen, the barest of the rooms in our house. Again, the surfaces were clear, the kitchen table was covered. But the floor was clean, not a shatter of glass to be seen.

Who had replaced the window? Who had paid for it? Maybe Mum, but she had never been practical about those things, especially not after. She would have ghosted through the house, probably not even noticing. Did she do it intending for us to move back in eventually, just the two of us?

My inheritance was large, enough for me to live on for the rest of my life and didn’t just consist of money and property.

But after my stint in rehab, I begged Dom and Issy’s dad to not allow me the money until I was ready. They had offered it to me at twenty-one, the year I was meant to inherit everything, including his side of the business, but five years later I still denied it.

One day, I would be ready.

In the kitchen, there had been so much blood. My dad’s, mine. Nearly all of my mum’s, too.

It was just a kitchen. A kitchen that held so many good memories and one awful, horrific memory.

Issy and me playing dress up and drawing.

The gunshot.

Opening my acceptance letter to the dance academy.

My mum screaming on the floor with the gun to her head.

Dom and me making an awful birthday cake for Issy.

Dom coming up behind me to take a gun from my hands.

The smell of Dad’s cooking, singing along to the songs I didn’t understand.

His last breath.

“Okay,” I breathed. “Okay.”

My body was rigid as I looked at that spot on the floor where there had been so much blood, my knees had been covered in it.

Dom stepped into my side, pulling my head to rest on his chest, looking down with me.

“That night…” I started, my voice pained. “You never told me why you were here.”

At the time, it hadn’t bothered me. Back when I thought our argument was just a blip and we would work through it. If anything, it made sense that he was there in the worst moment of my life, my guardian angel.

I’d expected him to be there in my moment of need.

It was the weeks after that the cracks became a crevasse.

“I came to apologise,” he said into my hair, “for how I was the week before and at school that day.”

“Those six days were hard, I remember that,” I said, wrapping my arms around his waist. “I thought you hated me and then you did.”

“I never… I couldn’t ever hate you, Leonie,” he said and pressed a kiss to my temple. “Did you want to write your impact statement here? I can find something to clean up the table and we can grab your notebook from the car and…”

Outside of my house, I knew my dad was capable of deadly, merciless things. He was not the same man in a suit as the man in his cargo shorts and apron, cooking ribs on the barbecue. Or the man that loved so fiercely he’d tortured those who kidnapped me so brutally it was rumoured they died from heart failure. Too soon, my dad had muttered at dinner.

He’d left the one that hurt me for Dom.

Mum’s love could feel like a chore. I had to play the part, even at the funeral. Whereas Dad’s love was effortless, it filled the room.

He was easy to cherish.

Dom’s palm stroked my bare arm in a comforting rhythm, up and down, up and down.

Would Dad be disappointed in me? The Castillos and the Belovs had a saying that family was the only thing that came above reputation.

I hadn’t honoured my family by getting out of the business. I’d just shoved those responsibilities onto Ivan and Anton. The Castillo name was hardly feared along the coast; it was just a story told when people drove past this house.

It was all the Belovs now.

The Castillos had disappeared.

The Castillos were just me.

I should let Firdman get released. I should let him live a life of luxury on the money he’d been given. Give him a glimpse of life and all it had to offer before I burned that life to ash and shoved the grains down his throat for him to choke on.

I’d make him suffer.

But nowhere near as much as who had paid for the deed.

“I just want to see,” I said, my voice shaking. “I just want to walk through. Dad’s office, the library, my room… I just want to see it. I can’t write like this.” My hand was shaking in his.

“Lead the way,” he offered.

Did he still know the way? Did I? Realising that I might not know the floorplan after so long made me feel ashamed… but I found the routes easily, poking my head into the library where Mum and I used to read together and argue over character arcs. The only way we bonded was through fiction. A lot of my mum’s life was fiction.

Now, it was permanent in her mind.

I picked some up to take to her. She wouldn’t have noticed my absence, but guilt was a bitch. Even though she asked me why I bothered showing up the last few times I’d visited.

Sometimes, I had to look after my own mental health.

We moved through the house, room to room, seeing the ghosts of furniture. I played a game in my mind each time, trying to remember the furnishings beneath each sheet before peeling it aside. I was right every time.

The only noise was our footsteps. But that was all I needed, just hearing him beside me, feeling his hand in my clammy one.

Dad’s office was locked. As it always had been. He had the thickest oak doors installed when I was little. Even then, I realised it was an opening into a different, darker world.

“I’ll get someone to unlock it,” Dom said and cleared his throat. It had been so long since either of us had spoken.

“I need to get in there,” I said. “I need to find anything between Derek and Dad. He has means and opportunity… but the motive? I’m coming up empty.”

Dom nodded. “I’m not sure either. I’ll hack into his files, but I doubt we’ll get anything of use from ten years back…”

I thanked him and we went to my bedroom door.

More sheets. My bed was covered, my desk, my wardrobe. It wasn’t mine anymore, it wasn’t anyone’s. But I couldn’t go in.

It was just a room. The kitchen was just a kitchen.

The people weren’t there. Or the same as they had been. Neither was I.

“You okay?” he asked eventually.

I took a deep inhale. “Yes… no. I don’t… I feel like it would take hours to explain.”

“I have hours,” he said. “Hours to listen.”

And, sitting on the dusty floor of the hallway, for the first time, I told him everything.