I appreciated how, even now, he did not bunch Mom into the colossal fuck-up that was Harry Fairhurst. He took full responsibility as the head of the family. Some people thought flowers and hearts were romantic. Me, I thought being a badass who took the fall for his entire family and shouldered all their sins was far better. Not that it was really my parents’ fault. They’d prodded, asked, begged, and questioned. They’d provided me with a magnificent childhood, and not just materialistically.

“Thank you,” I said curtly. “But no.”

“You don’t know what killing a person does to your soul.”

“And you do?”

He squeezed my shoulder again, refraining from answering me. Interesting.

“You have a girlfriend.” Dad changed the subject. “Isn’t she his niece? That would complicate things.”

“We’re not staying together.” I swallowed the lump in my throat. That would be beyond awkward, now that she knew my plans for her uncle.

I’d given her all my secrets.

I’d trusted her then, and I trusted her now.

She’d never opened her mouth. And, as it turned out, she hadn’t even known what she saw back then. When I told her about Harry’s abuse, she’d confessed to me that what she saw in that room was completely different.

“I didn’t see Harry’s head underneath you. I just thought it was a girl. I didn’t know anything about oral sex. I thought you were young, and angry, and doing things you shouldn’t be doing and going to regret. I felt sorry for you. At thirteen, you shouldn’t need sex and booze and blow jobs to feel. At thirteen, you’re learning the hang of feelings. It’s life on training wheels, you know?”

I didn’t know. Harry never gave me the chance to know what it felt like to feel.

“Besides…” I moved around Dad, changing the subject. “…how do you know about her?”

“Knight sent a family newsletter,” he said matter-of-factly.

“Fucker,” I mouthed.

“Watch your mouth.”

“I was making a general statement. What do you think he does with Luna? Play poker?” I flung myself over the bed, staring at the ceiling. I felt like a real teenager for the first time in forever. My dad was on my case, offering to get me out of the shit I’d gotten myself into. I had girl trouble. I made sex jokes on my best friend’s account.

Dad stood in the middle of the room, looking a little lost all of a sudden—for the first time ever, actually.

“It doesn’t have to be that way, Vaughn. You don’t have to lose her. You don’t have to lose anything.”

“It’s a done deal, Dad. Drop it.”

“Son…”

I turned to look at him. “Whatever you do, don’t tell Mom. It would break her.”

He held my gaze, nodding gravely. He got it. He got why I needed to do it myself.

“I won’t,” he said. “I didn’t when I saw the article. This stays between you and me. What happened doesn’t define you, you hear me? Once upon a time, I held on to a dark secret, too.” He leaned down, brushing my ink black hair from my forehead and frowning. A mirror image of father and son, with nearly three decades between them.

“How did it end?” I blinked.

He kissed my forehead like I was a toddler, smiling.

“I killed it.”

I was raised to find beauty in everything.

Growing up in Virginia, we didn’t have any money. We used buckets as small pools in hot, humid summers and trash bags to collect oranges and peaches in spring. An old tablecloth was destined to become a fine-looking dress once it ceased to serve its purpose. Two empty tin cans turned into a very short-distance walkie-talkie. An evening without electricity quickly rolled into an all-nighter full of scary stories and truth or dare.

Years later, after I married my billionaire husband, I’d stumbled across an article in the New Yorker, asking if the poor lead more meaningful lives.

I didn’t agree with the sentiment altogether, because I was happier now—happier with the love of my life, with my beautiful son, and surrounded by friends I could host and spend time with. But then again, I wasn’t really rich, was I?

Even with many millions in the bank, I would always be Emilia LeBlanc, who wore knock-offs and shook with exhilaration when opening new tubes of paint. There was something about the unavailable, the unattainable of buying new painting gear I’d grown up with that made unwrapping new equipment almost orgasmic. I never lost the joy I found in small things.

That’s why I fell in love with Harry Fairhurst’s paintings the moment I spotted the first one. It was a lone figure, walking in an alleyway, the buildings around it melting downwards in an arch, ready to swallow the person who dared take that path whole. Regardless of his precise technique and striking execution, it just seemed like a sad painting of a sad person.