Total pages in book: 83
Estimated words: 80689 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 403(@200wpm)___ 323(@250wpm)___ 269(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 80689 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 403(@200wpm)___ 323(@250wpm)___ 269(@300wpm)
“Uh…yeah, we get along well.” I finish grinding the beans before returning to the urn and placing the grinds in the top compartment.
“I haven’t mentioned it because it’s none of my business,” she says, “but how did you happen to get this job? I mean, how did Mr. Simon find you?”
“A recruitment company.” I figure that’s a safe and accurate account of what happened.
“Recruitment company. Interesting. It’s hard to predict what someone with too much money will do, I guess.”
She says this in a particularly pointed way, so I ask, “What do you mean?”
“If no one’s mentioned it, I don’t plan to.”
“Is it because I remind you of someone?”
She turns and looks at me, as though surprised to hear me say it.
“As a matter of fact, you do.” Despite having had other pleasant chats with her, this is the first time she’s mentioned it. “When I first saw you, I thought you were a ghost wandering the halls of this old place. You’re older than the young man I remember, but that face… Other than the boys, I might be the only one left to even know how much like him you look.”
“How long have you worked here?”
“Since the twins were just sprouting into their teens. Was so relieved I was the cook and not the butler, because it’s a messy time. He had to clean those sheets twice a week. That’s what happens when you have boys, though.”
It’s hard to miss her insinuation, but I’m not really interested in how much Simon and Ryan used to play with themselves, so I say, “Can I ask who I remind you of?” I know who I remind her of, but I also know Simon is listening, so I have to keep up the ruse.
Nell’s expression suggests she knows this isn’t the sort of thing she should be speaking with me about. I’ll have to navigate this very carefully if I’m going to get anything from her.
“There was another young man around here,” she says. “He was a little older than the boys.”
“An employee?”
“Like I told you before, it’s not really my business to know these kinds of things. The most I’m willing to say is that he wasn’t staff. Mr. Hawthorne treated him just like he did his sons, so he was practically family until he had that fall in the woods.”
This all lines up with what Ryan shared with me.
“A fall?”
“Terrible accident. Kids shouldn’t have played as much as they did back there, but it happened, and Mr. Hawthorne wasn’t the same after that. Saw him acting strange, and I considered calling the police the night before, but the next day, that’s when Mr. Simon found the body in the office. Bullet to the head.”
Despite her cryptic telling of the story, I can tell she has her own thoughts and feelings she’s dancing around.
“Why would he have done that?” I press.
“A man killing himself after the death of a kid he treated like a son, but who as far as anyone outside the family knew was just the help? That’s a good question, Jonas. Only Mr. Hawthorne will ever know the answer to that. It’s possible he grew to think of Kieran as a son, but the staff who worked here before me used to say it didn’t seem like a coincidence that the light in Mrs. Hawthorne’s eyes dimmed after Kieran arrived.”
She gives me a pointed look, making it clear she believes Kieran was Ryan’s father’s child. Based on what Ryan told me, could that have been why Mrs. Hawthorne had gone into therapy and to a psychiatrist before her suicide? Then when his son died, was that why Mr. Hawthorne had killed himself?
Was Kieran related to Ryan?
Is that why Ryan can’t speak openly about his feelings for this guy?
And then Simon hired me—Kieran’s look-alike—to come here, first to fuck Ryan, and now to be in a relationship with him?
Fucked up as it sounds, given how bizarre this whole situation has been, not to mention Ryan’s evasive comments about certain things from his past, I suspect there’s at least some truth to the theories Nell’s spun.
“How’s that coffee coming along?” she asks as she starts mixing batter.
She must know that as soon as she started talking to me about Kieran, the instructions she’d given me to finish the coffee had completely escaped my mind. Fortunately, she doesn’t give me too hard a time when she has to repeat herself, maybe because she understands that what she shared is pretty shocking.
I help Nell around the kitchen some more, and she doesn’t broach the subject of Kieran again—I figure she already knows she’s said too much. But after chatting with her, I know two things: that Kieran might’ve been related to the Hawthornes, and that Simon would probably listen to this recording and find out I’ve become aware of this information.