Thomas looked down at his girls, all stress and worry melting away. They were getting so big, nine months old. Old enough to hold their own bottles, sit up, crawl, even take a few steps. They were far more verbal than most eight month olds, but at the moment they were just two squishy lumps of sleepy baby, eyes at half-mast as they snuggled deeper against him. They smelled of lavender and baby powder.
He’d never expected to have grandchildren. Had never expected to have anyone in his family who could love him or see him as a father figure. Yet there he was, surrounded by family he didn’t deserve and these two perfect souls. While the jury was still out as to whether the girls would share their father’s psychopathic traits, at this age, they were all about bonding with those closest to them, knowing it was vital to them staying alive.
Part of him wondered how different his relationship with the boys would have been had he had them from birth. Not that it would have been possible to know if they possessed the psychopathic traits that had been so important to him all those years ago. Would he have gone back and changed it? If he could have somehow had the omniscience to know that his boys were like this at birth, could he have changed the trajectory of their lives? Would he?
Christ, he was a mess. None of his thoughts made sense. Arabella reached up and tugged on his beard pulling her bottle from her mouth to say, “pup-pup.” Adelyn followed suit, the two of them chanting “Pup pup pup pup” sleepily.
That was as close as they got to calling him grandfather. August was Daddy and Lucas was Papa. They’d been agreement on those names since before Cricket gave birth. But Thomas had no idea how he’d ended up ‘Pop Pop’.
That wasn’t entirely true. He knew how it started, just not how it stuck.
It had started as a joke during game night, the kids taking turns giving their most ridiculous recommendations for grandparent monikers. Granddad, grandpa and grandfather had quickly given way to pee-pop, glampa, gramps, grampy, gampy and finally pop-pop. How or why pop-pop had stuck was beyond Thomas but when the girls looked at him and said ‘pup pup’, he knew they recognized him as someone who was safe and who loved them and honestly, he didn’t care how ridiculous people might find it.
He put his feet up and let his eyes fall shut, letting the sway of the rocker lull the three of them to sleep. They were safe in his arms and it would only be a short while before it was time to eat. This was the only place Thomas felt truly at peace. Ara and Adelyn were his only comfort. When he looked at them he knew he’d done at least one thing right if they were in the world.
Aiden’s face flashed in his mind but he pushed it away. No matter how long he’d wished Aiden could have been his comfort, it just wasn’t meant to be. Thomas didn’t deserve Aiden, he didn’t deserve love or peace or any of the other things he’d stumbled into just in the last five years.
The others tried to appease him, tried to encourage him to take the leap—without explicitly stating what leap they referred to—and do what made him happy but they didn’t understand. They couldn’t understand because they didn’t know the truth. Thomas had spent a great deal of time and money to make sure of that. They didn’t know Thomas was a liar. A hypocrite. A murderer.
Not like his sons. The killing they’d done was righteous, justified, necessary, but the evil Thomas had committed… there was no looking past that. There was nogettingpast that. Thomas had killed people, innocent people, and by his ownrules, should have been put down like all the other monsters roaming this planet.
But Aiden was right. Thomas was a coward. A coward and a killer and a man who lacked the courage of his own convictions. He deserved every ounce of misery being without Aiden caused him. It was right. It was just.
Aiden was Thomas’s happiness. And Thomas deserved nothing of the kind.
Thomas heaved a sigh as the twins entered his office. It was the day before spring break started. They were both dressed in similar fashion, wearing jeans and the hoodies from their prep school, Asa’s for varsity rugby and Avi’s for JV Lacrosse. Thomas looked at his watch, surprised to see it was late afternoon. They must have just come from practice.
They had grumbled when Thomas had insisted they play a sport and truly had a fit when he’d insisted they play different sports. But he worried about their codependence. It wasn’t a concern at fourteen, but it might be at twenty-four. He’d let them know it was for their own good, but they had protested loudly, obnoxiously.
So obnoxiously that Thomas had almost lost Shira, nanny number two of the three that routinely rotated through the mansion. These boys had no idea how hard it was to find one nanny, much less three who could keep their mouths shut about the things that happened there, and they definitely didn’t understand the trials of finding nannies with not only child rearing experience but the clearance but the training necessary to handle them.
Shira was former Mossad and still they’d almost scared her off with their antics. In the end, a bonus and a vacation had smoothed things over, but just barely. Thomas had learned the hard way that there could be no less than three highly trained nannies on staff around the clock or chaos ensued.
Before he’d hired nanny number three—a mercenary from a private military installation in Iraq—every day had been chaos. Between August’s meltdowns, Atticus’s volatile science experiments, Adam’s frequent and often violent outbursts, Aiden’s teen sarcasm, Archer’s illegal gambling and the twins' love of hurting and being hurt, Thomas was living every day on edge, unable to run his business or even get a good night’s sleep.
Now, with three of his children in college, there was far less chaos in the house, but not enough for Thomas to dismiss any of the nannies. Not yet. Maybe when Archer went to college next year and it was just Adam and the twins.
Maybe.
Thomas pulled himself from his thoughts, studying the boys as they crossed the room, stopping a good distance from his desk, their longish brown hair flopping into their blue eyes. They were so mirrored even their hair parted in opposite directions. Thomas sat up straight and readied himself for whatever was about to fall out of their mouths. They only came to him like this when they were going to ask for something or when they were going to ask forgiveness for something.
Last time, they’d asked if he could get them nitric acid so they could practice dissolving the dead animals they found in the woods. While Thomas had admired their initiative, he wasn’t about to hand over a dangerous and deadly corrosive to two fourteen year olds. However, when he’d told them they weren’t ready, and had offered them a safer alternative to start, a nuclear level tantrum had ensued.
As always, Asa had been their official spokesperson, pleading their case until the bitter end. They’d ended up spending three hours in the quiet room before they’d been allowed to return and even then Asa continued to argue.
August gets to play with chemicals.
August already holds several advanced scientific degrees, Thomas had reminded.
You don’t trust us.
Of course, I trust you. It’s just not safe. You’re still children.
You don’t love us as much as the others.
I love all of you equally.
You taught Atticus how to get rid of a body in water.
