Fola nodded, shrinking back in a way she only ever did around her father.
“After everything I have done for all of you, you repay me with constant disrespect and incompetence. I sometimes wonder why I bothered in the first place,” he said, shaking his head, while squeezing his eyes shut like he had some sort of headache. “A bunch of good-for-nothing disappointments,” he muttered gruffly.
“Whydidyou, then?” Perdita said.
“Why did I what?” Mr. Button replied, opening his eyes in a way that seemed like the lights were hurting him.
“Why did you bother with us? Seeing as we are clearly such a burden. We didn’t ask to be here and we shouldn’t have to feel grateful to you for the rest of our lives. That isn’t right.”
Mr. Button didn’t say anything to his youngest daughter, just stared at her thoughtfully. He could tell her response could have been a lot harsher, seeing as they’d already argued earlier that evening. This was Perdita holding back.
“I for one amnotgrateful. I wish you’d never found me,” Bilal said.
“Me too,” Octavius agreed.
Mr. Button’s gaze scanned over the pair, a deep rage bubbling beneath its surface.
“In fact, I’d rather have anyone but you as a father,” Octavius added, and this was apparently finally enough to send Mr. Button over the edge.
“Ungrateful bastard,” Mr. Button yelled, and then suddenly he was advancing forward, his hand raised as he moved to strike Octavius. But he was stopped unexpectedly by two hands pushing the old man away from the white-haired boy.
Romeo’s hands.
And everything from that moment happened too quickly for anyone to process:
Mr. Button stumbled backward; Octavius reached out to stop his father from falling, but instead tumbled himself, bumping into the large desk and prompting multiple chess pieces to topple over. Fola and Bilal simultaneously tried to catch Octavius; Perdita, on the verge of an acute panic attack, attempted to back away from the pandemonium.
It was a circus and, as with all circuses, freakish things always ensued.
In the chaos of flailing limbs and bodies, their father made an attempt topull himself up, but instead tripped over someone’s foot, causing him to crash into the wall, hard.
If this were any other boat, or any other room, the collision would have barely left a scratch. But as Mr. Button had a particular fondness of taxidermized creatures, he did not hit the hard surface of a wall, no.
He found himself colliding with the horn of a rhinoceros, the sharp edge of the dead animal’s tusk piercing right through Mr. Button’s neck.
The sound that came from the old man was like no sound any living person could make. It was the sound of deep agony, of inhuman levels of pain.
His eyes were wide as he gasped for breath, writhing around helplessly like a fish on dry land as the blood-soaked horn protruded right through his neck.
The siblings could hear the buzzing of the drones and the fireworks exploding in the sky above, the orchestra playing a hauntingly beautiful melody on the upper deck as the sound of merriment filled the distant air.
Their father had got his rotten wish: He was dying… though perhaps not the painless death he had imagined for himself.
No one moved, no one tried to help him. Not that there was really any point. Blood sputtered out of the wound as he writhed and choked.
They stood in near silence, watching the life draining from their father’s eyes, his pupils shimmering around the edges with light and then suddenly dimming, as if someone had just blown out a candle. Octavius’s eyes were trained on his violin, specifically the bow, which had snapped like a twig under the weight of his father’s backward fall.
The events that would follow were almost as quick as the impalement had been.
It was quiet for a moment before the second-oldest Button launched into strategy, as the Button Method had trained her to do. Even in the direst of situations, she’d been taught to assess the chessboard first, draw a map of the game, play now, panic later. And so, ever the dutiful daughter, that’s exactly what she did.
Fola, still in shock, her face wet with tears, began rambling about manslaughter, first-degree murder, and the statistics of how likely it would be that they all got at least ten years behind bars—maybe even longer—and thus, needed iron-clad alibis.
“Wh-why would we need alibis? It w-was an accident,” Octavius said, crying.
“One we can’t prove. Hefellbackward, who’s to say he wasn’t pushed? And even if there was a chance that someone believes he was alone and just fell, it’s too much of a risk for us not to have any cover. You think a judge will care, let alone believe it was an accident? No. I don’t think a judge would care at all,” Fola said in a vicious tone, her face now streaked with fresh tears. “Also, keep your voice down, you don’t want someone to hear us and come rushing in here.”
“I don’t think anyone will hear us over the sound of the fireworks anyway,” Perdita said, covering her mouth as she looked away from their father’s corpse. She was visibly shaking, as was Bilal next to her.
