Two daysbefore we left campus for the funeral, my cousin Sebastian came to visit.
I was studying, reading ahead in my Forensic Accounting textbook, a blunt instrument in size and prose style. Lost in the mysteries of Benford’s Law, I almost missed his arrival outside.
“Come in, Sebastian,” I said, right before he knocked.
He entered with a frown. “I was so quiet.”
“That was the tell. The hallway chatter cut off, all at once.”
Sebastian has that effect, especially on places full of women. Now in mourning—black shirt and sweater, Uncle Orrin’s gray cashmere coat, a black umbrella—the attentions had only grown.
It’s not so much that Sebastian is handsome, or beautiful, or beddable. He’s all those things, depending on the light. But what draws eyes to him is the way he moves, the certainty with which he stakes out his path, expecting the world to bend around him.
“You heardthem, not me,” he argued. “No points for that.”
“A Morton must melt into the background.”
He smiled at that, knowing he would never.
Back on the estate, Sebastian and I had trained together since our family adopted him at the age of eight. Stealth, lock picking, pain resistance. Etiquette, conversation. A dozen different fighting and dancing styles—and, yes, climbing. We were spoken of in the same breath, the prodigies of our generation.
Which meant that, from time to time, we wished each other dead.
I excelled at intimidation, violence, the cold hard accounting at the heart of the family’s power. Sebastian was better at seduction, at understandingwhat made ordinaries fawn and flutter. Each of us thinking ourselves the better Morton, neither of us saying it aloud. As I’d reminded Peter, our family does not indulge in hubris.
But that doesn’t stop us knowing.
“How are you holding up?” he asked.
“I weep daily.”
“Droll. With the attention, I mean.”
“It’s like moving through molasses,” I said. “People keep staring.”
If you don’t smile at them, ordinaries stop seeing you. By my third year at Helshire, I’d acquired a certain amount of invisibility. But Peter’s death had trapped me in a spotlight of pity.
Sebastian shrugged. Eyes followed him everywhere at Helshire—girls, boys, teachers.
“Those appeared yesterday.” I waved at the vase of spring wildflowers on my windowsill, my hallmates’ sentiments crowding the little white card.
Sebastian flicked one of the flowers. “Bloodroot? Ominous.”
As children, we’d learned how to distill bloodroot into black salve, a natural necrotic. It smelled lovely in soap or a cream, and left disfiguring scars.
“Do you miss him?” he asked.
I looked away. Only Sebastian would ask this, and only when we were alone.
Missing was caring. Caring was unMorton.
When we pulled him from the foster system, Sebastian spoke a different English from us. He didn’t move or think like us. It wasn’t that he was Black—our family is sprawling and ancient, with hooks in every continent. But our usual custom is to adopt newborns, who bring nothing that must be remolded or excised.
For Sebastian, the Mortons made an exception. Sometimes, he speaks our language with an accent.
And yet I kept expecting to see Peter loping across the Quad, orwaiting outside my door. Sometimes it felt like he was in the room, my little shadow.
Jess, I have to come back up.
