Page 100 of Kingmakers, Year Three

“Abram Balakin called me from Moscow this morning, Dean. Your father is dead.”

This is so far removed from what I expected to hear that the words don’t make any sense to me. A long silence follows while I try to rearrange the Chancellor’s sentence into actual English.

“My condolences,” Luther Hugo says. “I know this is hard to hear.”

I can’t hear anything right now, because there’s a loud rushing sound in my ears, like the ocean waves far below us are beating directly against my head.

“He can’t be,” I say slowly. “I just spoke to him.”

“I’m afraid it’s quite certain. There was a fire. Your father’s house was destroyed. His body was found in his study. It appears he set the blaze intentionally. There was accelerant spread all through the house. The footage from the security cameras shows no other entry.”

A vivid image arises in my mind of my father pouring gasoline all throughout our house—over the stacks of booksand magazines, the boxes of unopened goods, the papers, the photographs—they must have gone up like kindling, blazing towers of fire. He burned the paintings, the vases and rugs and chandeliers purchased by my mother, their wedding photographs, and my old rocking horse up in the attic. My clothes and books and blankets in my room.

Then he sat in his office, his one safe place, and waited for the fire to finish the job begun twenty years earlier. The job of killing him.

“When did this happen?” I ask.

“The evening of the twenty-fifth,” Hugo says. “I was not informed until this morning.”

He killed himself on Christmas. The day before his anniversary.

“Did he leave a message for me?” I ask, dully. “A note?”

“If he did . . .” Hugo says, “it would have been burned. The fire spread to the neighboring houses as well. There’s nothing left of yours.”

I’ve never felt so much and so little at the same time.

A raging storm of emotion swirls around inside of me.

And yet I’m as numb and dull as a corpse.

My body stands up without my order. I hear myself say to the Chancellor, “Thank you for informing me.”

“Usually we do not allow departure and return to the school,” the Chancellor says. “But in this instance, with no other family to make the funeral arrangements?—”

“There won’t be any funeral,” I say.

For the first time, Hugo’s face shows a flicker of confusion.

“But surely you?—”

“He made his own funeral pyre. Why should I go against his wishes?”

Hugo hesitates, watching me closely.

“If you would like a few days to consider?—”

“That won’t be necessary. I’ll return to class now.”

Another silence, and then he gives a curt nod.

“As you wish.”

“Thank you for informing me,” I say, turning back toward the door.

I cross that expanse of carpet again, and this time it seems only an instant until I’m out of his office, descending the stairs.

My pulse throbs in my ears, faster and faster, and yet I feel oddly calm.

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