All My Darkest Impulses (House of Crows), Lisa Unger [top 10 novels .txt] 📗

man had always lived at Merle House, or at least on the property where Merle House stood. Justice Merle had been born there, returned there from Harvard to run the family construction business, raised his own family there—two sons, one of them Matthew’s father. He’d stayed at Merle House long after he’d sold the family business, after his wife left him, after he became estranged from both his sons. He’d lived alone in the eight-thousand-square-foot behemoth, grown old, and would have died there if it had been left up to him. Now his body was buried on the family plot, not far from the house in the surrounding acreage.

The old man would, in fact, be here for all eternity.

And now Matthew would join him. Something like dread pressed down on his shoulders.

“Yeah, but—” he started. She didn’t let him finish.

“So it’s inhabitable. Technically. Maybe not what we’re used to. But there’s electricity, running water. Right?”

Certainly not what they were used to, and they had Matthew to thank for that. Over the last few weeks, he’d developed chronic stomach pain, a kind of twisting roil in his gut. A miserable brew of guilt and anger.

He still thought about her, though he really shouldn’t, the woman who had taken a rocket launcher to his life, cost him his job, almost his marriage. Sylvia. He wanted to forget her completely. But he couldn’t.

“Matthew,” said Samantha, like it was the second or third time she was saying it. “Do you have the keys?”

Matthew stood staring at Samantha, who was tiny but mighty, with a tight, wiry body toned from years of yoga and long-distance running. She walked up and down the porch, tried the door, peered in the window. He admired the lush cascade of her dark hair, the determination on her brow, in her jaw. He was doing the staring thing; he knew that. When he had so many thoughts in his head that they kind of all jammed up and he just froze, glassy eyed, and needed to be snapped out of it. She turned to face him when he didn’t say anything, dug her hands into her pockets, and thrust out a hip.

“At least let’s take a look.”

The keys were in his pocket. He took them out with a jangle and joined her on the porch.

“Wasn’t the caretaker supposed to meet us here?” she asked. “Pete, was it?”

“We were supposed to arrive this afternoon. I told him we’d call him tomorrow.”

“Well,” she said brightly, fitting the key into the lock. It turned with a satisfying click. “I guess we’re on our own.”

Samantha pushed open the heavy oak door of Merle House and disappeared fearlessly into its maw. His wife, the warrior. He was her inferior in every way. Why had she stayed with him? After everything he’d done.

Matthew followed, stumbling over the threshold and nearly falling all the way to the ground. As he righted himself with a hand on the doorjamb, he could have sworn he heard laughter from somewhere within the house. He did. He did hear laughter. But it was coming from behind him.

“Were you just going to leave me in the car?”

His sixteen-year-old daughter, Jewel, stood behind him on the porch. Whatever amusement she’d found in his clumsiness had passed. Now she wore the usual scowl she seemed to save only for him. She was a mama’s girl; Matthew and Jewel had been at loggerheads for as long as he could remember. Because you’re basically the same person, Samantha liked to quip, earning protests from both father and daughter.

He had not, in fact, been in any rush to wake Jewel. As long as she was sleeping, she wasn’t complaining.

“Not all night,” he said, turning to drop an arm around her shoulder. She blew out the annoyed breath specific to teenage girls.

“God, is this it? It looks like a funeral home.” She hefted her camouflage rucksack up onto her slender shoulder, shifting away from Matthew.

“On a good day,” he agreed.

Her glance drifted from the house back to him. “Is it haunted?”

Good question. “Probably.”

She was way taller than her mother, and even catching up to Matthew. Jewel was a lithe five foot eight, too gorgeous for her own good and his, with silky black hair that hung like a curtain, always in her eyes, and pouty pink lips. And a body that made him see the wisdom in burkas and nunneries. She tugged at the silver hoops in her right ear, looked around.

“This is your fault,” she said. Samantha was wrong; their daughter wasn’t the same person as Matthew. Jewel was a darker, mean version of Samantha, all her mother’s personal power but none of her softness.

“I know,” said Matthew, looking away from her, bracing himself.

But she didn’t say it: I hate you. It still rang in his ears from the last time. She’d said it three times. Each time it hurt a little more, mainly because it seemed like she meant it.

Samantha tried to soften the edge of it. Of course she hates us. All teenagers hate their parents. It’s a rite of passage.

She hates me, not you.

You just happen to be the target of her rage at the moment. Next time it will be me.

“Hey, bunny?” It was what they’d always called her. “We’re going to be okay.”

She backed toward the front door and away from him; something played out on her face—sadness, anger, fatigue.

“Save the bullshit for Mom, okay? She is—for some reason—still buying it. And don’t call me bunny.”

Ouch. Who knew your child could have so much power to hurt you? He should reprimand her—seriously, she just didn’t have the right to talk to him that way, did she? But he didn’t have the energy.

Samantha came back to the door, stood behind Jewel, who had yet to cross the threshold.

“You guys,” she said, eyes shining. “This place is ah-mazing.”

“Yeah,” said Jewel flatly. “Amazing.”

But Jewel did look vaguely interested. Still, she took a moment to shoot Matthew a disgusted look before following her mother inside.

He stood