Chapter 1

Nina

The letter must have sat unopened for a month on your abandoned hall table as things carried on around it, the correspondence inside quietly waiting for me to find it.I look down at its crisp envelope as it rests on my black-­clad knee, the grain of its paper heavy, expensive, everything about it signaling that the correspondence contained within is substantial, important, and I wonder how I could have missed it.

But I have been busy with you: coroners, certificates, funerals, and memorials. The business of losing a father is a full-­time, short-­term contract with limited perks and a clear cutoff point. Though the admin thankfully fills the sudden gulf of hours.

The letter gathered dust in the worn leather letter holder where you always kept mail, while I tried to impose order on the inevitable chaos that a death leaves in its wake. There is chaos left behind even when the person who is gone was a meticulous genius, like you. And you were a genius, or as close as I’ll ever come to knowing one, the most fastidiously brilliant man I have ever known.

But the truth is, even you, with all the possible permutations of your thoughts, the clarity of your mind, were still not fully prepared to go. Of course. You were human, you couldn’t possibly have thought of everything. Or perhaps you did think of everything and you left things deliberately undone in order to give me purpose. In which case you succeeded, because I have allowed events to carry my full weight along this past month. And I looked for you, and found you, in everything after they told me you were gone.

The obituaries were well researched, kind, kingmaking, even if the kingdom you presided over was a small one. A rarefied one. Your books were collected by the university as your wishes stipulated. A few friends and colleagues were moved to receive what objects and chattels you left for them. Your clothes were dry-­cleaned and given to the charities of your choice, your essentials cleaned and distributed.

Death, it turns out, to those left behind, is an activity centered around the cataloging and dispersal of material objects.

I put the house on the market as per your wishes. You knew that I would not, could not, live in it. That it would always be your house and as much as I love you, loved you, you knew it is not healthy to live in a parent’s shadow. And we both know you cast a long shadow.

The rituals, the process, of bereavement held me, protected me from the simple inescapable fact that it all boils down to . . . I am now alone.

I was too busy to notice the letter. And now I see—­alone after the party—­that perhaps I have been too busy all my life. I was too busy to find someone of my own, to make a life for myself. After all, I had you.

But now, in the silence of the freshly emptied house, I do not have you. And I am not busy. I am whatever the opposite of busy is . . . Directionless? In search of mental employment? In search of a sign? Anything to distract me again—­to avoid the yawning void—­to not feel the full force of the fact that I am where I am.

I am a thirty-­four-­year-­old literary academic with inherited wealth and no one to share it with. A chuckle bubbles up inside me and echoes through the empty house as I think of the Magic 8 Ball you bought me for my tenth birthday, the one I demanded. You did not want to get it for me, believing that even children should not put faith in randomness, nor look for patterns in curls of smoke. “Chaos holds no answers,” you told me, a child of nine. “Look for the answers to your questions in the structure of things,” you told me. “That’s where meaning lies.” And of course you were right, though you bought the Magic 8 Ball for me anyway after tears and the promise of more applied study. I promised to achieve and you listened.

I cannot help but imagine the forecast that long-­discarded 8 Ball might give me now, if I rolled it over and asked what tomorrow holds: outlook not so good. My chuckle deepens—­but there’s no point in being morbid, is there? Another sentiment you hammered home early.

Besides, thirty-­four is still young, right? You used to joke that mathematicians peaked at twenty-one while biologists peaked at seventy. There was something in it about the predictability of numbers and the unpredictability of living things.

Regardless, I have yet to peak in any sense.

I look down at the envelope again.

A sign would be good.

On it, your address, in cursive black: your name beneath my name. I turn over the thick envelope and slide a clear, memorial-­service-­manicured thumbnail under the seal. It crackles open satisfyingly.

More of you would be good. One more hug. One more minute. Something to sink my teeth into.

I pull out the thick-­gauge paper and take in the sender’s address. An address thousands of miles from England, from our lives. The humidity of the location written into the words themselves, transportive and optimistic.

Clarence, Mitfield & Booth

Suite 3610-­13 Harbor Quay

Tortola

British Virgin Islands

FAO Ms. Nina Lillian Hepworth,

We would like to offer our deepest condolences following the sad news of your father, John Stanley Hepworth’s, recent passing.

We are writing to advise you that in accordance with his Last Will and Testament, Clarence, Mitfield & Booth have been appointed as estate executors for your late father’s assets here in the Virgin Islands. We understand that the late Mr. Hepworth’s UK assets are being overseen by Lansdown Lowe with his foreign assets being managed through Clarence, Mitfield & Booth.

We would like to advise you that we have successfully collected in the estate assets, ascertained and renumerated any outstanding debts prior to applying for probate, which is now complete.

We thought you would like to know that in accordance with your father’s Will you are the sole beneficiary and have been bequeathed:

Property: A 3-­bedroom Beachfront Estate, Pond Bay, Gorda, British Virgin Islands

When I look up from rereading the letter the light outside has faded and the empty sitting room is lit only by the bare bulb in the socket above me.

My father never even visited the Caribbean.

I wanted a sign and I got one.

Excerpted from LOOK IN THE MIRROR by Catherine Steadman. Copyright © 2024 by Catherine Steadman. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.