01 March 2023
A nephew. An uncle. 
A psychopath – but which of them is it?
Gil knows his nephew Matthew is dangerous. The signs were there early – on a family holiday Gil’s daughter was discovered nearly drowning at the bottom of a swimming pool, while Matthew looked on from the deck.
Now seventeen, Matthew is orphaned when his parents die in a car crash. He must leave his Upper East Side Manhattan life behind, to live with Gil, his wife and daughters in rural Vermont. He is insolent, bored, disconnected. At least that’s Gil’s take. To the women in the family he is charming, intelligent, wry.
But when he disdainfully joins Gil’s writing classes at the local university, Matthew’s fiction shows a vivid and macabre imagination spilling onto the page. Matthew is clearly announcing his intentions to Gil, taunting him before he does something awful to his family. But why is Gil the only one who can see this? As Gil begins to follow Matthew around, his own behaviour becomes increasingly unstable. Is he losing his mind? Which of the two of them is likely to kill someone?
There was still time to turn and walk out, pretend he’d never come. The screen, perched on a pillar near baggage claim, listed the New York flight as arrived. Gate 3. Any minute, passengers would come down the escalator in front of him. But right now, he could leave. Escape before his nephew spotted him. Concoct some excuse to tell Molly: The flight was canceled; no, he wasn’t answering his phone. Weird, right? Well, maybe tomorrow. Except no, not really. After all, he was the boy’s guardian, and they’d track him down. Or the boy would find his own way to their house and that’d be worse, because then he’d know how much Gil feared him. Hated him. Which was the wrong way to think. He should stop. He couldn’t stop.
A loosely strung crowd came down the escalator, hurrying through the nearly empty terminal to claim spots at the baggage carousel. Already it was too late. There he was: Matthew, in a short black down coat that was too light for the Vermont winter, a bright white shirt beneath; hair styled in a swoosh; on his face a smirk, the slightest turn of his lips, familiar enough to bring loathing into Gil’s throat.
He’d known that the boy would look different after all this time, but he wasn’t prepared for this. Once a lanky kid, he was now over six feet, a couple of inches taller than Gil. Matthew stepped around an old man who fumbled with a coat and a rolling bag, bored annoyance moving over his face, as if this was routine, as if he was a young businessman sent from the city to check on some far-flung investment.
Gil waved, and in the acknowledging tilt of Matthew’s head he caught a glimpse of his sister. Sharon. Who was dead. Who’d left him this. Her son.
“Well, hello, welcome,” Gil said, opening his arms, but the boy stepped back, as if he didn’t recognize this gesture, or the man behind it. “How was the flight?”
“The flight?” Matthew said, frowning at the darkened check-in kiosks, the empty car rental desks, the snow blowing in streaks across the asphalt outside, his dopey uncle in his black parka and clumpy winter boots. “I guess it was like most flights. Fine, in that I don’t remember anything about it.”
“That’s great,” Gil said. “Do you have any bags?” He pointed at the crowd staring forlornly at the unmoving gray belt.
“Nope. All set,” Matthew said, tugging at his shoulder strap.
Should Gil offer to carry it? But the bag was small and easily managed, as if the boy was only here for a weekend. Matthew gave him an indifferent squint, knowing he must wait to be led, though the dynamics that subordinated him to this person were clearly a miscarriage of justice, given their true stations in life. Or Gil was just being a dickhead. Maybe Matthew was standoffish because he felt awkward: coming to live with his uncle he hadn’t seen in years. That might explain the constricted approximation of a smile. He expected Gil, the adult, to take the lead.
