The servants hurried around the estate. My mother and I met with the constable in the drawing room, an outdated room of the last century barely used as my family wasn't the kind who often received people. My father disliked the local nobility and despised anyone lower so there were rarely guests.

The constable sat in the chair before us. My mother sat near me, drying her tears with her handkerchief.

Can't this wait? I thought.

He was a man older than myself, similar in age to my father, with an authoritative air to him. He listened to my mother, who spoke the most between us, and he silently wrote something down in his papers. What was he writing? I so wanted to know. He obviously drank himself to death-why the need for such fuss? I told myself it was only a formality. It needed to be done, but I felt he could see right through me.

My mother recounted everything we already knew. She was awakened by the screaming maid and by the rest of the household rushing to my father's apartments. I agreed and recounted the same. The last time she saw him well was when he took his leave from supper. I also agreed.

"Did Monsieur le Comte drink before supper?"

"Yes," said my mother, "I noticed he had much before he retired for the night."

I did not notice that.

"Is it often? Or only last night?"

"Some nights," she began, but she stopped herself and said in a low voice, "every night."

"How much? What kind?"

"Forgive me, Monsieur; I do not know," she began. "I am a lady. It would be improper to concern myself with such things."

"I see," he said. He nodded and wrote something. "Do you know, Monseigneur?"

"He's partial to wine at supper," I began, "gin at night."

He nodded and continued to write. I do not recall the rest of the questions, but it was over before long. The constable only stood up and took his leave. I could not read if he was satisfied or not. My mother looked over at me and departed from the room. The rest of the night, people moved to and fro, and I recall little of it. I only stayed near my mother, trying to comfort her, and she cried in bed. I stayed in Calais for three days before my mother convinced me to go back to Varlemont to tell Catherine. And that was the extent of it. That is how I killed my father.

I've never regretted it. I never cry myself to sleep at night thinking about him. My father was a cruel man, a fact about himself I believed he enjoyed, though it took me this long to realize it. Even after I killed him, I thought there was still a good version of him that I killed, but I know that all his terrible selves were the extent of him. They all blended together into one great muck. He was never a man I loved, though I often wish I did. In truth, I never knew him. I don't believe anyone has. I never heard of him speak of his childhood even once, of his father, or anything else about himself. The only thing I know is that his father died a few years after he married my mother; his mother died when he was ten; and his little brother died at eight. He never spoke of it. I know little of my family's line because of him. He had no memories. I suppose he wanted that. He wanted to be an empty vessel. A force only defined by how it exerts itself. I don't even see him as a real person with real emotions, memories, and dreams. He is, and always has been, just my father. How cold, serious, and silent was he.

I believe it might be our family curse-our extreme penchant for apathy. It might have started with my father, or his, or all the other fathers down into the mists of time. I suppose nothing matters when one is wealthy. Everything else has been predestined. You enter a noble profession, take a wife selected for you, have an heir and spare, and live your life fitting your station with the respect you deserve. That is all. There is nothing else to care about. It is this coldness, this carelessness, and this numbness at the end of our skin that have destroyed our family the most. Other houses may rise and fall, but we shall continue yet, not through intrigue or wealth but because, through the centuries, we are the men who idle. We wander and search desperately for the satisfaction we crave, hoping that one day we will be better, wiser, stronger, and honorable men, only to become another name to add to a long line of faces that all look exactly alike. We may think ourselves different, we may think that our generation is better than the last, but there are some wheels that are left unbroken because we are the people who never learn. We wander only to return to exactly where we started.

I am reminded of a dream I once had months after my father's death. I walked behind my father, wrapping a wool greatcoat around me as I braced against the cold, hard wind as we journeyed across the white cliffs of the Cape. I was a child, perhaps ten or so, and would barely keep up with my father's fast, wide strides across the grass. We reached the high point, and my father looked out into the horizon towards Dover. But it was not a clear day; there was too much fog and rain. I saw nothing but a horizon of gray and a murky sea.

"Do you see anything?" I said. He smiled as another burst of wind blew through us. I shivered under my clothes. I longed for the warmth of the fire, but there was nothing but the dark clouds and the gray skies. He ignored me and grinned for a long time.

"I can't see anything," I said as I squinted my eyes in the rain. I did not know where I was. I wanted to be warm. I wanted my mother. I wanted my brother. I wanted to leave and go back home. I had begun to cry. "Father, it's too cold. I want to go home!"

He finally looked down at me as he kept smiling. He was younger, perhaps not much older than I am now, and his face still had a boyish quality to it before drinking aged him beyond his years.

"Why are you upset?" He said as he knelled down to meet my height. He placed his hand on my shoulder. "This is our home. Isn't it so beautiful here?"

Hot tears warmed my face as the gray-hued skies darkened to black and the fog thickened into a white wall around us. Fear shot through me as thunder boomed somewhere in the distance. "Where's maman? I want maman!"

He frowned. "She's not here."

He stood back up and pulled out the golden watch from the pocket of his coat. He studied it for a moment before sighing. He turned his back on me and walked back down the slope, leaving me at the top of the cape.

"Don't leave me!" I shouted after him, "Papa! Papa!"

But he did not turn back to me. The last thing I saw was the black silhouette of my father, his greatcoat blowing in the wind, walking further and further away from me, down the slope, distorting and disintegrating into the great white fog. Into nothing.