Chapter 2: England
Ryan and John gazed at the portrait. The portrait gazed back, tall and grand and imposing in painted silence. Holiday, between them, said nothing, and said it with a small tired smile: facing his parents.
Ryan couldn’t excavate words. None big enough. Orders of magnitude.
Holly’s parents, in lush extravagant color, loomed over the gallery and the forest of other painted figures. Arachne Jones had chosen to wear red, the deep heart’s-blood red of a mortal wound; Horatius Jones wore black, tall and sharp and relentless. They contemplated the entire historic house and the cool stone floor and the extent of their domain with idle arrogance; they had not chosen to be painted with their offspring.
Holiday would’ve been two years old, then. Ryan could see the date on the di
