A Flaw in the Design

A Flaw in the Design is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.Copyright © 2023 by Nathan OatesAll rights reserved.Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.RANDOM HOUSE and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATANames: Oates, Nathan, author.Title: A flaw in the design : a novel / by Nathan Oates.Description: First Edition. | New York : Random House, [2023]Identifiers: LCCN 2022017457 (print) | LCCN 2022017458 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593446706 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780593446713 (ebook)Subjects: LCGFT: Mystery fiction. | Novels.Classification: LCC PS3615.A355 F53 2023 (print) | LCC PS3615.A355 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022017457LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022017458Ebook ISBN 9780593446713randomhousebooks.comBook design by Jo Anne Metsch, adapted for ebookCover design: Carlos BeltránCover photograph: Andree Martis/Millennium Images, UKep_prh_6.0_142845113_c0_r0 ContentsCoverTitle PageCopyrightEpigraphChapter 1Chapter 2Chapter 3Chapter 4Chapter 5Chapter 6Chapter 7Chapter 8Chapter 9Chapter 10Chapter 11Chapter 12Chapter 13Chapter 14Chapter 15Chapter 16Chapter 17Chapter 18Chapter 19Chapter 20Chapter 21Chapter 22Chapter 23Chapter 24Chapter 25Chapter 26Chapter 27Chapter 28Chapter 29Chapter 30Chapter 31DedicationAcknowledgmentsBy Nathan OatesAbout the Author Everything is a cipher and of everything he is the theme.—Vladimir Nabokov, “Signs and Symbols” 1JANUARY 2018THERE 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.“I’m parked just there in short term,” Gil said, turning toward glass doors that held their reflections—blurred and broken by the mounded snow at the curb, the flash of passing headlights—which might’ve been a tableau from New York. A homeless man (Gil), begging from an annoyed young banker (Matthew).“You might want to zip up. It’s pretty cold,” Gil said.“I’ll probably survive,” Matthew said, as the glass panes slid apart and freezing air gusted into the terminal.Waiting for a cab to roll through the crosswalk, Gil caught another glimpse of his sister. The boy had Sharon’s profile, the high arch of her cheeks, flushed now with the cold, her gray-blue eyes. Like it or not, Matthew was family, his only nephew, so he should try to see as the boy must: a salt-streaked SUV parked at the curb, the pickup area otherwise empty, a single cop car parked across the way leaking a wisp of exhaust, the lights sharpened in the gusting cold that cut through his coat. A provincial airport in the frozen, depopulated north, where he’d been sent to live among strangers.Okay, Gil had fucked up the greeting. But he could do better. All of them, Molly, the girls, they could all make this kid feel welcome after what he’d suffered. Except Gil couldn’t help noting, as he pointed the way to the Subaru, that Matthew didn’t seem in the least upset. Annoyed. Put out. But not sad. Not destroyed, as any kid should be after losing both parents less than a month ago.An accident on Sixth Avenue. Their sports car smashed nearly flat by a stolen delivery