Excerpt: A Thousand Northern Lights

I used to think I was the favourite child. It seemed I could get anything I wanted. Anything I asked for, I got. It always seemed my father just wanted to please me. I lived a charmed life.
My brother, on the other hand, had it much worse. My father was very hard on him, always expecting a lot. I never knew him to get anything he asked for. If my life hadn’t changed, I’d still feel sorry for him.
It was late one night, after I had been sent to the boarding school. I came home without telling anyone. I had been lonely that night, and all the other students had been out at the bars. I never enjoyed any of that, so had stayed at the boarding house when everyone else went out. After a few hours, I needed to be around people, so I headed for home to visit my family.
My brother wasn’t sent to school like I was. I had figured my parents wanted him home as a slave, to work around the house. If I could have seen more beyond myself, I would have realized that was far from the truth. He stayed home to learn the family business.
It took an hour or so to get home, taking an aircab. It dropped me off at the corner and I walked from there. It was a five minute walk up the drive to our house.
When I got there, I thought it was odd that the butler didn’t answer the door. I had come home at all hours, and he always was there when I reached the door. I always wondered how he did it, but I figure now that there were sensors on the driveway. That night, I opened the door myself, figuring he must have been asleep for once.
Most of the lights were out, which was odd in our house. I didn’t notice that night. I didn’t think to call out and let them know I was there. If I had, I wouldn’t have seen what I saw that night. I wandered through the house, not noticing the lack of servants, just looking for my family. It took almost an hour to search the house. I didn’t find any servants, my mother, my brother, or my father. There was no one in the house.
I never paid attention to the servants, so their absence didn’t faze me. My family was more obvious to me. Where could they be? I decided to check out back.
Stepping out, I looked to the servants’ quarters and guest house. I didn’t notice any lights on in either, so I figured they weren’t in either. It would have been odd if they had, so I wasn’t surprised. I did notice a light up on the hill back beyond the grounds. I didn’t realize this was strange, but figured it must be them. I headed across the grounds.
It took a while to get to the hill. By that time, the light had moved over the hill. I couldn’t see the glow anymore. I hiked up the hill until I reached the top. I saw the light near the stream at the bottom of the hill. I could see two figures and a large shape between them. As I watched, they sat the shape down and pulled two shovels from it. As I watched them dig, I realized it was my father and brother, and that the large shape was a body.
I left that day and never came back.