Clara

36

Our little excursion started out wonderfully: The sun was shining, the morning air was crisp, and the girls were…if not happy, then at least quiet. The road before us, potholed and narrow, wound between ripening fields and unruly woods, pastures scattered with cows and windmills spinning slowly. Soon enough the dirt road would give way to shiny asphalt, and our trip would begin in earnest.

I was jubilant.

I had followed my friend Gail’s advice and placed ads in several local newspapers all over the country, and lo and behold, the replies had come pouring in. I suppose it was the wording the customers—or “clients,” as it said in my book—found enticing: Gifted young medium speaks with voice of departed. Accurate and reliable. Reasonably priced.

Granted, our last séance hadn’t ended exactly the way I had wanted, but Mrs. Arthur had gotten her answer—and she had paid, even if her rug was ruined—though perhaps she didn’t care about keeping it pristine after she learned that it wasn’t really hers. The vomiting had been unfortunate, but I had confidence that it was a hiccup, something to be expected when the girl was so new to the game. My book hadn’t said anything about dirt materializing in the gastric passage, but in my opinion, it was a small price to pay.

I had mapped a route to take us close to where the clients lived, and with what could be made from this impromptu tour, I was reasonably sure that I could pay the rest I owed Isabella and finally hold the first pieces of the collection in my hungry hands. My niece’s “gift” would take me one big step closer to Clarabelle Diamonds.

The girls looked comfortable enough in the back seat. Lily had opted to sit there with Violet, even though I had offered her the passenger seat, stating that she wanted to keep an eye on her sister. The latter looked spry enough to me, if a little pale around the gills. Lily had wrapped her in a knitted blue blanket before we entered the car, which gave her an unfortunate resemblance to a bushy-haired blueberry. Lily herself sat next to her, ramrod straight and with eyes that were cold enough to burn. Lucky for me, I wouldn’t have to meet that gaze while driving, since Ellie Anderson popped up whenever I stared too long into the rearview mirror. The dead clearly didn’t care one jot about car safety.

After a while, the girls’ silence started to gnaw at me, however, and I thought I could feel Lily’s gaze sear into my neck even through the upholstery. It was out of necessity more than anything else that I had brought her along in the first place. Violet could feed me, true, but I needed a more mature hand for the makeup; it wouldn’t do to show up at clients’ houses unkempt and barefaced. Besides, she could console her sister if she fell ill again.

“It’s going to be a very long drive if you’re going to be quiet all the time,” I said when three-quarters of an hour had passed and not a sound had erupted from the back seat. “Why don’t you play a game or something? I’m sure you did that when traveling with your parents.”

It took a couple of minutes before Lily spoke. “Violet is too sick for games.”

“Oh, I’m sure she’s not. How much energy does it take to count blue cars and red cars?”

“We never did that,” Lily said sulkily. “We used to sing songs before, or read a book.”

“Didn’t that make you carsick?”

“No.”

“Violet will be just fine, Lily. Won’t you, Violet?”

“Maybe,” came her faint little voice. “I’m just very tired.”

“See?” I beamed, although they couldn’t see me. “A couple of nights’ sleep and you’ll be as good as new. I’ve booked a room at a motel called the Pink Dragon. It’s supposed to be very cozy.” In fact, the rates and location promised me it was not, but they didn’t need to know that. It was important that we kept the expenses at a minimum, so the profits from the trip would be as big as possible.

“Maybe there are real dragons there,” Violet said.

“You can pretend if you like,” Lily replied, using the soft voice she reserved for her sister, which made my skin itch all over. Violet was nearly ten and not a baby.

“Maybe they fly between the rooms,” Violet said, “and leave fresh towels at the doors.”

“Are all the dragons pink?” Lily asked.

“Uh-huh,” Violet’s faint voice answered. “Light pink, like the inside of seashells.”

“What about their eyes?” Lily continued the pointless exchange.

“They are silver,” Violet replied with all the confidence in the world.

It was going to be a very long drive.

“I never went anywhere when I was your age,” I cut in so I didn’t have to hear more about dragon maids with silver eyes. “We lived far away from everything, and we never had the money to stay away for even one night. If I wanted to see different walls, the only place I was welcome was at my aunt’s house—just like it is for you now.”

“What was she like?” Lily asked, always so curious about the past.

“Oh, Aunt Laura was a tired woman, always nursing or pregnant. She never knew how to avoid it, you see. Not like your grandmother did, after she had me.”

“I don’t think Papa ever mentioned Laura.” Lily again.

“No, Iris cut all ties when we left. I never learned what became of her.”

“Like with you and Papa,” Lily said. “You two cut ties as well.” Was that an accusation in her voice?

“Just like that.” I beamed again and suppressed the urge to look into the mirror. “Sometimes the world takes you in different directions, and it’s not useful to hang on to the past. Your grandmother taught me that.”

“How was Grandma Iris when you were a girl? Papa told us stories, but only from after she married Grandpa Otis.”

“She was vicious, cruel, and not kind at all. She never much cared for me, and after she married Otis, I was only a burden. I’m sure your father told you glorious tales about her legendary Christmas parties and the vacation house by the sea, but you should know that the one person she didn’t invite was me—her own flesh and blood.”

The girls remained quiet for a good long while.

“Why was that?” Violet finally asked.

I lifted my hammer of truth once more and slammed it down, full force. “Because she wanted to erase the fact that she had me. I reminded her of the past, you see—of a life she would rather forget. Iris wanted to pretend that she only started to live the day she became rich Otis’s wife, and that nothing that came before that counted.”

“Was it bad before?” Lily asked.

“Like you wouldn’t believe. We had nothing—were no one—and my parents did their best to rip each other apart.” In a flash, I suddenly remembered her again: the little girl rocking on her bed while her mother and father shouted on the other side of the wall. I remembered how I used to imagine that I sat inside a bubble. It was safe in there—it was just me, and no one else could get inside. Although the bubble was as smooth as glass, I imagined that it was made from diamond—the hardest thing in the world, Iris had told me. It was stronger than any steel, and no one could ever touch me in there.

“What happened?” Violet asked. “Did they…rip each other apart?” She sounded as if she was about to cry.

“Yes.” Again I resisted the temptation to look in the rearview mirror to gauge her reaction. “Iris won.”

“How?” Lily sounded tense.

“She killed him. She wanted something better for herself and killed my father to get it. It was ruled a stroke at the time, but she knew better—and I did, too. My father was fit as a horse.”

“Was that why she didn’t invite you?” Violet asked. “Because you knew it, too?” I was always astonished by the little girl’s uncanny knack for picking up on details.

“I always thought so,” I admitted. “I suppose I reminded her of what she had done.” Pretty Iris, with her cotton-candy hair and silver tongue.

“I thought—I didn’t know that Grandmother Iris was like that,” Lily stuttered, satisfyingly taken aback.

“No, I suppose not many people knew,” I said, “although Otis might have, by the end. He did die rather abruptly, and a lot can be disguised by age.”

“Like with Cecilia?” Now there was definitely ice in Lily’s voice.

“Just like that,” I gladly admitted, feeling amused more than anything else. There was something freeing about saying these things aloud after keeping them to myself my whole life. “What I have done may seem shocking to you, but remember that I learned from the best. My mother taught me many things, but the most important lesson of all was how to take care of myself and never balk at anything to get the life I deserved—just like she did before me.”

Lily’s righteousness kicked back in. “But did it make her happy, though?”

“Of course it did! Just look at you two, pampered and spoiled. You wouldn’t even be here if it hadn’t been for my father’s murder!”

“But are you sure that she did it—”

“Oh, I’m sure. He would never have let her go, you see, and it was the only way she could be with Otis. Father and I were nothing but chains, holding her back and dragging her down…”

“But it could have been a stroke,” Lily insisted, so eager to clear the name of a woman she hadn’t even met, lest she be tainted by her sin.

“My father did not have a stroke,” I said, as calmly as I could muster. “Mother knew a thing or two about flowers and herbs—all the women did back then. I suspect she infused his whiskey with foxglove; she always liked those plants the most. Then she bragged to me about how she had ‘taken care of it.’ Said it was ‘for the best.’ ” Even as I sat there at the wheel, the memory of her words had me fuming. “But Iris got her gowns and her yacht, so I suppose she thought it was worth it. I sure know that my sins bought me years of happiness, before you two came along.” I quickly turned to glare at them. “It’s not right what you did, Violet,” I continued when my eyes were back on the road. “Dead things should stay dead, and Iris knew that well—which is why I had to go, for being a part of my father.”

“Is that why you didn’t like Papa?” Lily asked. “Because he was Iris’s new child?”

“Yes.” I slapped my hand against the steering wheel, sending my diamonds into a glittering frenzy. “That is why I didn’t like Benjamin. He was still hers, while I had been shed like a snakeskin in the grass.”

“Papa didn’t know that, though.” Lily’s voice was quiet. “He never knew why you didn’t even send us a thank-you note when we bought you Christmas presents—”

“Those little trinkets?” I arched my eyebrows. “They were hardly worth the stamp.”

“It’s the thought that counts,” Lily murmured, but she didn’t sound so perky anymore.

“Were you very sad when your father died?” Nosy Violet had regained her voice.

“Yes, I was,” I answered. “I was very close to my father—we understood each other, he and I—but I don’t begrudge Iris her action. It was the right thing to do, for her.”

“Did you cry a lot?” Violet seemed not to have heard the last part.

“I did,” I admitted in a murmur. “But then Otis came and whisked us away, and I didn’t have much time to grieve after that.”

“You were probably not so mean back then.” My young niece had no manners. “I can’t imagine you as a girl, though,” she continued, oblivious to her blunder.

“Why is that?” I asked in a voice hoarse from lecturing. “Do you think the wicked witches and cruel stepmothers in your storybooks just appeared, like that?” I snapped my fingers. “Do you think they were hatched from witches’ eggs, or sprung from the devil’s brow fully formed? Even women like me, at odds with the world, have a past. We were all girls once—clay to be molded—but not all of us were allowed to grow and flourish as we should.”

“That is very sad,” Lily noted.

“Yes, isn’t it just,” I replied wryly. “But if you get nothing, you learn how to take, and that is what I do. If I hadn’t taken it upon myself to make my life better, I would have had nothing still, and where is the justice in that when people like you—or Cecilia Lawrence—have far more than you can use just by the right of blood?”

“It’s not our fault,” Lily protested.

“No,” I replied, “but it’s not mine either. Iris knew how the world worked,” I added, “and she was an excellent teacher.”

“Papa would have helped you if you asked,” said Lily.

“Sure he would.” I shrugged. “But I wasn’t about to ask him.”

“Why not?” Violet squeaked.

“Because when you have nothing, all that is left is your dignity.”

“So instead you killed Miss Lawrence?” Lily sounded incredulous.

“Yes,” I said, with my eyes still fixed on the road. “Instead, I killed Cecilia.”

“But you had to know that was wrong,” she cried.

“It didn’t feel that way,” I said.