Clara

41

Lemonade was my mantra on the morning following the failed séance, as we readied ourselves to leave the Pink Dragon. Lemonade, lemonade, lemonade…In truth, I was an expert at making it, having received basketfuls of lemons more times than I cared to count in my life—the latest little citrus being my niece’s unwelcome admission the day before. Obviously, she couldn’t speak to all the dead, only some of the dead…which already made me dread the next appointment, and possibly the next unhappy client.

I had been furious on the drive back from Miss Carlsen’s farm. I had felt utterly betrayed, and not entirely convinced that Violet had been honest with me. It would be just like the two of them to cook up a plan—invent a new “rule”—to pour even more misery on my plate, and I needed this to work. I needed the money now more than ever, because Isabella was getting impatient and had even threatened to take her creations elsewhere the last time I called her from the pay phone. She had called me “irresponsible” besides, for commissioning her work without having the funds. She hadn’t used the word “charlatan” yet, but I felt sure it was just waiting to be said.

Unless I wanted to see Clarabelle Diamonds slip from my grasp, I needed to find a solution—fast.

And then Violet’s admission, as welcome as a turd on the doorstep—and the failed séance, which had done nothing save cost me a fortune in diesel. None of this was good.

Not good at all.

The night before had been torturous. Every time the girls laughed, I winced, and it didn’t help at all that Violet was back to her old self. She was up and down from the bed at least a dozen times per hour, spinning around and chattering away like a happy monkey.

“Do you think I can be a dancer when I grow up, Lily? Or wait, they need to lace their shoes really tight, and mine would just fall off again—but maybe I could buy my own dancing company, and then I could dance on the stage when it was night and everyone had gone home…Or maybe I could just dance at home instead…Or I could make a bare-feet dancing studio…”

On and on it went. It would have been enough to give me a headache if I hadn’t already had one. The salad she fed me tasted like tissue paper, and Lily nicked me with her fingernail when she removed my makeup, leaving a smear of blood on my cheek.

And all the while, all I could think of was that Clarabelle Diamonds—my legacy—was doomed, and that all I had to look forward to now was being a prisoner in my own home, with the ghosts of my past holding the reins, torturing me at every turn.

I didn’t think of lemonade at all before I had gone to bed. But this had always been my pattern: first the despair, then the solution. Because if there was one thing I had learned through all my hardships, it was that there was always a solution, if only one dug deep enough and were willing to get one’s hands a little dirty. This time was no exception, and by the time dawn arrived, I had a new plan—one that worked no matter what.

My pitcher was now full of delicious lemonade.

Which is why my mood had lifted considerably by the time we loaded our suitcases into the station wagon and were finally able to wave the horrid motel bye-bye. I could tell that my lack of frustration put Lily on high alert, though, and she kept eyeing me with suspicion as we drove. Violet, however, seemed oblivious, and regaled her sister with a long and boring story about a red sparrow who laid silver eggs.

“It’s good to see you back to your old self,” I said, when I had had quite enough of the bird tale. “Being a little sick never hurt anyone. I was often sick as a child myself.”

“Did Grandma Iris bring you soup and make it better?” Violet asked.

“No, Grandma Iris was far too busy with her own challenges—my father, for one. She had no time to nurse a sick child.”

“What about your father?” Violet asked next.

“He had his own shit to deal with—my mother for one, and the curse of the bottle, too. They had that particular demon in common.” I let my eyes roam the dusty landscape as we sped by: dry pastures and sickly trees, a horizon the color of skimmed milk.

“Is that why you became a nurse?” Violet asked. “Because no one took care of you when you were sick?”

“God no!” I laughed, but it came out brittle. “I became a nurse because it was one of the few professions your grandfather would pay for when he wanted me out of the house. I suppose he saw it as a safe bet: There is always a need for nurses, so I wouldn’t go unemployed. ‘Safe and secure,’ he said. ‘A good livelihood.’ ”

“But did you like being a nurse?” Violet’s relentless nosiness seemed to have recovered fine as well.

“It was work,” I said, “but no, I didn’t like it. I felt like I had been forced onto that path—and disposed of. It wasn’t what I had seen for myself.”

“What did you see for yourself?” This time it was Lily who asked.

“I wanted to become a jeweler—or even a buyer for a store. I have always liked diamonds best.” I looked down at my fingers, the brilliant sparkles.

“But Grandpa Otis wouldn’t pay for it?” Violet again.

“No, he wouldn’t. I suppose it wasn’t secure enough.” I made the mistake of looking into the rearview mirror for just a second too long, and Ellie Anderson’s dark eyes stared right back at me. I quickly shifted my gaze.

“Did you miss your own father a lot back then?” Violet had such a relentless streak.

“Yes, I did, at first—and I was furious with Iris for having taken him away from me, but then I came to understand her better. You see, Ivan wouldn’t have been able to offer me any kind of education, but Otis did. Iris took care of it, just like she’d said. She used Otis to better her own life—and mine, too, by extension. In exchange, he got a beautiful wife and the pleasure of knowing he had saved her, and men like him do like to be the hero.”

“He got a daughter, too,” said Violet.

“No,” I replied. “It was never that way. But he did get a son.” Chubby, freckled, and mischievous; the apple of his father’s eye and the heart’s blood of his mother. The golden boy. The seal on their pact. “I don’t blame Iris for taking me with her to live with Otis in the city—or for disposing of my father. I realize that sometimes such things just have to be done.” What I did blame her for was discarding me: driving me out and making me feel so very unimportant. For not loving me, in essence, though I always balked at that word.

“It must have been a bad time for you,” Violet muttered from the back seat.

“No, I had a trick, you see.” I smiled as I shifted gears. “I used to pretend like I was living inside a diamond bubble with walls as clear as glass, and as long as I was in there, nothing and no one could touch me. Sometimes I would go for days, pretending to be inside that bubble.” Whatever Iris threw my way, it simply couldn’t touch me. When she complained about my temper, my lack of wit and charm, the bubble would deflect it.

“Do you still sometimes pretend to be in the bubble?” Violet was shaping up to be quite the little detective.

“No,” I replied as I changed lanes. “Crescent Hill is my bubble now. I don’t need to pretend.” Or at least that was how it had been before the girls arrived. “I won’t allow anything that threatens me to stay within its walls.”

“Is that why you killed Mr. Woods and Ellie Anderson?” Lily’s hard voice sounded.

“Just that.” I gave a satisfied smile. “I removed them from my bubble. And good riddance to them both.”

“Don’t you ever feel bad about what happened to them?” Lily persisted.

I shook my head, but I didn’t look back. “Timmy knew my rules and stepped badly out of line. He wanted to take my diamonds—”

“So you think it was his fault?” She sounded incredulous.

I shrugged. “One thing my mother taught me is that if you break the rules, there’s no one else to blame for being fat.”

Violet giggled. “What does that mean?”

“Oh, she had a thing about food.” I remembered how I used to sneak down to the kitchen at night to steal sugar and cookies from the pantry, and then how I hid my spoils around my room and other places in the house. I had decided early on that it didn’t count if no one saw me, so I used to comfort myself with something sweet every now and then—the only kind of sweetness my life could reliably provide.

I still couldn’t bring myself to eat sweet or fatty foods in public and always pretended that I hated the taste, just as Iris had taught me. Cucumber sandwiches, she had said. Cucumber sandwiches and melon balls. With all your other challenges, the best thing you have is your figure. I suppose she was trying to help me in her way, give me the best possible tools for survival, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt.

“Your father, though,” I told the girls. “He could eat everything he wanted. If he felt like apple pie, the cook would make an apple pie. If he wanted cookies, the cook would make cookies. Then they would all fawn over him and be amazed at how much he could eat. It was a very different life for him.”

“Papa was a good man.” Lily spoke very quietly.

“He could afford to be.” I shrugged again. “There wasn’t a thing that he wanted that he couldn’t get just by snapping his fingers. I suppose that’s why he was so fascinated with dangerous sports. He needed to feel a little more than what his life provided. Waterskiing, diving, parachuting…climbing. I suppose the poor boy just needed a challenge.”

“It wasn’t Papa’s fault that he inherited so much money.” Lily again.

“Or that he got all the cake,” Violet added.

“No,” I muttered. “But it certainly wasn’t mine either.”

They fell quiet for a while after that, so I think perhaps I got to them—or at least had given them something to think about. The peace didn’t last for long, though.

“I don’t see why we can’t just go home.” Lily used her whiny voice. “Maybe the next client doesn’t have a ghost either, and then you won’t get any money.” Lily was, of course, well informed about the previous day’s fiasco.

“I admit that it’s harder now,” I said, thinking, Lemonade, lemonade. “But all is not lost, and there are still ways for Violet to make it up to me. The world seems to be full of spooks after all, which means that at least some of our clients are bound to have dead relatives on hand. And”—I paused for effect—“I have been thinking of branching out…There are people who—like me—are hounded by the dead and have infestations in their homes, so perhaps we could offer our services to them. Even if you won’t put my ghosts back, perhaps you’re more inclined to help our clients with their vermin.” I was speaking to Violet and forced myself not to look in the rearview mirror to gauge her reaction. “That way we would only have to go to places where we know for a fact there are ghosts, and you would do our clients a valuable service by letting the dead tell them why they are still there. And even if you can’t ‘put them back,’ you can maybe find it in your heart to pretend to have chased them into the light?” My conviction that my nieces had been bluffing all along and had no idea how to get rid of the pests had grown both firm and strong. “There was a long chapter on haunted houses in How to Talk to Spirits,” I added, just to bolster my case.

“That is a terrible idea,” Lily said at last, sounding aghast. “Violet will just get sick again.”

“And then she will bounce right back,” I said, “just like she did last time. We’ll stock up on vitamin supplements and carrots. Maybe that will help.”

And so, quite pleased, I drove on into the night.