Clara

54

Saturday arrived with a glowing August sun and birdsong in the air. I spent most of it in my room, planning the last details of our trip, and felt wonderful as I hung up the phone, having made the last reservation just in time for dinner.

I stepped out in the hallway with some apprehension, as Lily had been a menace over the last few days—not because she said or did anything in particular, but because of the way she kept looking at me with her eyes narrowed to slits. It was unnerving: annoying and unsettling in equal measure.

The girl looked as if she was about to devour me.

It was Dina’s half day off, but she had prepared a delicious piece of venison for meat day, resting upon a bed of wild mushrooms. The meal had kept well in the food warmer, and I even burned my fingers on the plate when I carried it out to the dining room and called for Violet to come help me eat it. The girls had spent the day in the winter garden, where they were blissfully occupied with some new project. They were making suncatchers, Dina had told me, from strings and mirrors and pebbles and such. A silly waste of time, of course, but at least it kept them out of my hair.

Violet came slowly into the dining room, scrutinizing the food. She wore one of her checked skirts and a knitted red cardigan that hung halfway off her shoulder. Clothes were always an issue with her; she wore them all like empty sacks, ill fitting and rumpled.

“What is wrong?” I asked her. “Is the food not to your liking? Not to worry; you won’t have to eat as much as a bite.”

“It’s just the mushrooms.” She smiled and shrugged, then climbed onto the chair beside me. “They are cute.”

I rolled my eyes. “Well, let’s have a taste, then, shall we?” I was already salivating in anticipation. The meat was pink and tender, and the mushrooms smelled of garlic and butter.

“Sure.” She was still smiling when she lifted the silver fork. When the first bite landed on my tongue, I automatically closed my eyes to fully savor the tasty morsel. “Do you like it?” Violet asked, looking at me expectantly.

“It is delicious.” I wiped my lips with the napkin. “You should try it sometime.” There was nothing wrong with encouraging an appreciation for fine cuisine.

“No, I don’t think so.” Violet giggled, then kept eyeing me as I chewed.

Lily came drifting in when we were halfway through the meal. She stood by the door to the kitchen, leaning against the frame and looking at me with her wolf eyes.

“What do you want?” I barked at her.

“I’m just bored.” She sighed and pulled at the arm of her white cardigan. “Violet and I were going to watch TV, but now I have to wait for you to finish your dinner.” I had a strict rule about noisy activities at dinnertime.

“Well, meals cannot be rushed,” I told her. “It’s bad for the digestion.”

“Sure,” she said, but remained standing there, watching my food with feral eyes and tugging at her braid. “Dina and I picked the mushrooms,” she said. “There’s lots of them now, in the woods.”

“Yes, thank you. I know where mushrooms grow,” I said.

“We had mushroom soup before.” Lily continued the pointless conversation. “It was really nice, and Dina made fresh bread to go with it.”

“Kind of her,” I murmured.

“Yes,” Lily agreed. “Dina is very nice.”

“Open up.” Violet lifted another forkful of mushrooms to my lips. “You have to eat everything,” she told me with a nod.

“Did your parents teach you that?” I arched an eyebrow ever so slightly.

The girl nodded again. Her hair had come undone, tumbling out of the ponytail. I hoped I wouldn’t find one of the coarse strands in my food.

When dinner was over and done with, the girls planted themselves on the living room couch and watched TV as announced, their suncatchers momentarily forgotten. They both remained there until I chased them out in order to listen to my opera. I could no longer enjoy either wine or secret chocolates, but at least I had the music, which was something. As Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” streamed out into the room, I slumped down on the couch and took several deep breaths. Planning a road trip was hard work. There were all sorts of things one had to think about.

Even through the music and the closed doors, I could hear the girls’ chatter in the winter garden. I no longer felt entirely easy when the two of them were together alone; I worried that they conspired against me. I couldn’t make out any words, though, just murmurs. There was no laughter, but that wasn’t uncommon since their failed escape. I honestly quite enjoyed how their unbridled enthusiasm had become somewhat…tempered.

They deserved all the suffering they got, for awakening all my secrets.

I dozed off for a while, probably due to the heavy meal, and when I woke up, both the girls and the opera were gone, and there was nothing but silence around me. I didn’t feel right, though. My stomach hurt, and I was desperately nauseous. I scrambled up from the couch and only just made it to the pink downstairs toilet before all the delicious dinner came tumbling out of me. I stayed in the bathroom for quite some time, heaving and hurling, before my stomach was entirely empty. It still cramped, though, painfully—and to make everything just a little bit worse, Timmy came to throw his fists against the door.

“Go away!” I yelled at him. “Go away, you thieving troll!” But my husband—always a sucker for disaster—just kept hammering on the door while that awful hissing noise filled the air.

I unlocked the door and threw it open—which did indeed shut him up for a moment—before staggering into the kitchen to find the phone and call a doctor.

The phone wasn’t there, though.

The fat phone book was still in place on the counter, but the apparatus itself was gone.

“Lily!” I croaked. “Violet!” Maybe the two of them had taken it away as a joke. “Lily!” I cried again, but my voice was very weak. I stumbled into the dining room, and then farther into the living room, where I fell back down on the couch. My stomach was still convulsing, and for once I was at a loss for what to do. I threw up again then—pure acid down on the Persian rug—and noticed how my thinking wasn’t clear; it was hard just to catch and keep a thought.

For a moment, I saw the three ghosts, standing before me in a row and looking down at me. Timmy was smirking as well as he could manage with the bleeding cut on his cheek; Cecilia had folded her hands over her stomach and seemed as happy as the cat that got the cream; pretty Ellie pursed her lips and wagged a finger in the air. That was all I saw before another painful twinge made my body cramp upon the green velvet.

The next time I came to, my nieces were there. They were standing side by side on the other side of the coffee table, holding hands. Both of them stared at me, but neither of them rushed to help me. Lily had never looked more like Iris than she did in that moment; her cold gaze raked over my body like a scalpel, judging every inch.

“It will be over soon,” she said in a voice laced with ice. “We gave you a lot.”

“What…are you…talking about?” I croaked.

“Oh, nothing.” She shrugged. Violet, beside her, looked down at the floor.

“Get…help,” I uttered next, with considerable effort.

“No, I don’t think so,” Lily replied, and then—finally—I understood.

The little fox had tricked me!

If I had had the strength, I would have laughed then, because just as Clarabelle Diamonds slipped forever from my grasp, another legacy slotted in its place—passed on to me from Iris, and now from me to the girls.

Murder ran strong in our family.

“At least you’ll be rid of the ghosts.” Violet looked up and beamed in my direction.

Lily smiled down at her sister. “Violet has promised that she won’t bring you back, no matter how much you ask.” The girl shifted and tightened her grip on Violet’s hand. “It’s just like you said, Aunt Clara. Sometimes murder is the only way out if you want to make a good life. Thank you for teaching us that.”

For a second then, it looked as if the whole girl was engulfed in flames, of all colors of the rainbow—much like the fire in a well-cut diamond. Her sister, too, stood there shrouded in flames, only hers were gray as smoke and black as ink. It lasted for only a second, and then they looked themselves again.

“Violet…” I tried one last time to save myself, but the girl only gave me a pitiful smile, and now the ghosts were back, too, laughing and jeering.

“Soon I will see the soles of your feet,” Cecilia said. I was stunned to hear her voice at last but figured it had to do with my imminent doom.

“May you rot,” said Ellie. Timmy lifted a hand as if to place it on her shoulder, but to my immense delight, she shrugged it off. Their illicit love had clearly not lasted.

Instead, my husband turned his attention to me and toasted the air with an imaginary tumbler.

But I was safe, I was home, in a bubble of indestructible diamond—soaring high up in the sky, where no one, ever, could touch me.