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A panic attack.
Clara was officially experiencing a panic attack. Her entire life flashed before her eyes. Little moments here. Big memories there. Her feeling left out for all her childhood. Her hard work. The cleaning. The life of lonesomeness. Her chest began heaving. Her neck grew tight. No tears. Just panic.
“Calm down. Clara, calm down.”
Clara could hear the words, but Kate’s face became blurry. Foggy. Like a pencil eraser had been rubbed across her features. “What are you—what are you—” She repeated the same three words over and over again, trying to steady herself against the failing vision and cramping muscles.
Kate rose from her chair and knelt next to Clara, her hands pressed against Clara’s cheeks, leveling her jaw. “Clara, shh. Listen to me. Calm down, okay?”
One deep breath later, and Clara could see again. The tears came now. Frightful tears. “What are you talking about, Kate,” she hissed between sobs.
“Clara, when I was in high school, I got pregnant.”
The sobs halted abruptly. Clara knew she misheard. Or misunderstood. She sniffled and rubbed her fist beneath her nose, smearing away a mishmash of fluids from her face. “You never told me you had a baby,” Clara answered, lamely. How could she not know that her older sister was a teen mom? “What happened?” Clara asked, feeling her heartbeat return to normal.
Kate blinked and frowned but went on, answering in slow, looping words like Clara was a toddler. “Matt and I... ” Kate glanced out the window behind her, as if she hoped he’d appear at the door. Clara was glad he didn’t. “We were in love. But that’s no excuse, I guess. I’d tell you it was a mistake, but I’d be lying. I got pregnant. That’s why we went to Arizona. Mom was mortified. She didn’t know how to handle it, I guess.” Kate stopped, shaking her head. Fresh tears budding along her lower lash line.
“So what did you do with it?”
Kate offered a half smile, wiping away the wetness from her cheeks. “The baby?”
Clara nodded back.
“Well, we didn’t know what to do. Mom was so worried about people in town finding out. It was... uncomfortable.”
“What about Dad?” Clara asked.
Kate let out a small laugh. “That’s the funny thing. He wasn’t mad. He was okay with it, I guess. I mean, not okay with it. But he just figured we’d deal with it. That’s why he started building the cottage.”
“What do you mean?”
“Mom figured she could hide me away there. With the baby, I mean. We could keep it a secret.”
“Is that what happened? Did you move into the cottage? What happened to the baby?” Clara’s panic returned, as she began conducting some simple calculations in her head.
But before she had a chance to finish doing the math, Kate answered, quelling her questions for the moment. “Mom decided to adopt the baby.”
Clara’s head bobbed and her vision grew blurry again.
Kate grabbed her hands, squeezing them, and whispered through tears, “Clara, you were the baby.”
***
The next several minutes were a blur. Clara had already put two and two together in the course of Kate’s story. But the confirmation of what she suspected slid across her like an avalanche.
Her panic attack took hold once again, paralyzing her muscles and launching her stomach into full-blown nausea. She rose from her chair and stumbled to the kitchen sink, retching until Kate ran out to the back and hollered for the others to come inside.
Three women rushed in behind Clara as she lifted her head from the porcelain. She turned the faucet on, scooping tap water into her mouth and swishing. It was the most normal thing she could do.
Amelia and Megan twittered behind, shushing her and patting her back. Clara felt Kate’s presence nearest her, murmuring assurances and rubbing Clara’s neck.
“She must be in shock. Let’s have her lie down.” The voice, calm and deep, was a stranger’s. And, apparently, her father’s. Another wave of nausea filled her throat and she heaved again into the sink.
Kate continued rubbing her neck then directed orders to the others. “Get a glass for water. See if there’s ice in the freezer. Pack it in a dish towel. Clear the parlor sofa.”
It was an emergency. An actual emergency. “Take me to the hospital,” Clara wheezed from the sink. “Take me away from here. Away from all of you,” she wheezed between heaves. Dramatics be damned, she couldn’t handle the pain in her heart.
But the others just kept on shushing her, treating her like the baby she was. The baby she had always been.
***
Minutes later, minutes that felt like hours, Clara lay prone on the sofa, alone now. Dust motes floated past her blank stare and down beneath her slack jaw, settling onto her blouse. A blouse she’d selected for its conservativeness and comfort. The perfect teacher’s uniform. Boring and trusty. Just like Clara.
“Clara?” Kate’s face appeared, cutting off rays of the setting sun as they pierced the parlor windows and cut across the younger one, allowing for her view of the twirling, whirling dust.
Clara blinked. “What?”
Kate squeezed herself onto the cushion. “Can we talk?”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Well,” Kate went on, her voice still trembly, “you must have some questions, right? Do you want to go over anything, or—”
At that, Clara tugged the ice-packed dish towel from her forehead and pulled herself to a sitting position. “You’re my mother.” It wasn’t a question. Just a statement. But Clara wanted to test out the words. See how they felt. She swallowed and took in Kate’s features. Her own features, in many ways. The blonde hair—kept up by highlights nowadays—the blue eyes and petite, aquiline features. Features that were also inherited from Nora. But now, Nora was dead. Her inheritance didn’t matter anymore.
Kate nodded silently.
Clara glanced past her, toward the foyer. “Did Matt leave?”
“No. He’s waiting.”
“For what? To talk to me? Where has he been all these years, Kate? What happened between you two?” For some reason, their relationship felt more pertinent than their parenthood.
“Mom made us end it, of course. Clara, it was a major scandal. It was as big of a deal then as it feels to you now. You know? A shock?”
Clara’s face softened. She sat up and crossed her legs beneath her, and Kate moved deeper into the sofa. A stale smell tickled Clara’s nose, and she felt a sneeze coming on.
“God bless you,” Kate said in reply to Clara’s gaped mouth and subsequent spasm.
Clara couldn’t help but giggle. Kate smiled.
“Kate, I’m so sorry,” she whispered.
“Are you kidding? You have nothing to apologize for. That would be me. I’m the one who ought to say I’m sorry.”
“But for what?” Clara answered.
Her older sister—or whoever Kate was to Clara—hesitated for a moment, gathering her thoughts before replying, it appeared. “Clara, I bent to Mom’s will very easily. Especially back then. I felt like I didn’t have a choice. Coming back here as a mother would have been hard. And, even if I was up to the task, things might have been different for all of us, you know?”
“How?” Clara pressed, desperate to know anything else that would help her paint a truer picture of her childhood—the one that felt so much less like a childhood. If Kate had raised her, would she have had playmates? Would Ben and Will be obnoxious little brothers she shooed away from her bedroom? “Oh,” Clara added, upon finishing the thought.
“I would have had nothing to offer you. Matt and I couldn’t have made it work, not financially. And... I never would have met Paul, probably.” Kate closed her eyes for a moment.
Clara interrupted. “I still can’t believe it. It feels... unreal.” She lifted a hand and pressed it to Kate’s arm. Her sister—her mother—felt older beneath her fingers. Her skin felt different. She even seemed to smell different. Everything, in the blink of an eye, had changed. “It still doesn’t explain the will,” Clara said flatly. “If Mom—er, Nora, I guess, adopted me, then I should still get one-fourth. Just like I always thought. I should still be her daughter, right?”
Kate swallowed hard, her eyebrows falling low and her voice dropping. “I think you need to read the diary entry.”