Her Perfect Life

by Rebecca Taylor

  Clare looked down at Donna’s book, Messages from the Shadowlands, on the glass coffee table. It was an advance copy that Simon had requested from Donna’s publisher before the hardbacks hit the shelves, and long before the National Book Award medallions were placed on the covers. It had sat on her table ever since Clare had stayed up until three a.m. to finish it. When she had closed the book, she sat with it, silent, her pristine white-walled study dark beyond the reach of her crystal table lamp’s glow.

  Stunned. Moved. Affected by Donna’s story, yes, she had been all of those things. And also, for the first time since Simon had plucked her from that wood-worn book bar in Brooklyn, the Blue Spruce, Clare felt shame creep over the grand facade of her own oversized success.

  Had any of her many books, even one of them, ever made a single reader feel what Donna’s symphony had accomplished?

  Clare picked the book up off the table. It was the reason Clare had reached and, as Donna so accurately pointed out, lost her footing, or perhaps worse, taken on characters and subjects beyond her ability to effectively convey. Because she had wanted to do more—she had wanted to do what Donna did, but instead she had landed at the bottom of the canyon.

  Clare threw Donna’s book against the thick glass wall. The thud of its spine, first on the wall and then on the floor, broke the silence of her study. Several pages broke loose and littered the floor next to the large white shag rug and roused Charlie from his spot nearest the heating vent to sniff and investigate.

  “You can go ahead and pee on those,” she told him.

  He gave the pages a single snort, then trotted across the rug, under the glass table, and jumped up onto the white couch behind her. “You’re not supposed to be up there,” she said, and shook her head as she bent down to nuzzle his stupid, cute face and let him lick her cheek. She pulled the pale-blue throw from the back of the couch, laid it out, and positioned Charlie in the middle—pushing the extra fabric up and around him into a puppy nest. She kissed his face once more then headed to her desk to do the one thing Simon had expressly begged her not to.

  Poised in her office chair, one hand on her mouse, she opened Facebook.

  Her official author page popped up, the stream filled with her publicist’s recent posts—dates and locations for the thirty-city book tour she would still have to attend, despite her bloody, mangled corpse of a book being dead on arrival at the bottom of the canyon.

  But Clare Collins wasn’t who she wanted to be right now, so she logged out of this account and typed in the user ID and password of the person who she needed to be in this moment: Sara Smith.

  Sara Smith was no one. A low-profile, lurking plain Jane with a stock photo profile pic so innocuous, so truly forgettable, friend requests made by her were almost never rejected. It was easy to believe Sara Smith was someone who went to your high school, was someone you forgot. Maybe she was that wallflower in your junior year chemistry class who sat in the far corner? No, was it econ? Whatever, she’s already friends with everyone else you went to high school with—Accept Friend Request.

  With Sara Smith’s help, Clare had, one by one, become social media friends with eighty-four people from her high school class. If any of them ever suspected Sara was really Clare Kaczanowski, the girl from their yearbook who had defied all their expectations and actually become “The Most Likely to Succeed” by changing her name to Clare Collins and writing loads of books, they never called Sara out on it. Which would be mortifying, especially since she had, from time to time, contributed to some of the comments when former classmates occasionally posted news stories about her.

  “Hey, I went to high school with this woman!” Daniele Stephens posted several months back, along with the Forbes article detailing their guesstimates about Clare’s current net worth. The picture the article had used was of Clare at one of her book signings, a long line of readers stretched away from the table where she sat, pen poised over an open copy of Would I Lie to You?, smiling up at the elderly man waiting for his autographed copy.

  Not that she really cared about impressing her old high school friends. Well, that wasn’t completely true. At first she had, in those early years when fame and success were still new, still fun. Now she really just liked looking at people’s family pictures, seeing how they had changed, and sometimes, like now, pulling up Kaylee Collins-Hensel’s profile and seeing if she’d made it public yet. Clare had always been too afraid, even hiding behind her Sara Smith mask, to send a Friend Request to Kaylee.

  She always worried that Kaylee would see right through her Sara disguise.

  Even if Kaylee didn’t suspect Sara was really Clare, what would she maybe have posted about Clare over the years? Clare had obviously taken Adam’s last name, and Kaylee would know that, but what did she think about it?

  She stared at the photo she kept always on her desk, the four-by-six snapshot now almost twenty years old, in a thin silver frame to the right of her monitor—Adam and Clare. It was her eighteenth birthday, right before Adam had given her a tiny chip diamond ring. The ring had been a secret from everyone, everyone except his twin sister, Kaylee, who had helped him pick it out.

  Next to the frame, in a small two-drawer lavender velvet box, Clare kept a few of her most precious items. She pulled the dark purple tassel hanging from the handle and opened the top drawer. Inside, all the way at the back, she found the small white ring box she kept hidden, took it out, and placed it on the desk in front of her. She slid off the four-carat emerald-cut diamond engagement ring and matching wedding band Simon had bought her six years ago, with money he’d earned off her books, and placed them in the shallow dish next to her keyboard.

  With careful fingers, just like she’d done that day, Clare pried open the box to reveal the tiny chip of a diamond, held in place by four thin silver prongs, on a delicate gold band. She pulled it from the black fabric-covered sponge holding it in place and slipped it on her finger. Adam had shoveled driveways all winter through their senior year to afford it before their graduation in May.

  Twenty years ago. How was it even possible that so much time had passed? She’d lived an entire lifetime since losing Adam, but every time she thought of him, it was a new knife in an old wound that refused to heal.

  Clare leaned over her desk and pulled the photo closer, ran her finger across those two faces. They were so young, so happy. So desperately in love with each other—and for practically their whole lives. They had grown up on the same street in the same small town. He had always been part of her life.

  Until that night.

  Clare sat back in her chair, the photo resting against her chest. She let her head fall over the back of her chair and welcomed the tears that always came whenever she thought about Adam. She still, even now, loved him. Spent too much time imagining so many versions of lives she could have had with him.

  Clare wiped her eyes and sat up, stared at the computer screen in front of her that was still illuminating Kaylee’s profile picture. Like Clare, she was now thirty-eight. Unlike Clare, she had what looked like a normal life, if you could assume such a thing from a nuclear family photo complete with husband, wife, and two children—a boy and a girl. But that was all Clare had ever been able to see. Sara Smith and Kaylee Collins-Hensel were not Facebook friends.

  Clare reached for her mouse and moved the cursor to hover over the Add Friend button.

  Maybe she should leave Kaylee alone. Was this weird? Or even worse than weird, totally wrong to be social-media-stalking your old boyfriend’s twin sister? She twirled Adam’s ring around her finger with her thumb.

  Donna’s most accurate critique from that morning came back to her. One can imagine Collins scratching at the surface of the story she wanted to tell. It was an old accusation now freshly thrown down, publicly, whereas eighteen years ago it had only been witnessed by their other roommates.

  “What are you afraid of, Clare?” Donna had asked a
nd tossed Clare’s pages on the table between them. “You have to dig deep, get into your characters’ guts. I mean, what is the fucking point of writing anything if you’re not willing to tell your reader a painful truth?”

  Donna’s criticisms had always been so hard because of their laser-like accuracy. Clare wanted to tell that story, the one burning inside her, the one she’d been scratching at the surface of for over sixty books.

  Donna was right. Clare was afraid of that story, but twenty years was long enough.

  Kaylee was an important part of getting it right. Clare couldn’t envision telling it, diving into the guts of it, if she didn’t know what happened. Clare stared at the photo of Kaylee and her family, evidence of how she had moved on with her life. Had Kaylee really moved on? Before Clare could change her mind, she clicked her mouse—Friend Request Sent—and sat back in her chair staring at her screen.

  For the first time in years, she didn’t know what would happen next.

  Chapter 6

  Eileen

  Eileen waited with the hordes of other people in the last boarding group outside the gate. Stunned, numb, unable to believe she was about to get on a flight to San Francisco while still clutching explicit photographs detailing her husband’s affair with Lauren Andrews.

  Lauren and Eric had worked together at the same consulting company for years. Dave, Lauren’s husband, had left the photos and the note.

  Eileen had been to their home twice—once for a Halloween party, where Lauren had dressed up as a belly dancer, and once for a Memorial Day office barbecue. Surrounded by other people, she obviously couldn’t take the photos out of the envelope right now to check, but she was pretty sure every picture was from inside Lauren and Dave’s house. There was no way Dave had taken them himself without Eric and Lauren knowing; the photos looked like they were probably stills from an in-home security system. Did Lauren know her husband had installed a camera security system throughout their home?

  Obviously not.

  Actually, Eileen suddenly thought, wouldn’t it be more likely that it would be a video surveillance system? She felt ill all over again. Of course, because who had a single-shot photography home surveillance system? Which meant Dave had watched entire videos of Eric and his wife fucking, repeatedly, throughout his home. The envelope she held were just a few of the choicest shots Dave had prepared to… What? Why had he made them? Why had he left them on Eric’s car? Was Dave trying to blackmail Eric? Leaving it on Eric’s car, obviously Dave had not intended Eileen to see it first, or—oh God, their kids.

  Because that had almost happened. How close had her kids come to ripping Dave’s message open themselves? What if she’d been five seconds later getting out of the door this morning? She tried to imagine Ryan and Paige’s reactions—no, she couldn’t. Cameron begging to see too, clawing at the photos, Eileen trying to process what the photos meant in front of her kids—with them. All while the smug neighbor bitch across the street bearing witness before sliding into her Mercedes.

  Eileen handed her boarding pass to the gate agent.

  “Have a wonderful flight, Ms. Greyden.” The woman smiled at her.

  Eileen, still processing the family earthquake that had barely been avoided on her driveway this morning, nodded and kept walking through the door, down the jet bridge, and toward her plane.

  The flight attendant near the door was busy with a first-class passenger, threading a coat hanger through the arms of his sport coat. Eileen didn’t want any more greetings or smiles. Just her seat, a drink—and eventually, when she was ready, Dave’s note.

  Once she got to San Francisco, Clare would know what to do about all—

  Eileen stopped dead in the middle of first class. Clare wouldn’t know anything. Like a bucket of ice water, the reason why she was even on this flight shocked her from her train of thought. The weight of loss crushed against her chest.

  “Excuse me?” the woman behind her asked. “Are you here? My seat’s farther back.”

  Eileen shook her head and kept walking past the divider separating first from economy class. Her rolling suitcase caught on the arms of the seats every few rows, and she yanked it hard to keep it moving. She looked up at the row numbers and letters running the length of the overhead bins. She had no idea what her seat number was.

  Where was her boarding pass? She’d just had it in her now-empty hand. Eileen tried to keep moving down the crowded aisle while reaching into the side pocket of her yoga pants. Her suitcase caught on another armrest while her tote slid off her shoulder, down her arm, and against the head of the man sitting in 27D.

  “What the hell!” the man said, shoving her bag away and back at Eileen. “Watch it!”

  “Oh my God… I’m so sorry,” she said to him, clutching her offensive bag to her body. “It slipped. I’m so sorry. Are you okay?” She leaned in to touch his head.

  The man jerked back and raised his hand to block her instincts to mother. “I’m fine. Fine,” he spat, and turned away from her and toward the woman sitting next to him, who was also glaring at Eileen.

  Eileen stood up straight and took a deep breath before continuing toward the back of the airplane, trying her best to ignore the smattering of other passengers who were stealing furtive looks at the frazzled woman causing a scene.

  She glanced up at the row numbers again, still with no idea where she needed to be but probably long past her seat, too afraid now to again stop the train of passengers intent on riding her ass.

  At the very back, standing in the last row, a young male flight attendant with a kind face stood with both arms over his head in a V, his palms resting flat against the overhead bins. He was poised, professional and would know how to help her find her way to her seat. All she needed was to get to him.

  Don’t cry, Eileen. Don’t you dare. She bit the meaty back of her tongue between two molars and forced her mind to not think, no, not one single thought, about every shitastic thing that had happened in the last six hours to completely upend her whole life.

  “Hello,” the man greeted her with a large, white-toothed smile. He sized her up for a split second and then asked, “Can I help you?” His face suddenly morphing into an expression of extreme concern.

  Eileen nodded. “I…um.” She swallowed hard. “I can’t find my seat.” Her voice came out a whisper.

  His brow furrowed as he cocked his head. “I’m sorry, what was that?”

  She licked her lips. Don’t cry. “I…I can’t.” Helpless, she looked up into his now very concerned face. Eileen shook her head. She could feel herself losing control right before the tears filled her eyes and blurred her vision. She swiped them away with her one free hand, sending her tote again sliding off her shoulder and down her arm to her elbow.

  The flight attendant’s hands pulled away from the bins and reached to take her bag from her. “It’s okay,” he said as he motioned with his hand, follow me.

  She stumbled after him, farther back into the galley, so the passengers right behind her could make it to their seats in the last row. He placed her tote on the floor next to the jump seat. “How can I help?”

  A weird sound, like a horn, echoed out of Eileen’s strained throat. Embarrassed, she hoped he hadn’t heard it. “My seat,” she managed to say, “I can’t find it.”

  “Okay,” he said, his voice reassuring. He smiled at her. “I think we can get that figured out for sure. My name is Chris.”

  Eileen’s lips pressed hard into a straight line as she looked at him, so grateful. She nodded. “I’m Eileen. Thank you, Chris. I’m not normally… It’s just been a really hard day.”

  Chris sighed. “I’m sorry about your day. It looks like it was maybe a whopper.”

  Eileen nodded and resisted the urge to pull the envelope and book from her bag and launch into an explanation—see this, this is my sister, she’s dead. And these, these pictures are of my
husband, and fucking Lauren Andrews, the bitch. Instead, she said, “My worst day, yes.”

  Chris nodded. “Well, let’s at least help you find your seat. Do you have your boarding pass?”

  Now with Chris’s authoritative presence, and some space, Eileen was able to check her every pocket and her catastrophe of a bag. She finally located the rectangular piece of paper in a side pocket where she had absentmindedly shoved it. Her seat assignment was 22B. Once there was a break in the aisle traffic, Chris carried her tote and rolled her suitcase back up the aisle, past the man she’d almost concussed in 27D and his angry wife.

  Eileen didn’t dare even glance at them.

  “Here we go.” Chris pointed to what seemed to be the last empty seat on the whole plane, a middle seat in the middle of the plane.

  Eileen died a little more when she saw the cramped little space she would be spending the next two hours inside. The passenger between her and her seat stood up while Chris opened the overhead bins all around her seat to try to find a spot for her suitcase. “I’m sorry, they’re all full. We’ll need to gate-check it,” Chris informed her.

  Of course.

  Resigned, Eileen nodded and held onto the seat back in front of her and shuffled with her tote into her seat.

  “I’ll bring you back a gate-check receipt in just a minute,” Chris said. “You’ll pick your bag up in baggage claim once we’re in San Francisco.”

  Eileen collapsed backward into 22B. “Thank you,” was all she said as she shoved her tote beneath the seat in front of her and searched for the seat belt.

  Chris disappeared toward the front of the plane while her seatmate to the right of her squeezed back into their row and began the process of readjusting himself, his seat belt, bottle of water, phone, and headphones, in preparation for the next two uncomfortable hours ahead of them.