Her Perfect Life

by Rebecca Taylor

  “My mom,” Adam said, his tone flat as his eyes shifted to the floor.

  He was lying. She could hear it, she could feel it, but she had no basis for accusing him. Clare licked her lips and glanced at the phone, wishing there was some sane way for her to pick up his extension and hit redial. “What is going on with us?” she asked him.

  “Why don’t you tell me?” he snapped back. “You’re the one that’s been pissed off with me for weeks. Everything I do, everything I say,” he continued, “all I ever get from you is dirty looks and shitty comments. So why don’t you clue me in on what’s going on with us.”

  She stared at him, her arms feeling tingly and weak at her sides. She was at a loss for words. She had been shitty; she knew that. That was why she was coming up here—to apologize. But…she couldn’t shake the suspicion that there was something else too. Something she was not in the wrong about.

  “Are you leaving me?” she blurted.

  Adam pulled his head back, as if in shock. “What are you talking about? Of course I’m leaving. You know I’m leaving. I don’t get to Indiana without leaving.”

  He didn’t answer her question. Clare set her jaw, uncertain of where she was heading with this. “That’s not what I meant,” she said.

  “Then what do you mean?” He turned away and busied himself with organizing the mail from the school that was spread all over his comforter.

  “It just…I feel like…” Her eyes focused on the window behind him. The late afternoon glare made it difficult to see his face clearly.

  “What?” he commanded as he tossed the pages and pictures onto his already messy desk. He turned back to face her. “You just feel like what, Clare?” His tone was nasty, impatient.

  He was making this so much harder. She didn’t want to fight with him. How had they ended up here? “I feel like…it’s over,” she managed to get out.

  “What’s over?”

  She shook her head, overwhelmed and uncertain. Instead of reassuring her, it felt like he was being intentionally difficult and distant, like he wanted this to escalate and get worse. “Us! I feel like we’re ending. You’re leaving, I’m staying…it feels like you’re already gone!”

  He took a step toward her. Out of the shadow from the bright window light behind him, she could see his features clearly. With his brow furrowed and his mouth set into a hard line, Clare knew he had no interest in moving past this argument right now. “If you remember correctly, you’re the one that said no to me. Do you remember that, Clare? Me asking you to marry me, you telling me no?”

  She had never heard him speak to her like this before. It felt like he hated her. “I remember,” she whispered.

  “And how do you suppose that made me feel?”

  She didn’t know, not exactly, but if the way he was acting now was any indication, she could guess. He was hurt and pissed and maybe scared—but for the first time in their lives, she felt like she couldn’t ask him any of that. Long before Adam had ever become her boyfriend, he had been her best friend. Now, right when she needed him most, a wall had come up between them.

  Everything was changing, right before her eyes, but to her it felt like Adam was changing the most and the fastest. Without thinking, her thumb reached for his ring still on her finger—did it mean anything anymore? She was too afraid to ask him, too afraid he would hang his head and say no.

  “I’m sorry we’re fighting,” was all she could manage to say. “I’m going to go…home.” Her voice was soft, careful, unsure of everything.

  When he didn’t answer and only continued to glare at the floor between them, she turned from him, his room, and all the tension and unanswered questions she had about what was happening to him, to them. She headed down the stairs, past the framed lifetime of Adam and Kaylee, every single year that had brought them all to this moment right now. Kaylee would always have her brother. They were bound by blood, family. No matter how far apart they grew from each other, their lives would eventually spring back together.

  When Clare reached the bottom stair, a sense of utter loss opened up inside her. She was not Kaylee, and despite the lifetime she had spent inside it, the childhood acted out between these walls, it was not Clare’s home. Her picture didn’t hang on any wall here, and her connection to this place, these people, that boy upstairs that she loved too much—the intangible fragility of those bonds was suddenly crystal clear to her now that they were breaking.

  “Clare,” Adam’s voice called down to her.

  She turned and looked up at him on the landing, a hope opening up inside her that he was calling her back. He would take her in his arms. They would lie on his bed like they had done a thousand times before. He would hold her and kiss her, make love to her—because he felt the loss too and wanted to hang on to her for as long as they had, every second that was left.

  “I’ll call you later, okay?” he said. His face now softer. She could see the concern around his eyes—but it was not an invitation for her to come back to him.

  “Okay,” she said as she forced a small smile and turned to leave.

  On the front porch, she closed the Collinses’ front door behind her. Her hand lingered on the brass handle, and Adam’s ring caught her eye. That night. Adam’s unexpected proposal, and her yes.

  Then, the suffocating rush of fear the next morning.

  She loved him, more than anything, more than anyone, but there was a message. She remembered her mother’s own words, filled with regret, and often repeated to both her and Eileen whenever the opportunity presented itself.

  I was too young when I married your father. I loved him too much, and it made me blind to all his flaws. I couldn’t see the path he was on. With a little more age, a little more experience, I would have known exactly where he was headed. Instead, I let him take me with him.

  The morning after Adam’s proposal—waking up to him in his tent, naked between the piles of sleeping bags and blankets he’d brought—the small ring he’d given her felt like the weight of an entire lifetime pressing down on her.

  “Adam?” she whispered.

  He opened his eyes and smiled when he saw her on the pillow beside him. “I’m going to love waking up next to you every day of my life.”

  She took a shaky breath. “I’m only eighteen,” she finally managed to say.

  His eyes searched hers for a moment, but the shift in his expression told her he sensed what was coming. “I know that.” He sat up, gathering one of the blankets into his lap. “So am I.”

  “I’m not ready,” she breathed and closed her eyes. “I’m sorry. I love you, but I’m not ready to get married.”

  He turned away from her. It was impossible to make out the expression on his face.

  “Are you angry?” she asked.

  He sat there, motionless for several more seconds before he turned back to face her. “No…mostly, I feel stupid.”

  Clare sat up too and shook her head. “You shouldn’t feel stupid,” she whispered.

  “I’m scared, Clare.”

  “So am I.”

  “What are we going to do? I’ll be so far away. I can’t even…”

  She didn’t have any answers.

  He reached for her hand. “You don’t have to marry me—not now.” He touched his ring on her finger. “But this is still for you. Maybe someday you’ll decide to be my Clare Collins.”

  It changed everything. She didn’t realize it at the time, but those two little events, his, “Will you marry me?” and her no had plucked her from the life she had always known and placed her onto this unknown and unfamiliar path that felt like it was heading, hard and fast, toward a life that didn’t include Adam in it. Which was impossible to even imagine. Would she be standing here, feeling this way, the canyon between her and Adam growing larger every day if she had simply stuck with her yes?

  Could she still gi
ve him a different answer? What would he do if she told him she changed her mind—again? Yes, yes, Adam, I will marry you. Also, I think we should go through with it before you leave for school.

  It was desperate…and exactly how she felt.

  * * *

  Clare watched Donna set the last page facedown onto the coffee table between them. She had been burning with embarrassment since she’d first handed the pages over, certain she’d made a huge mistake agreeing to any of this. Oh well, lesson learned. Now she would calmly sit here and take it as Donna broke the news: Clare sucked, obviously, as a writer and frankly shouldn’t bother wasting another second on creating drivel.

  “It’s not bad, Clare,” Donna said, sounding sincere. “I mean, it needs some editing, some tightening up, and obviously you need to change the names of your characters unless you want everyone to assume this is about you and that it actually happened.”

  Clare nodded, trying to keep her facial expression neutral and not let on just how much Donna’s small praise had filled her heart with a joy she hadn’t felt in a very long time.

  “Is it true?” Donna asked.

  For a few seconds, Clare considered lying, but Donna was her friend, and she trusted her with the truth. “Basically.” Clare shrugged.

  Donna raised her eyebrows while she considered this confession. “Well then, you’ll for sure want to change those names before our meeting with the rest of the group on Wednesday. Also, don’t tell them. Let them think it’s just fiction. Trust me. This way you won’t feel so exposed when they rip it to shreds.”

  Chapter 21

  Eileen

  The grass was cool, soft, and a soggy squelch of wet earth rose up between her toes with every step Eileen took. In one hand, she had a half-finished bottle of wine gripped by its neck while her other reached for the weathered wooden handrail that ran the length of the steps leading from Clare’s backyard to the beach below. In the dark, with only the half-moon high in the sky to light her way, she took her time descending the splintery and steep stairs. The last thing any of them needed right now was a drunk Eileen found dead with a broken neck.

  Remembering exactly how Clare had come to receive the gift of protection from their mother all those years ago, Eileen didn’t have the stomach or the strength to read any more about her sister’s life tonight. She left Clare’s words spread open but facedown on the glass coffee table and wandered with her wine through the dark house and out the back door. The sound and smell of the ocean pulsing just below called to her.

  The last step was half-buried by sand, and then her feet sank, one step after another, into the cold and shifting beach as she made her way toward the water’s edge. She walked until the sand solidified, like cool concrete spread even and smooth by the waves’ relentless grooming, then stood and faced the dark swell and rush of power before her, its salty winds blowing through her hair and making her eyes water.

  Her legs folded beneath her, crisscross like her children, and she raised the bottle’s lip to hers and took a long swallow. The crash of the waves filled her ears and was nearly loud enough to drown out her own thoughts entirely.

  Nearly.

  She looked down at her left hand. Because of all the traveling, stress, and drinking she’d been doing over the last few days, her fingers were horribly swollen, which made her wedding set cut painfully into her ring finger. Eileen screwed the wine bottle down into the sand, then began working her wedding band and engagement ring off her finger until she held them in the palm of her right hand. She considered, briefly, walking to the water’s edge and tossing them into the rushing waves before her. The thought was simultaneously liberating and terrifying, but she couldn’t help but wonder if essentially that in effect was what had already happened to her marriage. Because, no matter what happened next, how could she ever expect to feel the same way about these tokens of the trust and promises Eric had made and then betrayed?

  “Mind if I join you?” a voice suddenly asked.

  Eileen jumped and turned toward a pair of hairy man legs. Leaning back, she quickly shoved her rings into her pants pocket as her eyes rose up past a pair of wet board shorts and a large striped beach towel wrapped around Simon’s shoulders and arms. “Jesus Christ!”

  “Sorry…sorry,” he added quickly as he crouched before her and shook his wet head of hair. “I didn’t mean to scare you.” He turned slightly and indicated with his head the place on the darkened beach farther down where he’d come from. “I saw you come down. I tried calling to you, but the surf was too loud.”

  Eileen lowered her shoulders and took another drink from her bottle as Simon plopped down onto the damp sand beside her. “You scared the crap out of me.” She handed him her bottle without him asking and watched as he inspected the label then took a long drink himself. “You’re swimming?” she asked, unable to keep the incredulous tone from her voice. “At night?”

  Simon shrugged and handed the bottle back to her. “Not really.”

  She turned her head sideways and watched his profile, uncertain about whether or not she knew her brother-in-law well enough to ask what she was now thinking.

  “And no.” He turned and met her gaze. “I wasn’t trying to drown myself, if that’s what you were thinking. But I can’t sleep, eat, even drinking hurts. It’s like I don’t even know what to do with myself, how to function…if I even should be functioning.” He took a breath, held it for a moment, then let it go. “I wanted to stand in the waves. Let them roll over me, crash on top of my head, fill my ears. I don’t why. I guess I just needed to feel the ocean beating against my body.”

  Eileen nodded, not needing any further explanation. She wondered if maybe she could use the same sort of beating right now. “Are you cold?” she asked him.

  “Yes, but it’s hard to care. Like all my nerves are numb. I hardly feel anything.”

  Eileen handed him the bottle for another drink, watched him swallow, and then settle the base of the glass bottle into the sand between them. “Can I ask you something?”

  He didn’t look at her but nodded, like he was waiting and bracing himself for something horrible.

  “Where was she?” Eileen asked.

  Simon lifted his head and gazed out at the water before them. “Right there,” he said. “In the water. Her body was found on the beach the next morning, but the investigators said she shot herself in the ocean. It was the only way to explain…” His voice caught on his words, and he stopped for a moment.

  As he picked up the bottle and finished off the last several drinks, Eileen stared out at the ocean and tried to imagine her sister standing before her. The waves rocking her slender frame, the silky pale-blue dress from her premiere that night clinging to her skin, the 9mm in her hand.

  “There wasn’t very much blood.” Simon said, finally able to continue. “The gun was found in the water by the forensic search-and-recovery divers partially buried twenty feet from the shore. Plus, there would have been more blood in the sand if she’d shot herself on the beach…or so they told me.”

  “I’m sorry, truly, Simon, for making you talk about this…but I have to know. Was it…did she…?”

  “Through her heart,” he said, already knowing exactly what it was Eileen couldn’t bring herself to ask him. “She shot herself in the chest, through her heart. They promised me…they didn’t think she would have suffered very long. They thought it would have ended quickly.”

  Eileen stared into her brother-in-law’s eyes, her fingers covering her lips, her mind working through the images it conjured of her beautiful and talented older sister, standing in the waves before them, squaring the gun between her breasts with both hands, and pulling the trigger on her own seemingly perfect life.

  “Why?” she asked Simon. “Why would she do it? Do you know? Or have any idea? I go over it and over it, but I just can’t make any sense as to why she would do it.”

/>   Simon pulled the beach towel tighter across his back. His arms resting on his knees propped up in front of him, he let his head hang between his shoulders. “Maybe…” he said so low Eileen could barely hear him. “I don’t know…but maybe.”

  Eileen dug her toes into the smooth sand, cracking the surface while she waited several seconds for him to go on, but when he didn’t she prodded. “Well, what? Why? What are you thinking?”

  She watched him struggle to say whatever it was, his expression contorting into a mask of pain, then fear. Eventually, Simon squeezed his eyes tight shut, then opened them wide and turned to face her directly. “I was seeing someone else—another woman. And I think Clare may have found out.” He broke completely on his last word, all his obvious guilt washing up and out of him. Eileen watched his confession pour out of him like a dam breaking. “I loved her, Eileen. Clare, I mean!” he added, obviously worrying that she may have thought he meant the other woman. “God, I loved her. Ever since the day I met her, from almost that first second, watching her up on that stage in that shitty little bar in Brooklyn. You have to believe me. I’m so sorry for what I did… I was just so fucking lonely all the time. But you have to believe me, I love Clare more than anything. More than everything.”

  He continued to sob long after his words stopped, turning away from her, staring at the space between his feet. If the information had come from anyone other than Simon himself, she would never have believed it.

  Eileen filled her lungs with the cool sea air, then let it out in a rush. She didn’t know what to say to him. Her thoughts were suddenly on a hundred different crisscrossing paths. Everything that had happened, her own current marital nightmare, the past, her sister, Simon’s confession—it was all so overwhelming she didn’t know if she was supposed to berate Simon or confide in him. The clearest thought she could grasp was this—Clare never loved you, Simon, not ever the way you thought or hoped she did. Which then led her to the realization that could both save Simon from his plague of guilt and possibly make him hurt so much more.