Her Perfect Life

by Rebecca Taylor

  Ella dropped her teacup into her lap. “No!” She reached forward, grabbing Clare’s leg.

  “It’s okay,” Clare said, taking her mother’s hand and looking around the room for something she could use to mop the mess up. She stood up. “I’ll just go get a towel from the bathroom. We’ll get you cleaned up.”

  Her mother tightened her grip on her hand, keeping Clare from leaving. “Listen to me,” her mother hissed, looking around the room as if there were some danger of being found out. “Sit down.” She pulled hard at Clare’s arm, her bony finger digging painfully into her flesh. “Sit down right now.”

  Oh shit. She shouldn’t have pushed. It was always a mistake. Not wanting to upset Ella further, Clare did as she was told. If she went along, sometimes her mother would stay calm and the episode might pass quicker. “Okay, Mom. I’m sitting. And I’m sorry.”

  “Listen to me.” Ella leaned in close. “You are not to sign anything. Do you hear me? Nothing legal, nothing confessional. They don’t have anything. I know it. I was so careful, Clare.” Her mother shook her head and looked like she might start crying. “So careful. I have no idea how they suspect…unless someone from the party saw you leaving? Did someone else see you?” She squeezed Clare’s hands tighter. “Think, Clare. Could someone have seen you get in the truck?”

  Time stopped. Clare stared back into her mother’s aged and frantic expression. Her heart beat hard and heavy in her head. Her mother was lost in time, and she’d dragged Clare along with her. “What are you talking about?” she whispered.

  “I know you didn’t mean it, honey. It was a horrible accident. But you have to listen to me now because they’re not going to see it that way. Because you were drinking and that poor boy—”

  Clare pulled her hands away from her mother’s and stood up. Her mother reached for her again. Clare took a step back.

  “Who approached you? Was it Joe? Teddy? Did Adam’s parents come to you? We have to consider that they may not have any evidence. They may only be trying to get you to slip up.”

  “What do you mean, you were so careful? What did you do?” Clare asked her.

  “I found you. I thank God every night that it was me. And I saw Adam’s truck turned over in the ditch and—” Ella choked on her own words. “I just knew you’d be in there. And I prayed for you to please, please don’t be dead.” Tears ran down Ella’s face. “You can’t know—”

  “What did you do!” Clare screamed at her mother.

  “I moved you…”

  Clare waited for her mother to finish saying it, out loud.

  “From the driver’s side, so nobody else would know—”

  “That I was driving,” Clare whispered.

  “It was an accident,” Ella cried.

  Clare turned around and faced the wall. Her hands clutched fistfuls of hair on either side of her head. She stared into the oil painting in front of her, a mahogany framed replica of Monet’s The Japanese Footbridge. She reached out and placed her palm flat against the painting’s center, barely keeping herself from grabbing it and ripping it from the wall.

  “Clare, I know this is upsetting, but you need to listen to me now. We need to be smart.”

  Clare turned back around. A gummy white paste had formed at the corners of her mother’s mouth. Clare couldn’t deal with Ella or her disease right now. She needed to leave. “It’s not 1993,” she stated. “No one is coming for me. No one knows what I’ve done…or what you have done.” She picked up her purse from the floor. “I’ll let them know you need to change your clothes.”

  “But the legal paperwork,” her mother hissed.

  Clare resisted the very strong urge to scream. “It’s not about the accident. It’s not about anything. You don’t have to worry.”

  Her mother’s shoulders slumped several inches. “You’re sure? It could be a trick. Always read the document first.” She raised a single arthritic finger. “The whole document.”

  “Goodbye, Mother.”

  Ella nodded. “I’ll be home in a bit. Just a few things to finish up around here.” She gazed around herself at nonexistent piles of work that didn’t need doing.

  Speechless, Clare watched her mother scan the room for several seconds, then closed the door behind her.

  She left the Regency in a haze. Barely registering anything on her way to the door, she scrawled her name on some papers for Winston and declined to sit through a lengthy explanation of what exactly happened in the game room between Ella and the other resident who “must remain nameless for confidentiality purposes.”

  “I’m sure your staff handled it appropriately. Please have the valet bring my car right away.”

  The director sputtered a few words, but when Clare turned away from him midsentence, dug her sunglasses out of her purse, and proceeded to leave, he picked up his phone and called for her car. “Ms. Collins’s Bentley. Straight away, James…run.”

  She pulled out of the Regency’s drive too fast, her tires squealing against the concrete. She barely missed sideswiping a white Prius with the right of way. Clare’s heart thundered in her chest as the driver of the small car laid into their horn and rolled down their window to yell at her.

  “I’m sorry.” She raised one hand, the other shaking on the wheel in front of her. “I’m sorry.” She felt the tears, hot and wanting to tear loose from the back of her throat. “I’m sorry,” she said again, even though the Prius had sped away in front of her. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry…I’m so sorry.”

  The drive out of the city and over the bridge was a blur, her mind filled with her mother’s confession.

  It was her fault. All of it. Everything. That night, twenty years ago, she remembered. She was so afraid of losing him, to school, another girl, his extraordinary life. Everything about Adam was so big, so bright, so seemingly beyond her. She was so afraid that what everyone thought was true; Adam was too good for her. Throwing away his life with a bit of white trash who had come from nothing and was going to be nothing. And then, seeing Adam with Heather, it was happening, had happened, her worst fear right there in front of her. She ran away, through the party, out the door, her whole world collapsing and the pain of it splitting her in half. She saw his truck. She was almost there.

  “Clare!” Adam shouted. “Stop!”

  She heard him. She could still hear him, years later, an echo in her head begging her to stop.

  But she didn’t listen; she didn’t stop.

  Her memory ran out right where it always did, like blank frames at the end of a movie reel. There was nothing again until those painful days in the hospital when she first woke up.

  Only now, she knew the truth. Adam was dead because of her. She killed him, and her mother had covered it up.

  Clare turned left on their road and saw something in the distance, right at the end of her driveway. It looked like an animal, a rabbit? She slowed down, pressing the Bentley’s brakes until her car stopped completely fifteen feet away.

  No, she was wrong. Had to be. It was something else—anything else. “Please,” she begged. “Oh, please…no.”

  Every second she stared at him, the more certain she became. Her vision blurred; she was dizzy and might pass out. Clare gripped her steering wheel, not wanting to move or breathe or think. “Please, not Charlie,” she sobbed. “I’m so sorry.”

  Clare opened her door and walked to where he lay, her eyes taking in his bright white fur and blood and stillness. When she looked up her driveway, she saw her garage door was up and the door to the house gaping. The interior of her home was exposed. She could see right through to the naked white glare of the living room.

  I didn’t close the doors.

  Her legs buckled beneath her until she sat slumped at the edge of the road. She placed one hand on top of Charlie’s tiny head and the other over her own eyes as wave after wave of anguish and regret ove
rwhelmed her.

  It was all her fault.

  Chapter 29

  Eileen

  Her flight home left in three hours and henry would be at the house in thirty minutes to pick her up. Her bags were packed and waiting in the foyer.

  Earlier, Eileen had spoken with the lead investigator about Clare’s gun and her concerns for Simon. He had assured her that, when the time came, most likely in a few months, it would be returned to her instead. Eileen wasn’t sure what she would do with the 9mm. Sell it? Keep it? It had been their mother’s, and so there was the sentimentality, or something like that—family tradition, nostalgia. Why else did she still have her own gun that had been, like her sister’s, given to her when she had left the house for college? But when she thought about receiving Clare’s weapon, currently tagged and bagged in some evidence room, the only emotions she felt were regret and revulsion. It was no longer simply a gun.

  It had given her sister the means to remove her own life from this world.

  It brought Eileen some relief to know that there was no way it would end up in Simon’s hands. It was all too easy to imagine him one night, despondent and alone in Clare’s seaside mansion. The gun stored in one of his desk drawers right next to all his dead wife’s work—way too accessible. He might be in a better mental space right now, but that could change in an instant—and an instant was all he would need. She supposed that if he ever became as determined as Clare to take his own life, the absence of this one gun wouldn’t stop him, but with it gone, it might slow things down. Give him time to think, to make a new choice.

  She would have both her mother’s old guns dismantled and destroyed.

  She checked the guest bedroom one more time, under the bed, behind the curtains, behind the bathroom door to make sure she had everything before heading down the hall to Clare’s study one more time. When she entered, Simon was on the floor in front of Clare’s bookcase with piles of her journals all around him.

  Yesterday, after the memorial service, they had come back to the house and pulled Clare’s journals from two years ago. The ones from around the time she began writing her last book and Charlie’s death. Simon remembered he had been out of town and Clare had been to see their mother the day Charlie died. It took them only half an hour to find the entry.

  April 21

  The most tragic events of my life have been my own doing. The guilt and pain and regret—it claws away at me, hollows me out, has taken away the desire to even live. I will never forgive myself. I don’t deserve it. I never deserved it.

  Or him. I can see now that I never could have had him. Not in any of the ways I have imagined. Eventually, I would have destroyed him because I loved him too much to ever let him go.

  That’s the truth I have always been too afraid to tell.

  “She was driving that night,” Eileen whispered when they’d both finished reading the entry. “That’s what my mother was talking about, how she took care of it. How we needed to protect Clare. Because it wasn’t Adam driving drunk that night; it was Clare.”

  “And Clare never knew that?” Simon asked.

  Eileen shook her head. “I don’t think so. We had just been out here for Christmas the year before. I don’t think Clare could have been so—I don’t know—just herself, I guess, if she’d known it was her fault.” She pointed to the date of the journal entry. “I really think my mother must have said something at that visit, or at least sometime right around then. That was about the time her Alzheimer’s started getting really bad. It makes sense that she could have let it slip during one of her episodes. Exactly like she did today with me.”

  Eileen tried to imagine what it must feel like for Simon, sitting there now, poring through Clare’s thoughts about her life. She couldn’t help wondering about her own husband, his private thoughts. She didn’t want to know them.

  “Henry will be here soon,” she interrupted his reading. “I wanted to say goodbye.”

  Simon turned to her and then picked himself up from the floor. He seemed older, completely exhausted. “Thank you,” he said, crossing the room to meet her. “For coming, for listening…for helping me try to figure all this out.” He ran his hand through his already disheveled hair. “I really don’t know if I could have made it through the last few days without you here.”

  She leaned in and gave him a hug. “Are you going to be all right here? Alone?” She looked at the journals spread all over the floor and realized that he was in real danger of losing himself in Clare’s past. She pulled away from him and looked him in the eyes.

  “Probably not,” he said, looking around Clare’s study. “It was always really just her house, and she let me live here with her, but it never felt like home for me.”

  “Will you go back to New York?”

  He nodded. “I have a flight booked for Monday morning. I figured it was best if I didn’t linger here.” He stared down at Clare’s journals. “I’ll come back later in the year. I need some time right now, before I…deal with all this.”

  She reached out and touched his arm. “I’ll come back then. If you want, and if you think it would help to not go through all her stuff alone.”

  He turned and gave her another hug. “I know I should say no, and that I’m fine, and I don’t want to bother you, but I’m going to ignore all that and just say yes to your help right now.” He let her go and tried his best to smile; he couldn’t hold it for more than a second. “I think I’m afraid of being here alone.”

  “Then don’t be. You don’t have to be alone.” She smiled at him and adjusted her purse on her shoulder. “Okay then, I’ll call you tonight when I get home…make sure you’re okay.”

  Simon nodded. “Thanks.”

  Eileen turned to leave.

  “Oh! Wait I almost forgot.” Simon called after her. He reached into his back pocket, pulled out a worn business card, and handed it to her. “When you’re ready, that’s the number for Clare’s attorney.”

  Confused, Eileen glanced at the card and then back to Simon.

  “Her estate,” he explained. “The attorney will help explain everything.”

  Eileen shook her head. “Explain what?”

  Simon raised his eyebrows. “Your inheritance. Clare left you quite a lot of money.”

  It was Eileen’s turn to raise her eyebrows. “What? What do you mean?”

  “She never told you?” Simon asked. “Eileen, you and I are the only beneficiaries of Clare’s will.”

  “Me?” It hadn’t occurred to her that Clare would leave her money.

  Simon sighed. “I’m sorry. We should have talked about this instead of me tossing it in your lap on the way out the door. Look, call the attorney when you’re ready, but you can’t wait too long, okay? They want to get it settled.”

  Eileen nodded and she read over the card.

  “Eileen?”

  She lifted her head.

  “It’s a lot of money. It will change your whole life. You’re going to need to hire your own accountant and attorney. I can give you the names of some good people.”

  Eileen laughed at the very idea. Her? Hiring an attorney and accountant?

  “It’s close to eighty-five million dollars. And that doesn’t include the percentage of future royalties you’ll be receiving.”

  She stopped laughing.

  * * *

  “Ms. Greyden,” the flight attendant greeted her at her seat. “Can I bring you a preflight beverage?”

  “A cup of tea would be nice, with milk, please.”

  “Of course.”

  Eileen sat back in her seat, closed her eyes, and hugged her complementary pillow and blanket to her stomach. It didn’t seem possible, the way her entire life had changed in a week.

  “A week,” she whispered to herself. It had to be some mistake. To lose your sister, your husband, and be thrust into an ent
irely new realm of responsibility. It seemed like years’ worth of upheaval.

  All she wanted was to see her kids, hold them, kiss them, and tell them how much she loved them. That, and to sleep in her own bed, on her own pillow, and wake up in her busy, chaotic, messy house with her kids making noise and needing things from her.

  Only, she couldn’t imagine sleeping in that bed next to Eric.

  “Ms. Greyden, your tea.”

  Eileen opened her eyes. “Thank you,” she said as the flight attendant placed the cup and saucer on the small table beside her seat and gave Eileen a smile.

  “You’re welcome. Please let me know if you need anything else before we take off.”

  Eileen picked up her cup and saucer and took a sip. The only other thing she needed right now was answers. In less than three hours, she would be standing inside her own home, face-to-face with Eric, and she had no idea what to do. She placed her cup and saucer back down and let her head fall back against the seat. Why was she the one with sweating palms, nervous and afraid to face her husband, when she wasn’t the one who had been fucking Lauren Andrews?

  * * *

  “Mom!” Cameron yelled as she opened the front door, his feet thundering across the upstairs hallway.

  She placed her purse on the table by the front door and looked up to the top of the stairs into his shiny, grinning face. He raced down, skipping steps two at a time and making her cringe, until he launched himself over the last five and landed with a thud, knees bent and hands on the wood floor inches in front of her. He sprang back up like lightning, his arms wrapped around her middle, his ear planted against her heart.

  “I missed you,” he said, squeezing her ribs so hard it hurt.

  “I missed you too,” she said into his hair as she hugged him.

  Without releasing her, he turned his head and looked up into her eyes. “I’m sorry about Aunt Clare. Are you very sad?”

  Eileen swallowed back a hot swell of tears and smiled down at her youngest. “Thank you. And yes, I’m very sad. I wish I’d been a better sister.”