Brass Ring

by Diane Chamberlain

  JON COULD HEAR THE phone ringing from the garage. He’d just arrived home after working out in the gym, and his arms felt tight and tired and terrific as he wheeled into the house. He picked up the cordless phone from the kitchen counter.

  “Hello?”

  “May I speak with Claire Harte-Mathias, please?” The voice was curt, and he assumed the woman who owned it was selling something.

  “I’m sorry, she’s not here,” he said. “Who’s calling, please?”

  There was a long moment of hesitation on the other end of the line, and Jon frowned. This was not a phone solicitor. “Hello?” he prompted.

  “My name is Vanessa Gray,” the woman said.

  “Vanessa?” Jon asked. “Claire’s sister?”

  Silence filled the line again, as if the question required some thought. “Yes,” she answered finally.

  “Well, hello, Vanessa. I’m Jon Mathias, your brother-in-law.”

  “Can you tell me when Claire will be home?”

  He was taken aback by her abruptness, and he pondered how to respond.

  “We’re separated,” he said. “I know that the last time she wrote to you, we were still together, but we’ve been through some changes since then. Why don’t I take your number and have her call you?”

  “No.” She nearly barked her reply. God, she sounded cold. “Can you give me a number where I can reach her?”

  “She doesn’t have a phone where she’s staying.” He could give her Randy’s number, he supposed, but he would have to look it up. It might not even be listed. He had certainly never tried to call her there. “Or you could call her next week at the foundation. At work.” It was going to be strange having Claire back in the office again. He’d told her she was welcome to come back, but now he had mixed feelings about having her that close to him when she would be returning to Randy every evening. “Would you like the number there?”

  The hesitancy again. “All right.”

  He gave her the work number as well as the address of the small apartment Claire was living in on Chesterwood.

  “Thank you,” Vanessa said. “Good—”

  “Vanessa?”

  “Yes?”

  “Claire really needs to hear from you. I mean that. More than you can know. Your timing couldn’t be more perfect.”

  44

  VIENNA

  CLAIRE WAS GOING TO be late for her first day back at the foundation, her first day of work in over a month. Randy had delayed her at his town house with waffles and conversation; he was not happy about her return to work. She’d rushed home to change into clothes appropriate for the office, and she kept one eye on the clock as she tugged on her gray skirt and red cardigan.

  She was anxious about seeing everyone who knew, to varying degrees, her role in what had happened to her marriage. She was anxious, too, about seeing Jon, about how the two of them would work together when their etched-in-granite team approach had been so thoroughly blown apart.

  Grabbing her keys from the table, she raced out the front door and almost crashed head-on into a woman coming up her walk.

  “Oh!” Claire said, startled. “Can I help you?”

  The woman’s straight blond hair was shoulder-length and swept to the side above large blue eyes. At first Claire guessed her to be about thirty, but then she noticed the faint lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth.

  The woman simply stared at her, and Claire felt a chill of recognition.

  “Vanessa?”

  “That’s right.”

  Claire broke into a smile. “Vanessa!” She moved forward to embrace her sister, but Vanessa stiffened visibly, and Claire quickly drew back.

  She glanced at her watch. Jon and the foundation would have to wait. “Come in,” she said.

  Vanessa followed her the few steps toward her door, and Claire’s hand shook as she fit the key into the lock. It was obvious that her sister was not here to rekindle a relationship with her. She stepped through the door and motioned for Vanessa to join her inside.

  “Would you like some tea?” she offered. “Something warm? The cherry blossoms are out, but the weather doesn’t seem to know it’s spring yet.”

  Vanessa shook her head. “All I want is a few minutes of your time.”

  Claire shivered at the ice in her sister’s voice. “All right,” she said. “But I’m late for work. Let me run next door to my landlord and call my office to let them know I’ll be late. I don’t have a phone here.” She opened the front door again, but Vanessa stopped her.

  “Don’t bother, Claire,” she said. “I’m only going to be a minute.”

  Claire reluctantly shut the door again, realizing as she did so that she had wanted to escape from this stranger with the riveting eyes and chilly voice.

  She gestured toward the sofa. Vanessa slipped her purse from her shoulder and took a seat on the sofa’s edge, hands folded over her knees. She was wearing a peach-colored linen dress, beautifully fitted over her slender figure, and Claire felt a stab of long-forgotten envy.

  Pulling one of the wrought-iron chairs from beneath the table, she sat down herself. “I’m very glad to see you, Vanessa,” she said. “I barely recognized you. Your curls are gone. It looks good, though, your hair. I—”

  “Please.” Vanessa held up a hand to put an end to her rambling. “I can’t deal with the small talk. I’m only here because I have to be.” She raised her head in the air like a racehorse. “I’m here to cleanse myself, to get rid of all the garbage I’ve been carrying around most of my life.”

  Claire felt a sudden jolt of fear, something close to panic. “I’m not sure I understand,” she said.

  “Then I’ll get right to the point.” Vanessa leaned forward. “I know what you did back then, when we were kids. I know you betrayed me, in the worst way a sister could betray a sister.”

  Claire shook her head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She didn’t know, did she? Then why did she feel this urge to leap up and run from the room? Her skin felt itchy beneath her sweater, and she rubbed her arms.

  “Zed Patterson,” Vanessa said. “Is it coming back to you now?”

  Claire frowned. “Zed Patterson? Was he the sheriff in Jeremy?”

  Vanessa cocked her head to one side, narrowed her eyes. “You really don’t remember this, do you?” she asked.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t have any idea—”

  “Well, I remember it very clearly, because I still have nightmares about it. I still have the scars. Want me to refresh your memory?”

  Claire saw a silver spoon dipping into a jar of honey. She could taste honey on her tongue, and the air in the apartment was suddenly thick and suffocating. She began to tremble. Please, Vanessa, slow down. Be gentle with me. She pulled her cardigan tighter across her chest. “Vanessa, I’m not sure—”

  “It was that last morning we lived together as sisters, remember? We shared that room at the farm, that big attic room with the yellow flowered wallpaper. And very early that morning, you woke me up to tell me that Zed wanted me to come out to the barn. You were nervous. I was only eight, but I could tell. You couldn’t look me in the eye.”

  The memory was wispy and vague, but it was there, and it was real. She remembered the anxiety—that same wired sort of urge to escape she felt now—but she couldn’t recall its source. “The sheriff said he needed your help,” she said uncertainly. It sounded more like a question than a statement. Was it the genuine truth, or a truth she had concocted?

  “No,” Vanessa said. “He said he needed your help. I went out there, and he said, ‘Where’s your sister? I like dark-haired little girls best. I told Claire I wanted her to come out here, but I guess she’s a scaredy-cat. Sends her little sister instead. Guess you’ll have to do.’”

  Claire gripped the wrought-iron arms of the chair. “What are you saying? Are you saying he…molested you? He wouldn’t have. He was a nice man, from what I remember. He—”

  “Don’t act so damned innocent!�
�� Vanessa rose to her feet. “Yes, he molested me. He raped me.”

  Claire drew back in her chair. “My God, Vanessa.” She couldn’t even entertain the idea. It was crazy. “Maybe you’ve remembered this wrong. It was so long ago, and you were just a child.” Was it physically possible for a grown man to rape a child that young?

  Vanessa stared at her sister. “I thought it must have happened to you, too. I figured that was why you knew not to go out there yourself.”

  “No.” Claire shook her head. “Nothing like that ever happened to me. So if—when—I told you he needed your help, I couldn’t possibly have known what he wanted.” She looked down at her hands, afraid to continue. Yet she had to. She was desperate to cast doubt on Vanessa’s story. When she spoke again, her voice was tentative. “Lately, I’ve discovered that I’ve twisted up some of my memories from back then,” she said. “Could you possibly be doing the same thing?”

  Vanessa paced across the floor. “Unfortunately, my memory of that morning is very clear, down to the last detail,” she said. “It happened on that goddamned merry-go-round. On the chariot.”

  “The chariot?” Claire asked. Vanessa’s memory was flawed. There had been no chariots on the carousel, only horses.

  “I was eight years old,” Vanessa continued. She was still pacing. “Do you know what that was like, what it felt like? Do you know the kind of toll that sort of experience exacts on an eight-year-old child?”

  Claire wouldn’t think about it. She felt nauseated; swallowing was an effort. “Vanessa,” she said, her voice strained, “we need to sort out our memories together. I think your memory is a little distorted. There were no chariots on the carousel, for example. Maybe what you think happened never did, and it’s made you angry with me all these years, and I—”

  “God, you remind me of Mellie.” Vanessa folded her arms across her chest and stopped her pacing to stand close to her. Her smile was cynical. “You are fucking Mellie all over again, aren’t you? I’d practically forgotten what she was like until you started talking.”

  “I’m not like Mellie.” Claire felt an indignant innocence. Suddenly she saw her mother’s face, as clearly as she’d ever seen it, smiling across the table from her in the farmhouse kitchen. Mellie was winking at her. And she could see a spoon being lifted from a jar of honey, a thick ribbon of amber spilling from the silver. The nausea teased her again, and she swallowed hard.

  “It happened,” Vanessa said. “You sent me out there, and the bastard raped me.” She leaned against the wall, arms still folded. “As a teenager, I looked far and wide for the man who could purge that encounter from my mind. I had sex with everyone. Didn’t matter who they were. I just wanted to find someone who could take away that pain.”

  Through the fog of nausea, Claire could see the slight shiver in her sister’s lower lip, a barely perceptible betrayal of the fragility behind the tough exterior.

  “I don’t know what’s fact and what’s fiction anymore, Vanessa,” she said. “If something really did happen to you, I’m terribly sorry.” She reached up to touch her sister’s arm, but her hand was shrugged away.

  Vanessa drew in a breath, her lip quivering again. “Do you know how much I loved you when we were small?” she asked. “How much I looked up to you?”

  Claire wanted to reach for her again, but stopped herself. “I don’t remember much of anything from back then,” she said. “I wish I did.” She remembered being jealous of her golden sister. That was all.

  “Well, you’re lucky, I suppose.” Vanessa picked up her purse from the sofa and slipped it over her shoulder.

  Claire stood up slowly, afraid of getting sick. She stood between her sister and the door. “I’m going through a rough time, Vanessa.” Her voice sounded weak. “The reason I’m separated from my husband and in this apartment is that I’m trying to figure out—”

  “You wrote in a letter long ago that you had a child.” Vanessa interrupted her. “A daughter?”

  Claire’s knees could no longer hold her up. She stepped away from the door to sit on the arm of the sofa. “Susan, yes. She’s nineteen.”

  Vanessa looked at the floor with its thin, drab carpet. “I have a daughter too,” she said. “Anna. Only I suppose that’s not her real name. I’ve never seen her. They took her from me when she was born because I was just a kid myself, and I was drinking and using drugs and taking overdoses of sleeping pills and generally doing everything in my power to either erase my existence or make it somehow bearable.” She looked out the window at the new buds on the maple tree, and Claire could see the shine of tears in her eyes. “I’m not saying that all of that is your fault,” she said. “I blame you for one thing only. For betraying me.”

  “I didn’t,” Claire said, “or if I did, it wasn’t inten—”

  “You know they were lovers, don’t you?” Vanessa asked.

  “Who?”

  “Mellie and Zed. That’s why Daddy left.”

  Claire pressed her fingertips to her temples. Mellie and the sheriff? “Oh, that’s insane,” she said. “You must be mistaken.”

  “I heard all about it from our father. Six days in the car with him on our drive to Seattle. I heard more than I ever wanted to hear.”

  “He never let us know where you were, Vanessa. Do you know that? We had no way of—”

  “He’s still doing it.” Vanessa clutched her purse close to her side.

  “Who? What?”

  “Zed Patterson.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Did you know he’s now a senator from Pennsylvania?”

  Claire shook her head blankly.

  “Goes by Walter Patterson.”

  Yes, Claire thought. She’d heard that name before.

  “A girl recently accused him of molesting her, but he got off because no one believed her story. I should have come forward to lend some support to her allegation, but I was a coward. Now though—” she let out a sigh. “I run programs for teenagers who were abused when they were younger, and now I’m going to testify on Capitol Hill to try to get funding for those programs. I’m going to come out in the open, for the first time, on all the crap I’ve carried around.”

  “What if you’re wrong, though?” Claire asked, alarmed. “Or even if you’re right and all of it did happen to you, do you actually want to dredge it up? Maybe you need to put it behind you.” The old Claire was talking, she thought. How quickly she could regress to that comfortable state of denial.

  She wasn’t surprised when her sister shook her head with disdain. “I’m through here,” Vanessa said, walking toward the door.

  Claire followed her. “Where are you staying?” she asked. “How can I get in touch with you?”

  “I’m at the Omni Shoreham. But I don’t see any point in us talking again. I’ve said all I want to say. I should have said it all years ago.” She stepped outside, then turned to face Claire. “You know, maybe I’m the lucky one after all,” she said. “At least I know who I am and what I did and didn’t do. At least I know I have nothing to feel guilty about or ashamed of.”

  Vanessa didn’t give her a chance to respond. Claire watched her sister walk out to the street and get into a waiting cab parked at the curb. Then she locked up her apartment and got into her own car, pulling out onto the road. The temptation to drive to the Fishmonger was strong, but she was already far too late. She would call Randy the instant she got in. She’d ask him to meet her for lunch in the theater. And she wouldn’t think about Vanessa’s visit until she was safely with him.

  She sped toward the foundation as though someone were chasing her, as though if she drove fast enough, she could leave the memories behind. But she couldn’t. They were with her, edging in. And when she looked in the sideview mirror, it was filled with green.

  WELL, CLAIRE WAS NOT off to a great start. Jon looked at his watch again and pursed his lips. She’d seemed so sincere about wanting to come back. Had she completely forgotten, or was she simply going to be abysmally l
ate? And how much should he tolerate?

  The door to his office suddenly burst open, and Claire stood in front of his desk in her gray skirt and a red sweater. Her face was pale, and she was trembling.

  “I’m sorry I’m late,” she said, “but I need one more minute for a phone call.”

  He set down his pen. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes. Fine. I’ll be back in a sec.” She turned to leave.

  “Claire, wait.” He wheeled out from behind his desk. “What’s wrong?”

  She ran a shaky hand through her hair, and he could see her debating between telling him and racing off to the phone. He felt as if they were both on the edge of a precipice. “What is it?” he asked.

  She drew in a long breath. “I just spoke with Vanessa—my sister. She showed up at my apartment.” She pressed her hand over her mouth as though she’d shocked herself with her words, and with a jolt, Jon noticed that she had taken off her ring.

  He motioned toward the sofa. “Sit down,” he said.

  “No. I need to make a—”

  “The phone can wait,” he said, wheeling toward the sofa himself. “Come here.”

  She hesitated a moment before sitting down.

  “Vanessa called the house for you a few days ago,” he said. “I

  gave her your address. I thought she’d write to you, or call you here at the office. I didn’t know she’d show up. I’m sorry. Maybe I should have checked with you first, but—”

  “No, that was fine.” She hugged her arms across her chest, shivering, hunching over as if her stomach hurt. “Oh, God,” she said, “I feel so sick.”

  “Sweetheart.” Jon wheeled close to her, resting his hand on her knee, and although her body remained stiff and tremulous, she offered no resistance to his touch. “What did she say that’s got you this upset?” he asked.

  She shook her head, eyes closed.

  “Claire,” he said. “Tell me.”