Chapter Twenty-Nine
Clementine’s hands shook when she sat down at her vanity.
She examined the hollows beneath her eyes, then patted the powder in the makeup tin and began to cover over the shadows.
Sunlight streamed through the mahogany slats of the Astral walls.
She dabbed perfume on her wrists, behind her ears.
She inhaled the signature scent of it, and it instantly made her mood rise.
She examined herself as her skin became smooth and even.
She didn’t know if Truman would choose her over Mabel. Over his aspirations. All she knew for certain was that Truman liked games, and this was one that she was going to win. She had to establish her own future.
Either with him, or in spite of him.
She suddenly had no patience for a set of tennis with the girls, or even soaking up the sun by the pool in her bathing suit.
She was tired of entertaining, of pretending.
She wanted to know she was home, and walk down to the animals and feed them apples and hay.
To come back with her arms full of flowers and her hair slightly wild, without having to look pinned together and perfect.
She would slip away for the afternoon. Look at the zebras, or perhaps take Kitty with her on horseback to ride the trails. Anything to feel less like she was just one more of Truman’s kept animals.
Her hand was on the banister when she met Everett Conner on the staircase.
“Morning, Mr. Conner.”
“Good morning, Miss Garver,” he said. They stopped together on the landing.
“What you did last night was incredibly brave,” she said.
She jumped at the distant sound of a door banging.
“Are you quite all right, miss?” Jack asked. He reached out and gently touched her arm.
“I’m not altogether sure, to be honest,” she said. She surveyed him. She had never spared him too much of a thought, this man that seemed more of Truman’s plaything. A card shark. A farmer. Yet she was surprised to realize that this man was handsome.
Not noticeably, movie-star handsome. Not Beau. But assured. Young. There was something about his eyes that was alluring.
She couldn’t remember the last time someone had cared enough to ask if she was all right.
“Were you on your way out?” he asked, gesturing toward her sun hat. He leaned back, instead of forward. But it almost seemed like an invitation.
There was something about his presence that she liked.
“I was,” she said. She hesitated. “Have you seen the aviary down past the gardens?”
“I haven’t.”
He smiled at her.
She smiled back.
“Would you … like company?” he asked slowly.
She felt the brittle texture of the hat beneath her fingers. There were other affluent men in the world. Not as rich and as powerful as Byrd, but at least they weren’t married. Who wouldn’t put her aside for their own insatiable dreams.
Something had to change. She knew it deep in her bones.
And so she said yes.
When Cora returned to her room, she found a small white paper bag on the nightstand.
Next to it was a note.
She crossed the room in three steps and tore into the envelope.
I’m sorry, Ella. I know you’re furious. But I learned something from Florence. Byrd’s hidden his name all over the house in code, just like those letters you found for Mabel.
She opened the bag and found the taffy.
P.S., he’d written. I thought I remember you liking the banana ones.
For a split second, she saw the dappled afternoon when Bobby had slid down on one knee.
He had knelt there in the grass, the wet beginning to stain his pants, and he had looked up at her with a small ring.
He had called her father to ask for permission.
They had never even met each other, but her father had said yes.
And so had she. She had felt a sudden wholeness when he slipped the silver ring on her finger.
She had watched the small stone catch the sunlight, when no one else was looking.
She had felt a pure euphoria that had lasted for a week.
And then, only a few days later, Cora thought she saw Jack.
It probably wasn’t possible, given that he had spent his last several years in Nevada—but maybe that was all a lie too.
Maybe she really had. She had turned her head and lost her breath, watching the man walk down the street near Fifth Avenue.
She had stood up so abruptly that her chair had clattered to the floor behind her, and Theresa had exclaimed “Cora, what’s wrong? You look as if you’ve seen a ghost!”
Cora had left the table and followed the man, watching as he stopped to glance in a department-store window. He had a hat pulled over his face, so she couldn’t be sure whether it was him or not. And then he had disappeared into the crowd forever.
And in that moment, she had known, with a sinking feeling.
The wholeness had been punctured clean through, like it had taken a bullet.
Her fiancé didn’t know the real her, and she was too afraid to ever really tell him.
They had gotten too far down the road. He had fallen in love with a person who didn’t really exist. And she couldn’t take the chance for any more rejection from a man she loved. She wouldn’t be left again.
How quickly feelings toward someone could ripen—but that didn’t hold a candle to how quickly they could rot.
She picked up the candies and threw them in the trash.
Jack stood beside Clementine, and they watched the zebras grazing at the foot of the hill.
“They’re called a dazzle, you know,” Clem said. “When they’re in a group.”
“Why zebras?” Jack asked.
Clem took off her satin gloves. “Truman brought them over from Africa. The rest of the zoo plans failed, but the zebras remained and they’re completely wild. No one even feeds them. I’ve always wondered what it would be like to pet one,” she said.
“Why don’t you, then?” Jack asked.
She smiled ruefully. “Because one kick can break the jaw of a lion.”
“Ah,” Jack said.
“Plus, they bite.” Her dress caught in the breeze as she turned to him.
“Does your arm hurt much?” she asked.
“Hardly at all,” he said.
“The police said the mob was behind it,” Clem said.
“The hit man wasn’t associated with them before, or it would have turned up in the background check, but they got to him somehow.
” She shook her head, looking toward the crash of the ocean.
“Truman didn’t really think they could reach him.
I think his hubris got in the way of common sense. ”
She touched Jack on the arm in a way that seemed both gentle and loaded. For just long enough to make him wonder.
“Good thing you were there,” she said.
He didn’t answer. Instead, he smiled at her and moved down toward the shadows of the aviary.
He examined the birds fluttering through the enormous dark metal walls.
Rainbow lorikeet, the plaque said. He watched a budgerigar shiver and clean its scalloped wings.
Inside the aviary were miniature fruit trees and, according to the plaque, bright crimson bottlebrush flanked by budgerigars, yellow-collared lovebirds, and a single dollarbird.
BYRD.
“Gives you a certain amount of clarity,” he said. “Getting shot at.”
She nodded. “Yes,” she said.
“Or watching it happen to someone you love,” he continued.
She bit the curve of her bottom lip and turned her head away.
“I’m not trying to pry,” he said. “I just thought it was no use pretending. If you needed someone to talk to about it.”
She looked up at him in surprise. Her eyes wide and haunting.
“You know, I actually believe you,” she said. Her famous face softened, and she almost looked amused. “At first, I wondered whether you wanted my company today in order to share my bed.”
“Oh, not your bed. Surely nothing as civilized as that. The barn, maybe,” he deadpanned, and she laughed.
“What is it that you want, then?” Clem asked, with an unbearable hint of sadness. “There’s always something people want.”
And buried beneath it all, Jack felt a twinge of concern for her. So much that he almost couldn’t go through with it. He met her gaze.
“What if I did want something,” he said slowly, “but it would help you, too?”
She tilted her head. Listening. “And how do you know what I want?” she asked.
“I think it’s possible,” he said, “that you and Mabel Byrd both want the same thing.”
She snorted at that, surprised. “I can’t possibly imagine that’s true.”
“I think you both want her to divorce Truman.”
Clem cocked an eyebrow. Leaned a hair forward. “All right,” she said cautiously. “I’m listening.”
“A divorce might require a large portion of Truman’s fortune, of course.”
“There would still be plenty to go around,” Clem shot back.
“And it might cost him his political aspirations,” Jack continued.
Clem grew quiet.
“But it would mean that Mabel was out of the way,” she said softly.
She traced her delicate fingers along the aviary’s bars. Her ring finger was bare.
“I know what it’s like to feel trapped,” he said. “And that sometimes the only way out means hurting someone you care for.”
She looked deeply into his eyes. He looked back and thought of the blackmail he had come for, tantalizingly within his reach. Of finally finding out who had framed him and Leo all of those years ago.
“What did you have in mind?” she asked throatily.
Jack offered her a cigarette, smiling.
In the main dining room, Cora was meticulously measuring the space between the silver utensils and the patterned china for supper when Daisy entered the room.
“I’ve been looking for that heavy candelabra,” Daisy said.
“Which one?”
“The ridiculous one with the clusters of grapes and the mermaids,” Daisy said. She came closer, then looked over her shoulder to make sure they were alone.
“Any updates on Liam?” Cora whispered.
She could smell the star jasmine through the opened windows, spilling over the wall in a wave of verdant green and flecked with blossoms like whitecaps.
Daisy shook her head miserably. “I’ve been listening to see if I hear anything. All I know is that he’s being held at the San Luis Obispo police station.”
“Are you worried?” Cora asked. She saw the twitch of a pulse in Daisy’s temple, the shadows beneath her eyes.
Daisy nodded. “I know he lied to me, but I still care for him,” she whispered furtively. “I was starting to picture a future for us.” She shook her head to clear the gathering tears and steeled herself. “What a fool. Now I doubt I’ll ever see him again.”
They looked up as one of the butlers entered. They separated and went about their tasks while he cleaned the grate of the fireplace.
That’s when Cora noticed the pattern on the wallpaper.
Byrd’s hidden his name all over the house in code, Jack had written.
She had never paid it much attention before, but it was a repeating pattern, almost a coat of arms—a honeycomb swirling with bees, a clipping of green yew spilling into vibrant red roses and an antlered deer.
B. Y. R. D.
She began to set out the wine glasses until the butler left the room again.
“I learned something else, though,” Daisy whispered. “I was trying to find out about Liam, and I overheard Truman and Miss Garver arguing.” She cocked her eyebrow and said, meaningfully, “Tonight will go one of two ways. And one of them might be exactly what you were hop—”
Mrs. Macready entered the room and cut her off, this time with the groundskeepers behind her, their arms overflowing with blossoms to make the new centerpieces.
“Daisy,” Mrs. Macready said, eyes narrowing as she inspected their work. “Miss Duluth can finish up here. I need you in the kitchen.”
Daisy curtsied. “Yes, ma’am,” she said.
She waited until Mrs. Macready had turned her back and then hastily scribbled something on one of the doilies. She crumpled it and, without looking back, kicked it to the floor.
Cora forced herself to slowly make her way around the table, setting wine glasses at each spot. Then she subtly bent and retrieved the note.
Bell tower at 8 p.m., Daisy had written. Camera ready.
Cora crumpled the note in her hand.