Chapter Thirty-Two
~ Day Seven ~
The next morning, Cora’s lips were pillowy and bruised from kissing Jack.
She ran her fingertips over them, smiling with pleasure.
A tingle shot down her spine every time she thought of him.
The simmering anger she felt when she believed he had double-crossed her had given way to a hope-tinged fear that it was too good to be true.
Until the way he had looked at her; the smile that had parted his mouth when he kissed her.
Feeling alive and on edge, Cora watched the sunlight cut through the wood beams of the Astral Suite in gold mist. There was no room to feel tired, even though she had barely slept.
There was a rush pulsing through her veins, her lips buzzing as she delivered Clementine’s tray the final time.
She could still feel the way Jack’s arms tightened hungrily around her waist. The undeniable thrill she had felt when she realized that he had chosen her future over his past.
Cora stole a glance at Clementine as she slept, curled up within her satin sheets. Her breaths were even and her hair spilled out across the pillow, a jewel-toned satin sleep mask secure across her face. She was lovely in the golden light.
Cora wanted to thank her. Clementine had set several things in motion that were going to change Cora’s life, Truman’s, Mabel’s—and her own. But it was more than that, Cora realized. Clementine had set her free from something Cora didn’t even realize she wanted.
It was the freedom from having to betray her.
“Any messages left for me?” Cora asked Daisy under her breath when she reached the kitchens.
Daisy shook her head.
She took one look at Cora’s lips and raised her eyebrows.
Cora flushed.
“Get going, ladies,” Macready barked. “This is the busiest day of the year.” She set them to work on so many tasks that Cora wasn’t able to steal away again for another hour.
As soon as she could, she settled into the telephone booth and closed the door behind her. She called the Fairmont. There was no answer.
With a slight note of alarm, she left another message for Mabel.
And then she realized, too late, that she had forgotten to call her father.
Truman ate a cherry iced pastry at his desk and examined the miniature train car. He touched the carriage gingerly, because the gold paint was starting to fall off in chips. He took a sip of black coffee. Today would have been Elias’s fifty-ninth birthday.
It had felt like fate that Truman had been standing in front of The Resurrection of Lazarus at the Bastion when he was given the chance to resurrect what was already over.
He had done the final math that very morning, counted out every last cent, and had forced himself to face reality.
His tabloid had been running for two years, and it wasn’t close to breaking even.
He would have to return to his father and be humiliated by the man who had, as it turned out, been right about him.
He would be emasculated in front of Mabel.
His dignity had been stripped off in patches like birch bark, exposing the soft, raw wood of himself beneath.
He had eyed the Lazarus. It had been his mother’s obsession after Elias had died.
Truman remembered visiting the Chicago museum when it was on loan, going almost every day.
They went to look at it more than they visited Elias’s grave site.
So Truman had lingered there, that fateful day years later at the Bastion, where it had long since been returned from its loan.
He had stared at the swirls of paint the same way he had done when he was a boy, standing next to his mother, taking her gloved hand in his when she had started to cry and he had felt the unbearable pinch of sadness in his belly.
He had always turned it to anger. Just like he’d seen his father do.
“My mother and I used to look at this painting for hours,” he had said softly to Mabel.
Only she was no longer standing next to him.
She had moved on to the next room, wearing that red dress, looking like a firecracker even despite the crowds.
The museum had been Dolores Bastion’s home once, and it was kept dim and shadowy, with the drapes drawn and flickering, low-lit sconces on the walls.
That was when Truman had seen the man saunter up to Mabel. He’d tried to cop a feel, bending to whisper something suggestive in her ear.
Truman had come up silently behind them.
“Come on, sugar,” the man had said, his hot breath in Mabel’s face. He had tried again, this time putting his hand up her dress. She had slapped his hand away, and the man had laughed and then leered at her.
When he turned, Truman had seen that the man was wearing a guard’s uniform. He worked at the Dolores Bastion museum.
“Who’s this?” the guard had asked, when he saw Truman’s expression.
“Her husband,” Truman answered. “And I’ll kill you and drop your body in the Fens out there if you touch her again.”
The guard had laughed at him. “Next time, why don’t you pick someone who can pay his own way?” he’d asked Mabel.
Truman could hardly remember what had happened next.
That old anger, the humiliation of eating beans and watching balances dwindle.
Of Elias and his mother rotting away in their coffins while Truman knew his father would trade him for them in the span of half a blink.
And worst of all—the flash of shame that had crossed Mabel’s face before she could hide it.
He had blacked out with fury, lost control and started throwing wild punches, and he wasn’t even sure whether they were meant for his father, the man from the printing press threatening to shut him down, or the guard who had tackled him and was now calling for backup.
Truman completed his spiral of disgrace by being readily escorted out, a bruise already forming around his right eye.
He was informed that he could never return to the Bastion again—paying guest or not.
And then, while his buddies held Truman down, the lecherous guard had kicked him repeatedly in the ribs for good measure.
That had been the death of the old Truman.
Next would come the resurrection that would change everything.
Cora’s heart turned to a deep thudding as she picked up the telephone.
An image of Jack grabbing her thigh came into her mind. “Now everything has changed,” he’d whispered.
She took a deep breath. She couldn’t think about that now. Especially before she placed a call to her father.
She would think about it later.
She picked up the receiver and dialed the Bitterlake police department.
Chief Bellanger picked up on the second ring.
She gritted her teeth.
“Chief Bellanger,” she said warmly. “It’s Cora McCavanagh. Is my father there?”
“Miss McCavanagh,” Bellanger drawled. “We need to keep this line open for emergencies. It isn’t a private number for family chit-chats.”
“Family emergency,” she corrected him coolly. “And it’s rather urgent. Is he there?”
“No.”
She exhaled. She could practically hear Chief Bellanger adjusting his oversized belt buckle in the background.
“I just need him to know that I’m all right and that I’ll be home on Sunday. Could you tell him that for me?”
“We’ll see,” he said. “I’m not the secretary.”
“Thank you, you’ve been supremely helpful, as always,” she said, and hung up on him.
Clem dressed in an emerald day dress with puffed sleeves that was cut low and tied around the waist—one of Truman’s favorites—and drank the coffee Ella had left her.
She was too nervous to eat any of the food beneath the domed trays, and instead left the house and wandered the grounds.
The morning was warm, and she nodded at some of the groundskeepers as she passed them on the paths.
She trailed a lone peacock, watching its feathers spread out behind it like a jeweled bridal train, and then plucked off a handful of rose petals, wondering what she had done.
Truman could easily ruin her if he found out—and would he?
Would her career be over? Would she be sent packing back to Florida, with her mother tsking and the neighbors shunning her at the grocery store?
She had put away some of the money from her films, but it wasn’t nearly enough to last for the rest of her life—especially at the lifestyle she hoped to live.
Perhaps she would end up like the rest of them after all, working for pennies, the fine dresses and caviar a distant memory, turning to dust in her mouth.
Maybe she should have just been content with what she had.
She shredded the soft petals in her fingers and let them trail to the ground.
She would find out soon enough.