Chapter Thirty-Nine
~ Day Eight ~
Cora’s father had barely said a word to her all morning.
But at least he was there, idling in the parking lot of the police station, waiting for her when she emerged into the foggy morning after a night of questioning.
She shielded her eyes from the weak sun and gave him a small wave.
He didn’t acknowledge it.
“Where are you headed?” he asked roughly when she climbed into the front seat next to him. He stared straight ahead.
She faltered. Wondering if she had enough courage to ask if she could stay with him.
“I was thinking I’d set up my business,” she said carefully. “I don’t think I’ll be seeing the rest of Mabel’s payout, but even so, what she gave me is enough to get me started.…”
She trailed off as he turned right at the intersection and began to drive toward the train station. The opposite way to his home in Bitterlake.
She swallowed, disappointment sinking in.
But he was there, wasn’t he? He cared enough about her to stay and make sure she was all right.
But something had changed between them. He was, without saying it in so many words, rescinding his offer for her to come live with him.
She stared at the purse in her hands, loaded with Mabel’s cash.
Or maybe she hadn’t been clear enough? Maybe he didn’t understand that she had been thinking of coming to Bitterlake with him?
She watched the police station recede in the rearview mirror, growing smaller and smaller. Cora pulled out her cigarette case, wondering if she should say something. She offered her father a cigarette, and reluctantly he took it.
“Did you tell them about Jack Yates?” her father finally asked.
Cora cleared her throat. “No,” she said lightly. It had been tricky work, making sure she didn’t mention Everett Conner’s involvement at all. She lit her own cigarette.
“You knew it was him. For how long?”
Cora took a drag, letting the paper catch and flicker. She didn’t answer.
Her father had been so proud once, standing at attention in his gray Pelican uniform. She remembered her mother tying his crimson tie. Polishing the badge on his hat. How much he had wanted someday to be Warden.
“I let him go,” her father said, as if he still couldn’t believe it. “When I could have had him captured. I could have told the police everything. Redeemed myself.”
She exhaled smoke from her cigarette. Hardly breathing. “Why didn’t you?”
“Because you were caught up in all this somehow,” he said. For the first time, he cut her a glance. “Weren’t you?”
She swallowed hard. Her heart beat fiercely in her chest. She saw herself standing on the Brooklyn Bridge, getting ready to throw her dog tag in the water.
She saw Bobby looking at her. Asking her for her darkest secret.
She reached into her pocket and, as her fingers closed around her worry stone, she thought of her mother, standing alone on her island of grace.
She pictured Jack in his suit, walking toward her with a smirk on his face, a drink in his hand.
Redemption isn’t possible without the truth, Jack had told her.
What she wanted now, more than anything else, was to finally be free.
“I was the one who helped him escape,” she said. “When I was a girl.”
Her father’s neck flushed red. His hands gripped the steering wheel. As if he wanted to break it.
“I’m sorry, Da. I’m so sorry. I’ve wanted to tell you for years.”
Would she go back and change things if she could? For so long, the answer would have been an instant yes. Now she didn’t know.
Her father’s mouth tightened in a line. “Those boys killed someone that night.”
“I know,” she said quietly.
“Rusty. My friend.”
“I’ve lived with the guilt of that for years.”
“And I let that bastard go.”
“It was more complicated than that, Da, I promise. It always has been.”
“No, Cora. Not to me.”
He pulled into the train station. She turned to him, feeling the tightness in her chest threatening. “Da—” she said.
He reached toward her and for a split second, she thought he was going to embrace her. To tell her that he still loved her, no matter what. That he forgave her.
Instead, he reached across her and opened her door.
She waited there in the in-between. Wanting to find the right words. Wanting to give him time to change his mind.
He stared straight ahead as if she were already gone. As if she had already been gone to him for years. Perhaps not saying a word to the police about Jack was the most he could do for her.
It all hurt so much, she could hardly breathe.
She climbed out of the car and retrieved her trunk. By the time she turned back and opened her mouth, he was already reversing. She stood in the shadow of the train station, feeling her heart fissure like lightning as he drove away without another word.
Clementine smoked a cigarette while she pored over the morning papers from a room in the San Luis Obispo motel.
She had sent Rita out to buy them all that morning, her face shielded with a pair of Clementine’s oversized sunglasses.
The papers were scattered in sections over the rumpled sheets.
Clementine hadn’t bothered to take off the makeup from last night’s party.
She picked her way to the bathroom, examining her skin under the garish light.
Her face was puffy, shadows gathering beneath her eyes.
The curtains were drawn, and cigarette butts littered the motel-room ashtrays.
The bathroom smelled faintly of mold. Last night, she had wanted to drink an entire bottle of Contratto to numb the shock.
She had picked up the telephone to call for room service. But at the last moment, she had remembered that outside of the Hill, alcohol wasn’t supposed to exist. Slowly, she had set the telephone back down.
She was supposed to have woken up in the Astral Bedroom that morning with a clear path to becoming the next Mrs. Byrd.
After the scandalous photos ran, Truman’s presidential dreams would be dashed, and Mabel would be a strangling cord finally cut free for good.
Clementine had planned to give Truman a few days to mend his ruffled feathers and then propose that they go skiing at a chalet in Switzerland, or perhaps ride on a gondola in Venice.
She had wanted to visit art museums and operas and taste gelato.
Send frivolous postcards to Rita and Kitty, and maybe even her mother.
Buy gowns of Italian silk and exchange cheek kisses with the king of Italy’s wife.
Instead, Truman’s contorted face looked at her from the front page. In the last shot, his expression was so hateful that he looked nothing short of a monster. Clementine shuddered.
She pictured Truman in bed next to her, laughing at the way he’d persuaded the prime minister to dress up like a clown at last year’s costume party. Feeding Clem’s dog out of the palm of his hand. Crying at a private screening of Children of Eve.
Rita rolled over in the bed. “What are you going to do now?” she asked softly.
Last night, Clementine had gathered her things in a dazed panic while two policemen looked on.
Stuffed her old life in a bag as if it were something that had died.
Her jewels. Her gowns. She touched them now, running her fingertips over them like shells she had collected from a short, shimmering afternoon at the beach.
“You can come stay with me,” Rita offered. “Until you get your feet back under you.”
“Thanks,” Clementine said. She opened the curtains and winced at the sunlight, looking out at the mirror of the sea, her sightline now almost equal to it. Her coffee cup sat full on the side table. It tasted burned compared to what Ella would have brought her.
She went into the bathroom and closed the door behind her.
She took out all of her makeup and surveyed it.
Clem slowly and carefully selected each piece, covering each flaw, taking her time.
She wondered if her association with Truman had brought her so high to the sun that her wings had melted, and now she would be untouchable.
She would let the dust settle; and then, in a few weeks’ time, she would summon her courage and ring Berty to find out.
In the mirror she saw a girl, lying in the grass with mud caked beneath her fingernails. Making herself a bracelet out of violets.
Clem brought a trembling cigarette to her mouth. “Rita?” she called through the door. “Do you have a telephone number for Beau Remington?”
She put on her perfume.
Cora walked into the train station, her chest tight. She stood in front of the departures board for a long time, looking at the list of destinations. She wiped the silent tears that snaked down her face until they were done falling. Then she bought a one-way ticket to New York City.
As she turned, she saw Daisy, sitting on a bench, her worn trunk at her feet.
“Daisy!” Cora called. She crossed the platform and slid into the seat next to her, grateful for the chance to say goodbye. “Where are you off to?”
Daisy squinted up at the board. “Going home to Bismarck. I’ll stay with Anette for a while and see if I can get a job at the Biltmore.” Cora nodded, feeling a fresh stab of guilt. Because of what she had done, Daisy and a lot of other hardworking people were out of a job.
“I’m sorry,” she said. There was always collateral damage when she got involved, and it seemed to hit the people she loved the most.
“Macready said she’d put in a word for me,” Daisy said. She nudged Cora’s foot with her boot. “What about you?”
Cora cleared her throat. “I was hoping to go home with my father. But we don’t see eye to eye about some things. So … I guess I’ll go back to New York.”
That dream of returning to New York City triumphantly with Mabel’s money in her pocket had been like a glittering jewel that, now in her hand, looked dull and deadened.
No one would be waiting for her there when she stepped off the train.
Maybe she would call Theresa and see if she wanted to have dinner.
Or maybe she’d start all over. Become a brand-new person. Again.
Cora asked Daisy to watch her trunk while she went to the lavatories. Then she hid a wad of Mabel’s cash in her jacks bag. She scribbled something on a piece of paper and stuck it inside, cinching the purse strings tight.
For Anette and baby Esther, the note said.
When the train whistle rang, she hugged Daisy tight, smelling her familiar smell.
“My real name,” she whispered, slipping the jacks bag into Daisy’s purse, “is Cora.”