Chapter 29
Clara Fitzgerald stood with her hands on her hips, circling a floral arrangement she'd just finished—the most tasteless thing she'd ever put together in her life. The icy air conditioning made her shudder briefly as she reached toward the twisted eucalyptus branches.
"It looks nice, honey," Elizabeth said, pulling off her glasses and setting the romance novel she'd been reading in her lap.
Clara clicked her tongue, fairly certain her wife was lying.
She'd been restless all week—tension at the office had followed her home—so when bedtime rolled around, she'd had to move to the guest room to keep from waking Elizabeth with her every-five-seconds tossing.
Bored, she'd started watching a crafting tutorial about the relaxing art of building beautiful floral arrangements.
After carefully studying all five installments of a seventy-year-old woman calmly explaining the importance of choosing good moss, Clara realized she felt calm, so she decided to take the final step: buy everything she needed to put together a bouquet using everything she'd learned. The result was a disaster.
"It's hideous." Clara stayed facing her creation, squinting. "It looks nothing like the photo I copied."
Her wife let out a melodic laugh that loosened something in the marketing director's chest. She came closer, sat beside her, and pulled her into a hug.
"I love you," Clara whispered, and kissed her on the lips. "I don't know what I'd do without you."
She meant it, because from the moment she'd met her years ago, Elizabeth had been her anchor in everything—and had become her favorite person after meeting many, many people and deciding the world was an ugly place full of people who weren't worth the effort.
"I love you too," Elizabeth said, smiling. "What if we—"
The doorbell rang once, and two seconds later it rang again. Longer this time, as if the person on the other side had kept a finger on the button.
Clara made a face but got up from the couch anyway.
On a Saturday morning, the only possible visitor was a group of older women going door to door handing out pamphlets about paradise and the coming of Christ. She'd always had the slightly unhinged urge to tell them that in her house sin was the house rule, seeing as she was married to another woman, but Elizabeth—ever gracious—always made her take the thin little magazine, say thank you, and go back inside.
That was what she was going to do. She grabbed the handle, put on a smile, and opened the door.
A woman with an odd look about her watched her from behind dark sunglasses. Despite the glamorous white linen pants and the simple sleeveless blouse, she looked like nothing so much as something someone had thrown on a hanger and forgotten.
"Diane," Clara said by way of greeting, without stepping aside. "To what do I owe the honor?"
Even with the sunglasses hiding her eyes, Clara caught the small movement in her left eye—a flinch that, for all it gave her away, she'd never managed to control.
They hadn't spoken since that Friday at the Asian restaurant, and almost a week had gone by.
Their interactions had been limited to work, and staying a good team had been anything but easy.
Their history was long and tangled: their beginning had been messy, they'd learned to carefully balance their relationship with the job when they were together, and they'd become experts at hiding how broken they were when it ended—all while Diane kept concealing that she was drunk in front of a client paying half a million euros for Whitestone's services.
"Can we talk for a minute?" Diane's voice came out hoarse, as if she hadn't spoken to anyone in days.
Clara's expression hardened, and just as she was about to close the door in her face, her considerate wife floated to her side.
"Diane, sweetheart, so good to see you." Elizabeth nudged her wife gently out of the way. "Come in, please, don't stand out there in this heat."
The dark-haired woman glanced at Clara, waiting for her approval, and her friend's answer was a sharp exhale and a tilt of the head, inviting her in.
The three women walked down the hallway like they were headed to a funeral, and when they reached the living room, the silence pressed in around them.
Conveniently, Elizabeth checked her watch and folded her hands together.
"I have a call to make, but Diane, make yourself at home—you know you're always welcome here."
"Thank you, Elizabeth," she answered, and got that warm smile in return.
Before she left, Elizabeth kissed her wife and held her gaze for a moment. The silent be nice didn't go unnoticed.
When Elizabeth turned and walked away, the friends—or partial enemies—sat down. One in the armchair, the other on the couch. They faced each other, but neither spoke for several seconds.
"I'm sorry," Diane began, and though something stirred inside Clara, her expression didn't change. "Not just for putting you in a professionally difficult position—but for who I've been to you."
Well. The short-haired woman hadn't seen that coming.
"You're right, Clara. You've always been by my side no matter how hard I made it to stay there.
" She took off the sunglasses, and the other woman held her breath.
Without makeup, the two dark hollows beneath Diane's eyes were impossible to miss—her gaze dull, her skin drained of any glow. "What I said the other day isn't true…"
"Which part?" the marketing director cut in. "Because you said several things, Diane. Most of them incredibly hurtful."
Diane nodded, absorbing each word for what it was: a reproach.
"I've never needed anyone to get what I want—but I have needed you, to move forward in so many areas of my life.
" She pinched the bridge of her nose hard.
She looked exhausted. "For most of my life I took for granted that what I'd accomplished was because I'd earned it, that my effort, one way or another, had paid off.
Part of that's true—but without you, a lot of it wouldn't have worked. "
Diane closed her eyes for a moment and breathed slowly. It reminded Clara of people sick in hospital beds, drawing their last breaths. Her skin prickled.
"A while back I told Cassidy—" the name cut through her chest like a fire-wrapped lance "—that I owed you my life, that without you I'd be dead.
I'm not sure I ever actually said it to you, and that's one of the many things I've done wrong by you.
You're the most important person in my life—not my parents, not my siblings.
You, Clara. You're my family, my friend, and a complete pain in my ass, but keeping you in my life is a need I didn't know I had until now—because you'd never gotten tired of me before. Please forgive me."
Clara Fitzgerald had fallen in love with that woman fresh off the plane from back east—someone who, for all her commanding manner, had a heart that knew how to love.
She remembered the first serious conversation they'd ever had, where Diane told her why it mattered so much to make people respect her, whether they feared her or hated her for it.
She'd landed a decent sales position when she was living in New York, and her boss—to his own surprise—had given her a team of three to manage.
For Diane it came easy, and within months she was overseeing seven more.
One night they worked late, and at the end of it one of them made a move to invite her for a drink.
By then Diane knew she liked women, so she turned him down.
He didn't take it well—stepped toward her in a way meant to intimidate, said a few things Diane had since wiped from her memory, and left.
The next day she went to her boss, told him what had happened, and the response was to show her the door.
You don't have what it takes to command respect.
You can't control anyone without running to me crying.
You'll never get anywhere. Clara was certain Diane had filed those words somewhere in her brain and held onto them so tightly she'd remade herself into a tyrant capable of reducing anyone to a trembling mess.
And yet, that sweet woman who fled Idaho nearly three decades ago was still in there—just crouched beneath layers of molten iron.
"I've hurt you, and I've hurt her." Diane kept talking, because if she went quiet too long she didn't think she'd be able to continue. Coming to this house had cost her a lot. "At least let me fix things with you."
Clara crossed one leg over the other and rested her hands at her sides.
"And with her—are you planning to do anything?" she asked, making no mention of everything Diane had said before. There'd be time for that.
Diane pressed her lips together.
"I'm not very good at this. Cassidy was right about one thing: I'm a coward.
" She drew a slow breath. "I'm leaving Whitestone.
" She raised a hand—Clara had been about to interrupt.
"All of this has a lot to do with it, but it's also something that's been in the back of my mind for a while.
I want to keep doing what I'm good at, on my own terms—no idiots putting me through their little tests, no partners saddling me with interns. "
Clara's mouth curved. Samuel Barnes—beloved and despised in equal measure.
"And that's it?" she asked. "You start your own thing—and what happens to your personal life?
Diane, if I didn't know you, I'd tell you that if you're happy like this, go ahead and do it.
The problem is you're not. You pile up mountains of work and stay late so you don't have to go home and face being alone.
You told me you were in love with Cassidy—so much that you couldn't stand seeing her if she wasn't yours. Doesn't that tell you something?"
Diane clenched her jaw. Of course it did—a pretty solid something, in fact, because her life had been nothing but an uncomfortable hell since she stopped touching the blonde.
Since Cassidy started looking away. Since she stopped walking into her office at seven in the morning.
That girl had been light to her. The one who made her feel at peace with being alive, the only person she'd trusted enough to say things out loud she'd never said before.
Because of some absurd fear—one she still felt and wouldn't be easy to choke out—she'd chosen to stay breathless and let herself go slowly dark.
"She's young. She'll get over it." She bit her lip. "Besides, she's with that girl you told me about, right? She's moving on, and it's not my place to hold her back. I've done enough damage."
"God, Diane, you've never seemed more clueless to me than right now.
" Clara pressed a hand to the back of her neck.
"I told you once and I'm telling you again—you're not royalty.
Nobody is going to care what you do in your own bed.
I know your past is the reason you are the way you are, but you're not twenty anymore.
You're not a defenseless girl who couldn't hold someone's gaze for three seconds.
You've built a name for yourself, people respect you, you have money, and now you're leaving corporate to do things your way with nobody above you pointing a finger.
You've got it all—including the girl. Stop kicking her out when you want her in. "
Diane threw her head back and let out a low, miserable groan. Clara's words were quick kicks to the ribs, and there was no stopping them. She couldn't argue with any of it—she'd known all week she'd made hundreds of mistakes. She just didn't know how to fix them.
"What if I ask her for a chance to talk and she says no?" Her voice came out small, nothing like Diane Carter's voice. "What if she just wants nothing to do with me?"
"Then you try again, and if she still says no, you deal with it, you cry, you move on, and you get over it.
" Clara opened her hands as if all of that were obvious.
"Screwups have consequences, and you've been screwing up with both feet for a long time without caring that someone might eventually call you on it.
You never thought someone like Cassidy would make you question your whole existence.
Life's a bitch—what do you want me to tell you? "
Diane squeezed her hands together and nodded, conceding the point to her friend once again. She lifted her eyes and held Clara's gaze.
"Thank you for all of this, Clara." She paused a moment and ventured the question. "Are we going to be okay?"
Now it was the short-haired woman who let out a long breath.
"We will be—I'm sure of that. But I need some time to get back to normal." When she paused, Diane dipped her head, telling her with the gesture that she understood. "You hurt me, and I need a little air."
The dark-haired woman across from her smiled sadly, her expression heavy with something melancholy. She got to her feet.
"I should go before Elizabeth comes back—I don't want to take up any more of your Saturday." Clara stood too, and didn't invite her to stay. She really did need the space.
When Diane turned to go, she paused a moment, her eyes landing on the floral arrangement in the center of the dining room table.
"If you want, you can take it," the marketing director offered.
Diane looked away from it and looked at her instead.
"It's hideous," she said, and slid her sunglasses back on.
Clara burst out laughing, and Diane curved her lips into something like a smile—and with that, both of them confirmed they were going to be fine. That it couldn't ever be any other way.