1. Boston #2
Burdock’s eyes narrowed at the implication, his voice firm.
“Whether you are my client or not, Mr. Dennison, no one in my office has any need to ever revisit Tom’s files, which have already been relegated to a locked basement in my home.
Your father’s secrets have gone with him to the grave.
” His blunt words made his client’s orphaned sole survivor flinch.
“Ah, forgive me.” He rubbed a hand over his eyes. “Tom was my friend, as well as client. I miss him.”
“I beg your pardon,” Clem ran the hand holding the cigar through her wavy hair, scratching her head.
“I mean no offense. I’m still … confused by all this.
” She tried to smile. “I do hope you’ll be my lawyer, Mr. Burdock.
” Puffing another smoke ring, she nodded.
“I need someone to look after my ongoing interests here in Boston now, and to help connect my California bank to transfer funds.”
With a genuine smile, she leaned forward and looked him in the eye. “I need discrete legal representation, and it would appear you are the best man for the job.”
“I’m happy to do so, Mr. Dennison.” Burdock shook her hand with a warm squeeze.
Since he did not, for the first time, put an inflection on her title, it eased her into saying, “Then, as my attorney of record, please call me Clem.”
He smiled, stroking his trim mustache. “Your father called me James,” he answered.
“What would you rather be called?” Clem laughed. “I can tell by the way you said it.”
Mr. Burdock laughed. “I prefer Jim.”
“Then Jim it is.” She shook her head. “I was always Clementine, or Clementine Lorelei when he was angry.” Her mouth twisted in wry amusement.
“It was quite a mouthful to get out. He was as stubborn as they come with names; always using the full Christian moniker.” Her voice roughened.
“And that was just one way he could be stubborn.”
A surprising twinkle developed in the attorney’s eye. “With everyone but one.” He grinned. “Please come for dinner tonight at my house, Clem. There’s someone I want you to meet, one of your father’s friends.”
After agreeing to meet Jim at seven o’clock at the address he provided, Clem returned to the saloon near the train station.
Someone had been in her room; a small leaf left wedged in the door lay crushed by her feet.
She unlocked the door and threw it open hard to slam against the wall, assuring herself no one lurked behind it.
Hands curling into fists, she strode into the room, stared into each corner, under the table, and beneath the bed.
She even peered into the cold bathwater from the night before, finding only her own eyes staring back at her.
Lighting the kerosene lamp, Clem searched the room again, this time finding a note that had fallen beside the bed asking if she wanted fresh water.
Reassured she was alone, she shut the door and locked it, removed the key, and hung her hat on the doorknob to cover the keyhole. She pulled her bags from under the bed and went through them.
Nothing was missing or out of place; her clothing lay undisturbed, and the hidden bottom still hid her reserve of secrets; four flats of linen bindings for her breasts, the six johnsons she’d had time to make on the long train trip in her private car, and her personal stash of US currency, which she traded gold for in Sacramento before taking off east. Breathing a deep sigh of relief, she added the five thousand dollars Jim Burdock gave her to it, and repacked her bags.
Deciding to use the cold bathwater to freshen up, she undressed and examined herself in the mirror.
In the prime of life at twenty-three, she stood close to six feet tall with an imposing build that now filled the suit she’d taken with her three years earlier.
She set aside her pocket watch, then removed coat, vest, and shirt, revealing the linen binding her breasts.
Clem inhaled, thinking about what she’d learned from her father’s lawyer, enjoying the first deep breath she’d taken since wrapping this morning. With more air in her lungs, she might figure things out.
During three years of hard work, she’d grown sturdy, with strong arms, a wide chest, broad shoulders, a muscled stomach, and thick-hewn thighs.
In the mirror, her light brown eyes stared back at her from under heavy brows grown together above her father’s large, beak-like nose, her full lips pressed into a severe line beneath it.
In his clothing, of course she looked like Tom Dennison, newspaper magnate.
Why hadn’t she noticed it before Henry Philpot, the nervous clerk, fainted?
So many whys. Her cruel brain poked at the new bruise of knowledge. Pain flared behind her eyes.
Why did her father sell the Journal instead of leaving it to her?
Clem expected him to stipulate she couldn’t be the editor or even write for it, but why sell eighty-five percent interest to someone else?
He believed she’d ruin his paper, so he made sure she couldn’t.
Fifteen percent interest gave her an income, but no more.
Did he hate her because she was passing as a man? Because she didn’t fit his idea of a woman? Or wasn’t the son he always wanted?
Or the wife he lost?
Her chest felt tighter than she’d ever bound it. Had he disowned her from his grave?
No.
He meant it when he said he loved her.
Or maybe she’d always been a trusting idiot.
She was a child desperate for his approval, so of course she believed he loved her. What a fool I was. She shook her head to clear it.
The last time her father told Clem he loved her was almost three years ago when she boarded the train for Independence.
He was mad, furious, worse than she’d ever seen him, but he said it when he hugged her goodbye.
She could still hear his voice, clear under the rumbling hiss of a train engine building steam.
“You may not be the woman I know you could be, but I have always loved you, Clementine Lorelei Dennison, and I always will.” He’d emphasized his words with a hug so tight it left her breathless before spinning on his heel and walking away from her without a backward glance.
He must have been lying, but why? Her father couldn’t have loved her and done what he did.
He loved her mother, he’d said it many times. When she died in childbirth, his only child became a poor substitute; no good for anything because she didn’t look, act, and by some miracle become her.
Using cold bathwater, she sponged away the sweat of the day, both from heat and anger. Her head pounded, but her heart remained shocked into silence. She spared a thought to wonder if it even still beat.
She didn’t have to wonder anymore now that she knew for sure.
Her father never loved her. She shook under the power of the familiar, miserable thought as she dressed.
Her mother was the perfect woman, and she’d killed her by being born.
Tom Dennison would a thousand times rather she lived, and his child died.
Clem chased away this thought the same way she had for the last eight years, speaking out loud to make it powerful. “Too bad, old man. I’m not her; you’re stuck with me.”
Checking herself in the mirror, she reached down inside her trousers to adjust her fresh johnson, making sure it angled down and not up.
She grinned, remembering making that mistake once, returning from an outhouse to a California saloon where she and Barney were drinking.
One of the working girls got the wrong impression, and when turned down she made Clem a laughingstock.
That embarrassment would last her a lifetime.
Now she always checked in the mirror, head on and profile, before going out in public.
A lucky, if disgusting thing she’d learned; men adjusted themselves without caring who saw, so she could too, when needed.
Walking toward the home of James M. Burdock, Esq., she felt the consequences of her fight yesterday. Walking wounded, she kept her hat low to cover her eyes, checking out everything, but seeing nothing.
When she reached Jim Burdock’s house, a handsome, slender man in his thirties with the dark complexion of the Mediterranean opened the door and cried, “Hello!” He threw both the door and his arms open in a clear invitation to hug.
She stepped back, but he reached out and grabbed her arm. “You’re Clem Dennison.”
“Yes,” she said, still unsure. “Is this Mr. James Burdock’s house?”
“It is,” said the animated young man, tugging her across the doorsill. “I’m An Burdock, short for Antony. He told me how you terrified poor Henry, that must have been a sight. Your father’s been here many times, and I must say, the resemblance is uncanny. I would have known you anywhere.”
He tucked his arm in hers, walking through a large anteroom into a formal sitting room. “Jimmy’s waiting for us in here.”
Jim Burdock stood near the bar across the room, tending a fire. He smiled and handed them each a tumbler of whiskey. The smaller man accepted his drink with a graceful nod.
“Jimmy?” Clem asked as An let go of her arm. She took the glass Jim offered her, sitting in an overstuffed chair.
“Clem,” Jim said, wrapping an arm around the younger man’s shoulder and kissing his cheek, “this is An, my lover of sixteen years.” He gave her a moment to let the information sink in.
As it did, she smiled.
“Your father was my client for many years before we grew close enough for me to bring him home to meet my family. When he met my An, he tried calling him Antony … how many times?” He smiled at his lover with a twinkle in his eye.
“Twice,” said the younger man, smiling at Jim. “The first time I corrected him. The second time I sent him home without dinner.”
“You did what?” Clem almost choked on her whiskey.
“Well, it’s rude, isn’t it?” An sipped his drink, then placed it on a table. “A person tells you how they wish to be addressed, it’s rude to call them anything else. I don’t allow rude behavior in my house.”