day 1, afternoon #3
Something was on the table, though. A cake, it looked like, with a silver-wrapped present next to it.
Everyone trooped down the stairs, talking softly with one another, the tension of their initial descent now a distant thing.
“There was an issue with my card,” Audrey murmured to Wellington, sounding more fearful than apologetic.
Claire tensed up again. If Elias’s parents were in a financially abusive relationship, she really wasn’t in the mental space to learn about it, which probably made her a terrible person.
But Wellington just patted his wife’s hand. “It’ll all resolve soon.”
Ash remained by Claire, watching her from the corner of an impossibly blue eye. “Spooky, huh?” He didn’t remove the cigarette from his mouth to speak.
“It’s beautiful.” It was beautiful, but it was also spooky. More sinuous lines curved around the windows, and the decor was brutalist, thick and heavy.
“Beautiful and spooky,” Ash replied, like he’d read her mind. His smile tipped to self-satisfied.
Her brows slammed down, her grip tightened on her suitcase again.
This was the brother whose selfishness had driven a wedge between Elias and his family, the brother who’d refused to shoulder his own responsibilities and instead shucked them off onto her dead fiancé.
The neurologist said that the aneurysm that had killed Elias looked like something waiting since childhood, a sickness unidentified, but surely stress could affect such things.
Maybe it was unfair to think of Ash as the reason Elias was dead, but once the thought made a home, she couldn’t evict it.
The knot of emotions in her chest tilted toward the edge, all that massed grief and anger she didn’t have time to deal with. Claire closed her eyes, took a deep and shaking breath. Hollowed out the pit in her chest, gave the knot more room.
“Hey.” Ash didn’t touch her, but she felt him think about it, felt the stir of air when his hand twitched and then fell away. Grief made people so overfamiliar. “You OK?”
“The man I was supposed to marry is dead.” Flat, colorless, a statement of fact.
That was the only way she could talk about this.
“He’s dead, and I’ve never met his family until now, and I’m here to spend four days with them because I was too chickenshit to plan an actual funeral. Do you think I’m OK, Wellington?”
He didn’t say anything, but she heard the long hiss of his cigarette as she started down the stairs, suitcase hitting each step behind her like a second heartbeat.
○ ○ 3. ○ ○
When she reached the bottom of the staircase, Audrey put a soft hand on her shoulder and steered her toward the table, which definitely held a present and a cake. “Surprise! We heard it was your birthday!”
Claire’s face twitched. She should smile, should show gratitude, but she couldn’t quite muster it.
There was no way for the Ashburys to know that her birthday was something she tried very hard to ignore.
She’d thought of it once, when she woke up at the asscrack of dawn this morning to catch the town car, then had put it firmly from her mind.
“You heard right,” she said softly.
Her reluctance didn’t register. Audrey beamed, turning to the table and handing her an already-cut slice of cake. “Birthday girl gets the first piece.”
Behind her, the quiet sound of Ash’s smoke-filled breath.
Claire dropped the handle of her suitcase and accepted the cake. Everyone was smiling at her, happy, trying to take the terrible event they’d all gathered for and make it something less terrible. And she could identify with that, the masking, covering awful things with layers of gilt.
So she managed a smile back, a genuine one, and lifted a forkful to her mouth. The cake was decadent, though she couldn’t quite place the flavors, and the icing was sweet and somehow sour at the same time.
“We didn’t know what you liked,” Patrick said, in that audiobook voice, “so we let Lucille go nuts.”
“Vanilla and rosemary,” Audrey said proudly, as if she’d made the cake herself. “With Greek yogurt buttercream.”
That explained the taste. It was odd, but good, and Claire wolfed the piece down, careful not to get any on her dress.
Once she was done, everyone else helped themselves, as if they’d been waiting for her to finish first. Dierdre and Audrey sliced their portions paper thin, and Claire was retroactively embarrassed at how fast she’d eaten, especially after her dessert at lunch.
The only person who didn’t get any cake was Ash. He leaned against the window, still smoking, and looked at Claire’s empty plate instead of Claire.
“Presents!” Audrey grabbed the silver-wrapped package off the table. The ribbon was cream-colored, silky. “Well, present. But it’s a good one!”
Claire’s smile was warmer this time. Audrey really was trying, and she appreciated it. She unwrapped the box carefully, not wanting to rip the paper.
“Oh my God.”
A Hasselblad 503CW. Not the rarest film camera, but the body alone cost near two grand. And there were three lenses for it, and two packs of film.
Claire looked up, her mouth gaping. “How did you…”
“Elias told us you liked film photography.” Wellington’s voice was low as he spoke of his son. A deep ache there, a swallowing trench.
She did like film photography, but it’d been years since she’d done anything with it.
Elias had gone so far as to build her a darkroom—on the main level of the house, not the basement—but as time went on, she’d found herself picking up cameras less and less.
She was never great at the actual picture taking, more enjoyed the process of the thing, and felt silly continuing to try.
Claire was no artist, and it hurt to remind herself of it over and over, even if she pretended she didn’t care.
She wasn’t the type who could mine pain for creation.
But still. It was so thoughtful, so unexpected, that a tear was trickling out the corner of her eye before she could catch it.
“Oh, honey.” Audrey folded her in a hug. After a moment, Dierdre joined. The men didn’t, but they watched with soft eyes.
All except Ash, still staring at the dregs of her cake. He lit another cigarette.