day 1, evening #2
She finally turned to look at him, teeth all but bared, and he had the audacity to smirk at her, like her anger was a cat he’d been beckoning forward and finally had in reach.
“I do not want to be in the elevator because it is a tiny fucking space,” she hissed. “And I do not like tiny fucking spaces, and I especially do not like sharing them with arrogant assholes who pass all their responsibilities on to their brothers.”
Maybe she had it wrong. Or extremely right. Casual cruelty he seemed to enjoy; this more pointed kind made a shadow pass over his face. Not hurt. Guilt, maybe.
It passed quickly. Ash nodded, brows raised and lips pursed, like he was impressed. A tiny scar flicked at the edge of one impossibly blue eye. “There it is.”
“There what is?”
“Emotion.” He pressed a button on the keypad. “I was beginning to wonder if you had any. Other than crying over a camera.”
Her fingers flexed back and forth, fists with nothing to hit. It tugged her back to her body, that anger, closed in the walls around her spiking mass of grief. Dangerous.
Deep breaths, in through the nose, out through the mouth. She crossed her arms. “I have plenty of emotions, thanks.”
He rocked back and forth, heel to toe and hands shoved in his pockets, watching the numbers above the elevator light up one after the other as it rose from the main floor. “Could’ve fooled me.”
“Thinking that you should be privy to all of them after knowing me an aggregate total of ten minutes isn’t helping the whole arrogant thing.” She scowled at his back. “You don’t know shit about me. Don’t pretend you do.”
Ash chuckled at that, too low to really be amused. The elevator arrived, doors sliding open. “You aren’t great at knowing when someone is pretending.”
Her fists tightened on her biceps, like her arms could be a shield. She stuffed the anger down, down. “Fuck off.”
“Gladly.” He stepped into the elevator and leaned on the back wall. At the last second before the door closed, one foot stuck out and tripped the sensor. The door slid open again.
“All my responsibilities, huh?” His change of subject was smooth. “That’s what he told you?”
She nodded, not trusting herself to give a more complete answer.
“Maybe you should think about what those responsibilities were.” It was the most serious she’d heard him sound, almost pained, nothing joking in it anymore. “Context, C. Context is everything.”
He pulled back his boot and the door finally shut. With one more set of box breaths, Claire started down the stairs, refusing to think of what Ash had said, refusing to be angry, refusing to be anything at all.
○ ○ 3. ○ ○
“So, Claire.” Wellington Ashbury polished off his glass of wine and sat back, blue eyes glinting at her across the table.
If Audrey looked like a movie star, so did her husband, almost in a more convincing way—as if a scientist had managed to cross Harrison Ford and Daniel Day-Lewis, making someone too intimidating to be simply handsome. “Tell us about yourself.”
Claire finished off her own wine, using the few seconds to try to come up with something to say that wouldn’t sound pathetic. If you didn’t count tragedy, Elias was the most interesting thing about her.
Though she guessed he was just one more tragedy now.
“Don’t put her on the spot, Wellsley.” Audrey faux-swatted at her husband’s arm. “Claire has had quite a day, give her a moment’s peace.”
“No, really, it’s fine.” Claire swallowed, coughed when it went down the wrong side of her throat, recovered.
Having Audrey defend her—having Audrey say she’d had quite a day, as if all this weren’t a direct result of her son dying—made her want to play along.
“You already know about the photography. That’s my only real hobby, I guess. ”
Though did it really count, if she hadn’t done it in so long?
Wellington smiled. It was too brief for her to tell if it ever reached those icy eyes. “What do you like taking pictures of?”
“Uh, landscapes.” It was true, but God, it was boring. “Elias and I traveled some. I liked that. I’d take lots of pictures.”
So she liked travel and photography. She sounded like an AI-generated millennial Instagram bio.
The Ashburys didn’t want her platitudes. That wasn’t what family was about. They were supposed to know each other, deeply. No one who wasn’t a therapist had ever wanted that from her, save Elias. And even his knowing had only gone so far.
So dig into the meat of it.
“I, um, I was raised by my aunt,” she said, tapping her thumbnail absently on her glass. “After my parents died.”
The accident. The one Audrey said she knew about, earlier, the one she said Elias had shared with her. But the Ashbury matriarch didn’t say anything about it now, sitting in polite silence, picking at pieces of the fish on her plate.
Claire had barely touched hers. It was roasted whole, lined with carrots and potatoes, and she couldn’t make herself eat something with eyes. The fish stared up at her, mouth agape, as if listening with rapt attention.
At the end of the table, Ash sat in front of his own mostly full plate. He’d taken one bite and then set to whiskey, staying silent and draining tumbler after tumbler. His eyes were glassy as he refilled the tumbler again from the bottle beside his fork.
He noticed Claire looking. Took a long, pointed sip. Claire tore her eyes away.
She half expected someone to ask how her parents had died—it was the logical next step in this conversation, and she’d had it so many times she could recite both sides from memory—but none of the Ashburys did.
“Was she kind?” Audrey asked gently. Almost like she already knew.
Claire snorted. “She was there. That’s all the state was really concerned with.”
Next to her, Dierdre reached over, gave her forearm a brief squeeze.
“It’s fortunate you had someone to take you in.
” Patrick leaned forward, seated in the chair to Wellington’s right.
Not quite as good-looking as his older brother, but still with a certain gravitas, enhanced by his heavy-framed glasses.
He kept adjusting them on his nose, like he was aware of the role they played in his overall vibe and wanted to make sure they were positioned to their best advantage.
“Always better, when family can step in like that. Better than the foster system, anyway.”
“Miles better.” Theo nodded, gave Claire a small smile. His voice had the hint of an accent, she noticed. Italian, maybe? “I grew up in the system. I had it better than most, but it was still… difficult.”
Greg stretched an arm around his husband’s shoulders. Theo leaned into it.
It encouraged Claire, to know she wasn’t the only foundling the Ashburys had taken in. No wonder they’d welcomed her with open arms; they knew family was more than blood.
“We donate a lot to the foster system,” Dierdre said, not quite masking her pride. “Because we love Theo so much, but also because it’s such a good cause.”
Theo smiled at her softly.
“I’m glad you had someone to step up,” Greg said. He gestured to Audrey with his wineglass. “Just like Audrey did, when Josephine died.”
At the end of the table, Ash stiffened, fingers tightening around his cut-glass tumbler.
Claire’s brows drew together. “Josephine?”
“My first wife,” Mr. Ashbury said softly. “She passed away.”
A clink. Ash set down his tumbler so hard that amber liquid spilled over the side as he stood, pushed away from the table.
He left without a word, stalking into the shadows with the whiskey bottle in his hand, back toward the elevator and the six stories of cloister-bedrooms stacked on the back wall.
Silence for half a heartbeat. Claire swallowed, looked to Audrey. “I didn’t know Elias was your stepson. He always spoke of you just as his mother.” Not warmly and not often, but she didn’t mention that part.
“Elias is mine.” Audrey’s smile was genuine but tremulous, like Ash’s reaction had rattled her. “He and Wellington are half brothers.”
That recontextualized some things. Elias had never mentioned it.
It wasn’t really important, she supposed, not in the grand scheme.
But with the level of contempt Elias seemed to have for Ash, it would make sense for him to mention that they didn’t share a mother, to draw attention to their distance.
Had. The level of contempt Elias seemed to have had for Ash. Audrey hadn’t used the past tense, and it made Claire’s middle ache.
The knot of grief rolled toward the edge. Claire ground her teeth together, almost physically tilting herself until it settled back into her hollow center, untouched and ignored.
“Audrey stepped in to mother Wellington when her sister passed,” Patrick said. “Noble, even if he doesn’t see it.”
Audrey nodded at him with a weary sigh. Claire wanted to smack Ash herself, for making his kind, generous stepmother feel so underappreciated.
“That’s the way of things,” Patrick continued. “At least it should be. Family stepping up when needed. Any of us would do it, if the need arose. That’s the problem with children today, they leave their family at the slightest disagreement. No respect.”
Claire pressed her lips together and didn’t comment.
Next to Patrick, Dierdre stared at her plate, only the bones of her fish left, though her potatoes were untouched. Claire saw a muscle twitch in her arm, like she’d clenched her hands beneath the lip of the table. “Let’s not start with the diatribes, Pat. Don’t want to scare her off.”
“Wouldn’t scare Claire off,” Patrick said. He grinned at her. “Claire is good stock, I can tell.”
Claire smiled back. Dierdre did, too, though it was slightly strained.
It took Claire a moment to go back to what Patrick had said earlier. That Audrey had stepped in when her sister passed. “Wait, you said…” She pointed at Audrey, realized that was probably rude, dropped her hands to her lap, and twisted them together. “Josephine was your sister?”