day 1, night
At least, that was what Claire had read on Wikipedia.
It was more information than Elias had ever given her, and more than she’d ever thought to look up before he died.
There’d been an official website, which she’d given a cursory glance, and countless articles from scientific journals, both positive and otherwise.
Claire hadn’t bothered with the news stories at the time.
Now she wished she had, or that she’d at least looked up pictures of the submarine prototype.
The thought of being in a submarine—so far under the surface that the sun didn’t penetrate, stuck in a closing fist of cold water—made Claire’s palms sweat, her hands still twisted together in her lap.
She wished fervently for more wine, but couldn’t quite make herself tap the rim of her glass to signal for it, as if that pretty woman with the knot on her neck were a dog.
“Really, that’s OK.” Just shy of stammering, and her fear was probably written on her face. “I’m not… I mean, I don’t really like…”
“We won’t get in it, of course.” Wellsley chuckled like the idea was ludicrous, though again, the sign of levity didn’t reach those ridiculously blue eyes. “Merely look at it. And the dock really is something, if I do say so myself.”
“It’s very cool.” Theo grinned at her, blue eyes glinting beneath a boyish flop of dark hair. “There’s nothing else like it in the world. You have to see it, at least once.”
No part of her wanted to go any farther from the surface than she was already, but there wasn’t a polite way to refuse.
And she’d handled the tiny bedroom OK, better than she’d ever handled small spaces before, her fear blunted by familial acceptance.
Even now, she didn’t feel as on edge as previous experience told her she should be, the Ashburys’ warmth eclipsing at least the sharpest edges of discomfort.
Still, Claire swung her eyes to Audrey, half hoping she’d bring up the accident again, her understanding of why Claire didn’t like being in small spaces. But the Ashbury matriarch just smiled.
The Ashburys were always smiling at her.
Well. Except for Ash.
Everyone rose from their seats and pushed them in, the sojourn down to the submarine apparently a foregone conclusion. Claire sat rigid, fingers gripping the bottom of her chair.
A soft hand on her shoulder. Dierdre. “Don’t worry, Claire,” she murmured. “It’s just part of being in this family. You see the sub once, talk about how cool you think it is.”
The natural trajectory of that sentence would be for it to end with a reassurance—and you never have to go down there again. But Dierdre didn’t offer that. The technically complete statement dangled in the air like a severed limb.
Claire swallowed. Stood.
“That’s our girl,” Dierdre said.
The Ashburys made their way to the far corner of the huge room, to the edge of the wall of windows.
Dark water covered the glass, except for a thin strip of air up at the very top.
Claire imagined swimming up to that pocket of oxygen, taking a deep breath, knowing it might be your last. How your lungs wouldn’t be able to expand all the way in your panic, how it’d feel like sipping air through a straw—
Stop it, she hissed at herself. Stop thinking about it.
Wellsley placed his hand against the stone wall.
A square panel around his fingers began to glow at his touch, brightening until it was a beacon of blue.
A wavering line of light passed from the top to the bottom of the glowing square, scanning his palm, and a slight beep heralded the wall peeling back, revealing an elevator.
This family and their damn elevators.
“You’re doing it?”
Behind her, at the abandoned dinner table, Ash stood in front of his father’s chair, quickly returned from his whiskey-fueled sojourn around the house.
One hand still clutched the bottle, almost empty now.
The top buttons of his shirt were undone, his dark-gold hair disheveled, a cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth, smoldering. His eyes were narrowed, bloodshot.
At first, Claire thought the angry question was for her, calling her out for being afraid of the elevator before when she was clearly planning to get in one now. But Ash’s snarl was directed at his father.
His father, who appeared completely unruffled as he turned from the open maw of the elevator to face his eldest son. “Of course, Wellington,” he said. “You know the plan.”
“What plan?” Claire asked, her voice thin.
“Just how we always show a new family member the sub,” Dierdre answered smoothly. She chuckled. “It’s practically the foreplay for dessert.”
“Lucille’s desserts are good enough to warrant it,” Audrey added, tittering.
The men didn’t join in. Patrick’s eyes flickered from his nephew to his older brother. Greg shifted on his feet and crossed his arms. Theo stared at the ground.
Claire, for her part, was painfully aware of the staircase at her back. For all that she wanted to be here, to be part of this, her mind kept straying to the way out. Like an indoor cat with no survival skills darting toward an open door, the self-destruction of abandoned security.
Ash stared at his father. Then he looked to Claire. “You’re just going along with it.” He sounded wounded, almost, despite the huff of laughter that chased the sentence’s end. “Great. Perfect. He chose so well.”
“Wellington.” Mr. Ashbury’s voice was a knife.
“Right.” Ash rolled his eyes. “He didn’t choose.”
He was drunk off his ass. He was making no sense.
And the others stared at him with expressions that ranged from disgust to pity.
Would they look at her like that, if she left?
If she threw away this chance at belonging, the only one she was likely to get?
Claire had never been good at awkward social situations, more likely to leave than adapt.
Even though her heart wanted her to stay here, her stomach was practically running out of Harrow Point already.
They wouldn’t stop her, if she did. They were too well-bred, too polite, too perfect. She needed them so much more than they needed her.
The stairs at her back. The stairs beyond that, leading up past apses and dark hallways, back into the world where she was alone, alone, alone.
Claire felt the tether that held her to her body fraying. The knotted and spiking thing in her chest grew and grew, and if she felt it, she’d feel too much, and she wasn’t ready.
He wouldn’t make her feel that. Wouldn’t make a scene, make her have to deal with that on top of everything else. Claire could ride a damn elevator, could look at a damn submarine, could get through this day and all the ones that came after poised and intact and belonging.
And it was a submarine. What was the big deal, anyway?
“You’re drunk,” she said, arching a brow at Ash.
“You’ll want to be,” Ash replied.
“Are you done?” Wellsley’s voice was winter-sea cold, eyes like icebergs. “Are you actually going to do anything other than be a nuisance?”
He said it almost like a dare.
Ash’s fingers flexed around the whiskey bottle, kinetic energy without a decided outlet. Blue eyes flicked from Claire to the elevator, then back toward the stairs.
Ash raised the bottle and took another drink. Then he waved a hand at his relatives. “Let’s go see the fucking submarine.”
○ ○ 2. ○ ○
Box breathing, in and out, pulling in the smell of citrus cleaner and expensive perfume, blowing out anxiety.
In theory.
The ride down to the submarine felt like it took years.
At least the elevator itself was big enough for everyone to stand comfortably without feeling crowded, but that didn’t help much—all Claire could think of was that they were going down, down, disappearing beneath the murk of the ocean, far enough that the light above would be only a memory.
memory
The pull of her jeans on her waist, waterlogged and heavy, wet denim chafe.
The cold seeping in the corners of her makeshift vessel, because the sea was a living, unseasonable thing and summer wouldn’t keep her from being caught in its teeth, her defenses slowly washing away.
How the ocean muffled her screams, muffled the silence that came after, when the water was up to her neck and her limbs were numb and she realized it was useless, this was it.
The voice—
“You OK?”
Ash. Of course it was Ash who noticed she was spiraling, the last person she wanted to talk to.
He stood next to her, leaning against the spotless metal wall, head tipped back and eyes closed.
Had he been looking at her, seeing near panic on her face, or was it so palpable he could feel it, emanating from her like radio waves?
The elevator was small enough that everyone could hear the question, but none of the other Ashburys acted like they were listening. If her fear was a palpable thing, it hadn’t touched them like it had Ash. Or they were just too polite to draw attention to it.
She wanted to give him the silent treatment, but instead Claire nodded. “Fine.”
A snort. “Liar. But good try.”
Claire’s lips pressed to a grim line. The whiskey bottle was clutched tight in Ash’s hand, and the smell coming off him was enough to make her eyes water. But what he’d said at the dinner table still stuck in her head, unable to be easily dismissed.
He didn’t choose.
Elias had said strange things when he drank, sometimes. “You’re perfect,” he’d slurred once, in their backyard, next to the outdoor pizza oven they never used. “So perfect for me. For all of this.”
Later that night, she’d rolled over to an empty bed, his pillow cold. Elias had been in the living room, choking a wine bottle, staring at the octopus-thing in the tank.
She couldn’t ask Ash about what he’d meant here, not with everyone else in listening distance.
Hell, she probably shouldn’t ask him about it at all; his words were just conjurings of alcohol and rudeness.
But the shivery feeling in her stomach wouldn’t settle, even though she’d resolved over and over again to stay.