day 1, night #4
He was still drunk. That amount of whiskey didn’t make its way through the system in barely two hours. Claire sighed and leaned her head back against the pillar. She should go inside. Nothing about this was restorative.
“Elias was always more… pragmatic than I was.” Ash wasn’t looking at her, studying his lighter instead, flicking it on and off again. “He was a better choice, for what they wanted. More committed to the cause.”
“The cause of ocean exploration?” She didn’t believe that. “He wasn’t even a scientist. He was a hedge fund manager.”
“The cause of our family.”
Her forehead wrinkled. Elias hadn’t wanted anything to do with his family, for all he’d said he respected them. This didn’t compute. “And you aren’t?”
“I want to get the fuck away from them,” he murmured.
Claire laughed, harsh. “Yeah, I don’t believe that.”
“Aren’t you the one who said we don’t know each other?”
“I know enough.” She turned to face him, though her arms were still crossed against the cold.
“You ran off when there was responsibility involved, but the minute you got bored, you came back to Daddy’s house and Daddy’s money.
Because you don’t know how to live without it.
You’ve never done a damn thing on your own, because I’d bet that even when you were gone, you were still bankrolled by Ashbury Marinography. ”
He didn’t speak, but his eyes were flinty, and when he moved, Clare flinched. Ash rolled his eyes, cigarette held between his lips, as he slipped out of his suit jacket and held it out to her.
She eyed it distastefully. “I’m fine.”
“It’s cold.”
And it was. After a moment, she took the jacket, though she just slung it over her shoulders rather than putting it all the way on. “So? Am I wrong?”
Ash didn’t answer, just shook his head with a rueful smile and flicked his cigarette to the floor.
“Yeah. But I can’t tell you just how wrong.
” His face was hidden in shadow, but he grimaced, like his stomach hurt, and his hand moved toward his middle again.
“It’s getting bad,” he murmured under his breath.
Claire straightened under the weight of his jacket. In her brain, a collision of disparate moments smacking together in a sparkling, flaring mess, a water-and-magnesium mistake. The voicemail, the one left before Elias died. Things are getting bad, in that raspy, low voice that seemed so familiar.
“You called him,” Claire whispered.
The hooked moon gleamed in his eyes. A harsh breath pulled through his nose. “Claire, I—”
“You called him.” She advanced a step, and he moved backward. And she liked that, seeing him made afraid. “Days before he died. You called, said, ‘Things are getting bad.’”
Ash’s eyes swung from one side to the other, his expression caught somewhere between panic and, strangely, relief.
He pressed a fist to his stomach and closed his eyes tight.
“Listen. Listen to me, OK? Yes, I called. I wanted to talk to him.” He paused here, as if waiting. For what, Claire had no idea.
“Suddenly, after however the hell many years, you wanted to talk to him?” She barked a laugh and shook her head. “Truly excellent timing. Downright fucking Shakespearean.”
Her throat was constricting. Not a good sign. The space behind her eyes felt heavy.
Ash looked like he was going to be sick. Good. He clenched his teeth and swallowed, hard. “There’s things you don’t know about him.”
From somewhere out in the expanse of the island, a cry rose into the night. Maybe from the direction of the barn.
“Fuck off,” she snarled. “I am not doing this with you.”
“Claire.” Ash swallowed, then swallowed again, sweat beading on his forehead. “We have to—”
“Room for one more?”
The door to Harrow Point opened soundlessly, Theo grinning on the other side. His eyes flickered to Ash, then back to Claire. “Some air sounded nice.”
Ash looked at his uncle, expression unreadable, the fear that had been there draining away into resignation. Then he stomped through the still-open door, into the darkness beyond.
Claire turned around, breathing deeply until her throat expanded to normal proportions. She wiped surreptitiously at her eyes, but there was no moisture.
Theo sighed, coming to stand next to her with his hands in his pockets, looking up at the stars and slender silver crescent just like she had. “He’s a good kid,” Theo said softly. She expected him to say more, but he didn’t.
“Could have fooled me,” Claire replied.
“He’s dealt with a lot. We all have.”
The same thing he’d said at dinner. Claire wondered what that a lot was.
Elias’s death, obviously. Drugs, maybe—that voicemail and Ash’s words right before he left the porch had sounded like reality breaks—but wasn’t that pretty par for the course in this tax bracket?
Or maybe she was just confusing real life with Gossip Girl.
“I’m glad you’re here, Claire,” Theo said with a soft smile. “With us. It’s not always easy, being an Ashbury. But the rewards outweigh the risks. The costs.”
There was something in his tone on that last part. Like he didn’t quite believe it. Or maybe he was just as tired as she was, too exhausted to sound sincere.
“I’m glad to be here,” she replied. “To be an Ashbury.”
Theo nodded. “I won’t tell you it’s always easy, being in a family like this. I know it seems like a dream come true, for people like us, but…” He trailed off. Swallowed. “If you can come around to their way of doing things, most of it is worth it.”
Most of it. Claire pondered asking what wasn’t worth it, but it seemed like an asinine question. No family was perfect. Hadn’t Ash just proved that?
“They’ve been so kind to me,” she said softly.
“All of you. Audrey, especially, after everything she’s been through…
” Tears blocked her throat, coming back in a wave after she’d thought them banished.
It was so much easier to cry for someone else.
To think of Audrey, losing her son and with a stepson who hated her, trying her best and getting nothing in return.
She scrubbed at her eye, mindful of her mascara.
A soft hand on her shoulder. “You’ve been through a lot, too, Claire.”
Something in her broke, a momentary lapse in her careful defenses. Claire sobbed, once, a deep, tearing feeling, and dug the heel of her hand into her eye, smearing her makeup beyond repair. Theo didn’t try to hold her, just squeezed her shoulder.
“I never imagined this,” Claire said, the words torn through emotion’s teeth. Her tears were happy as much as they were grieving, and that’s why they were allowed. “I thought that with him gone, I’d just be alone. But you’re here, and you’re wonderful.”
Her thoughts returned to Ash, saying, There’s things you don’t know about him.
Fuck Ash. Fuck him for trying to take the only good thing Claire had—what had given her belonging, a tie to a family—and trying to taint it.
Fuck him for calling Elias after years of selfishness and silence only to garble some nonsense onto the landline. Unmitigated prick.
Theo’s grip on her shoulder wavered. A moment, and he dropped his hand. “Claire,” he said, and his voice was serious. “They are wonderful. But don’t… don’t put them on a pedestal, OK? The Ashburys have so much to give, but they expect you to give back in return.”
Claire nodded, wiping her eyes. Like Patrick had said below—from those who receive much, much is required. All love was transactional, in a sense. “I know. Being in a family like this is a job all its own, I’m sure.”
Something dimmed in Theo’s eyes. He stuffed his hands in his pockets. “Yeah,” he said.
Composed now, Claire smiled. “Thank you for coming out here. It’s nice to know I’m not the only lonely kid they’ve taken in.”
The emotion in his eyes didn’t change, but Theo smiled back. “Come on.” He turned to the house. “I’m beat.”
Down on the shore, beyond the edge of the cliff, a wave crashed hard against the sand.