3.
It would make more sense to do it in the morning.
Claire thought it like a mantra, scrolling through her head as they spent the rest of the day on the yacht.
Audrey and Dierdre swam, but Claire never took off her shorts, claiming her period.
She offered to go keep Theo company, but Greg firmly declined, saying he needed to sleep.
So she sat on one of the deck chairs and half-heartedly flipped through an old issue of Architectural Digest until the yacht turned back to Harrow Point.
The funeral part of the trip was over, she was pretty sure.
She’d seen where Elias was buried (kinda), which meant she’d never get the chance to see his body.
She’d stayed two of the four days, and it seemed like the other two would be more of the same, a vacation now that the funeral bit was done.
And she’d come back, of course. She was family now, the Ashburys had made that clear, and the next time they got together, there’d be no pall of death overhanging things, making them weird and fraught.
It would be totally fine for her to leave.
In the morning.
Claire felt better with a plan. They got off the yacht as the sun was starting to sink into the sea, loaded back into the cars and carried back up the winding road to the house.
The causeway was still down. Maybe they’d put it back for her in the morning, once she explained.
Or maybe there was an airfield somewhere on the island, and they could have the jet pick her up directly.
Claire hated to be an inconvenience, but her anxiety was ratcheting up, and she knew Audrey would understand.
She wouldn’t ask if it weren’t necessary.
She hoped none of them would be mad at her.
Claire shared the car with Greg and Theo again. Theo looked better, not as pale or clammy, but he didn’t speak, just gave her a closed-mouthed smile as she got in. She patted his hand. “Being seasick sucks.”
He just nodded.
When they got back to the house, Audrey walked with her down the steps, her arm looped through Claire’s.
“We’ll probably do an easy dinner, though I’ll be sure to come sit with you.
” There was a nervous edge to her voice.
Claire understood. Seeing Elias’s resting place (the ocean, vast and wide and consuming) had been jarring for her, and probably for Audrey, too.
“Feel free to get into something comfortable.”
Ahead of them on the stairs, Wellington was murmuring into his cell phone. Claire couldn’t pick out many individual words, though she heard secure accounts, overdraft, and quick resolution. Men like Wellington Ashbury never stopped working.
Patrick came up beside his brother when Wellington hung up, bent close. “Got a status report on the new model.”
Wellington seemed pissed off by whatever conversation he’d just had. “And?”
“The new pressurizing method yielded some… unfavorable results.”
“Christ.” Wellington rubbed at his forehead. “The kind that will need NDAs, or the kind that will need insurance payouts?”
“Probably both.” Patrick didn’t seem all that perturbed. He glanced back at Claire, a quick dart of his eyes, but didn’t seem bothered to be talking shop in front of her. “I told them to do whatever they thought was best. It won’t be a problem again.”
When they got to the main house, and Claire had changed into yoga pants and a nicer T-shirt, she went back down the stairs to the table.
Audrey dutifully sat at the head, though she was just drinking and not eating.
Another huge buffet spread, salads and fruit and slices of turkey. Did they have turkeys out here, too?
Claire was starving. She loaded her plate with meat, adding salad as a guilty afterthought. A forkful was already shoved in her mouth before she spoke. “Where is everyone?”
“The boys had something to take care of.” Audrey poured more wine. Lucille must have the night off. “And who knows where Dierdre is. Probably calling one of her foreign boyfriends.”
Claire’s eyes widened, but she didn’t comment. So Dierdre and Patrick were having problems. Audrey took a drink right after she spoke, as if she regretted letting Claire see a fissure in the gleaming Ashbury glass.
“I’m so sorry, Claire,” Audrey murmured. Then she pushed one hand against her eyes and let out a quiet, broken sob.
Claire abandoned her plate, though what she’d feverishly eaten had done little to blunt her hunger, wine and Oreo long gone. She knelt beside Audrey, arms around the older woman, making hushing sounds. Audrey’s tears made her own grief rise to the surface, but Claire squashed it down, down.
“So sorry.” Audrey rallied, waving her hand to clear away the brief crack in her armor. “It’s just… it’s so hard. And you understand that, don’t you? We aren’t like them. We weren’t born into anything, we had to claw our way up.”
Audrey’s family had worked for the Ashburys, before they married into them. Twice over. Audrey hadn’t been raised with this kind of obscene wealth, no more than Claire or Theo had.
“It’s really OK.” Now wasn’t the time to ask, but she’d brought it to Claire’s mind. “Is Theo any better?”
“Fine.” She waved her hand again. “He won’t make the same mistake twice.”
The mistake seemed to be getting on a boat, which would be a hard thing to avoid with the Ashburys. “Maybe he wasn’t seasick. Maybe he got whatever Ash has.”
That startled Audrey. She straightened, gave Claire a brief searching look before softening her face. “Maybe.” She wiped at her eyes. “They’ll both be better in the morning, I’m sure.”
The morning, when Claire would ask to leave. But could she do that now, when she had such definitive proof that Audrey wasn’t doing as well as she pretended to be? She couldn’t believe everyone had left her alone. Everyone but Claire.
Audrey sighed and picked up her wine again. “It’s difficult, but there’s no other way.” Claire wasn’t sure what she was talking about. Grief, maybe. The only way out was through, or so she’d been told. “There’s just no way to make it easier. Not without giving everything up, and that’s impossible.”
“Maybe you should get some rest, Audrey.” Claire stood and held out her hand. “It’s been a hard day.”
“It has.” Audrey took the proffered hand. When she was upright, she pulled Claire into a tight hug. “We’re so thankful for you, honey. You’ll never know how thankful.”
Claire glowed. She was family. Audrey wouldn’t cry in front of anyone who wasn’t family.
○ ○ 2. ○ ○
She expected to have a hard time falling asleep, but Claire was unconscious as soon as her head hit the pillow, as if all her exhaustion from the day before had dovetailed with the stress of being on the yacht and knocked her clean out.
When she woke, groggy and desperately needing to pee, her phone told her it wasn’t quite eleven o’clock.
She’d gone to bed around nine. It’d been ages since she had a sleep schedule this healthy.
With a groan, Claire levered herself up, the beginnings of a headache creeping around her temples.
Pee, then bed again, back to heavy sleep.
She still hadn’t quite figured out what she would do in the morning.
Audrey’s tears had washed away at her resolve to leave, a tide carving out a shoreline.
The instinct that had awoken on the yacht was still there, but deadened, like it’d run out of steam after the first push. Maybe she’d overreacted.
The close darkness of the room crept along with the headache, waiting until she was awake enough to be afraid. She wouldn’t let herself get there. Claire was out of bed and through the door in three steps, leaving the claustrophobic space behind before her brain could catch up.
The bathroom was three doors down from her room, a glassy marble space so white it almost made one forget how small it was. She skulked through the hall and did her business.
When she came out of the bathroom, she heard voices.
Claire’s first instinct was to hide. Aunt Margo had been extremely strict on bedtime, the one real rule she imposed.
Claire was supposed to be in her room by ten, and if Margo caught her out of it, she’d make a disgusted face that Claire hadn’t seen the match of since.
That face was enough to make sure she never flouted the rules.
There’d been a bathroom attached to her bedroom, so it’d been easy enough.
She learned quickly not to seek comfort during thunderstorms.
But she was grown, and this house wasn’t Aunt Margo’s. Claire approached the railing of the balcony, almost in defiance of her memory.
(what if they’re down there looking out into the ocean again—)
It didn’t matter. It didn’t.
There were no Ashburys down in the large main room. Instead, a woman dressed all in black and white, holding a white plastic tub.
The blonde woman, the one who’d served at dinner the first night she was here. Lucille, with the weird knot on her neck.
Lucille limped. No, not quite a limp—a shuffle, like she couldn’t lift her feet all the way up off the floor. Her eyes were fixed forward, shining points in her face picked out by the low light of the lamps. Something sagged around her ankles, like too-big socks, drooping into her shoes.
She clutched the tub with a white-knuckled grip; it seemed heavy. A rusty stain striped down the side. One more lurching step, and her hold faltered. The tub fell to the floor, knocking loose the lid. Inside, Claire could see only darkness.
Lucille stood, staring down at the tub, breathing heavy. Claire was too far away to make out her expression, but she could see a gleam of teeth in her mouth.
With a snarl, Lucille fell to her knees. She reached into the tub with a clawed hand, pulling out a fistful of whatever was inside, and shoved it into her mouth. Dark liquid dripped down her chin.
Blood. It was blood.
Claire’s own seemed to freeze over, too chilled to let her move. Dreaming again? Hallucinating?
“Lucy!”
The voice made Lucille stop, her hand back in the tub. She bent her head low and whined, like a dog that knew it was in trouble.
“Gross, Lucy,” Greg said. He sounded just as disgusted as Aunt Margo used to look, shaking his head as he snatched her arm, pulled her hand from the tub.
It still clutched a gooey mess, and he grimaced.
“Told Pat he should call two of you to take it. I knew you’d drop it, and if you did, you’d eat. Mike was a heavy motherfucker.”
Lucille kept her head down. Greg gave her one more venomous look, then tossed away her arm. She looked up at him, eyes wide and faux-innocent, as she shoved whatever was in her hand into her mouth.
“Jesus.” Greg stalked away. “No more until you get to the barns. You have to share.”
Lucille waited until Greg was gone, then surreptitiously ducked her hand back into the tub. She pulled out one item, this time, not a handful, and stuck it in her mouth as she slowly fastened the lid back on the tub.
It hung from her lips as she shuffled toward the stairs. When she passed right under Claire, she got a good look.
A finger.
Mike. The name swam in Claire’s mind, a drowning thing reaching for the surface as her stomach lurched. Mike, she’d heard that name recently, hadn’t she?
And when the realization came, it hit her like a hurricane.
Mike. She’d said it was a great name for a cow. Dierdre had laughed. A heavy motherfucker. You have to share.
No. No no no no no.
Things she could handwave away in the daylight had particular weight at night. Claire clapped her hand over her mouth and ducked backward, toward the shadows against the wall. Her stomach clenched and heaved.
Mike was a person, and Mike was in that tub, and Lucille had eaten him.
Claire gagged, her body responding to this thing her brain wouldn’t let her spell out in language. Surely she misunderstood, surely she was overreacting, but that instinct had surged back, once more unto the breach, and she needed to leave now. Not in the morning. Now, or she was going to lose it.
Her legs felt like jelly as she forced herself up, swallowing hard over and over. Down below, the shuffle of Lucille’s implacable steps. A crunch as she bit into bone.
Claire darted down the hall.
Right before she reached her room, a door opened. A hand snaked out, grabbed her wrist, and yanked her inside, shutting the door behind her, enclosing her in flickering light and the scent of salt and sick. “You finally wise up, C?”
○ ○ 3. ○ ○
Ash looked haggard, half bent at the waist like he couldn’t hold himself up.
His face was pale, carved into harsh lines by the lone candle on the table behind him, the rest of the lights left off.
The candle was enough for her to see the photos plastered on the wall, but only their edges, wrinkled and ink-bled by damp.
It was something to think about that wasn’t Mike, wasn’t the white package thrown into the sea. When Claire stepped forward, Ash let her wrist slip out of his hand. He braced himself on the wall, breathing hard, and didn’t try to stop her as she approached the photos.
Her face. Thirteen and braces-capped and frizzy-haired, just like in what she’d thought was a dream, a dream that ended in Ash vomiting seaweed. Lurid headline splashed beneath her image. She didn’t need to read it again. She knew what it said.
Slow, dreamlike, she turned to the other photos. The ones that had seemed familiar. The years piled onto the faces, made them easy to recognize, even without their blue eyes.
“Theo,” she murmured. “Dierdre.”
“I can’t explain it here.” Ash’s voice was the saw edge of a whisper, as if he’d been sick for hours, his throat ravaged.
“Too close to the water. Once we get up top, I can say more, if you want to hear it.” He pressed a hand against his middle, swallowed.
“If you just want to get the fuck out and damn the explanations, that’s cool, too.
They’ll all be arriving soon. The causeway should come back at half past midnight. ”
“He was a man. Mike.” Claire’s voice sounded distant to her own ears. There was a roaring in them, the sound of an approaching storm. “Lucille ate him.”
She desperately wanted him to tell her that she was mistaken. Tell her that she was completely fucking bananas and probably needed an institution. Hell, at this point, she’d welcome one.
But Ash just stared at her, pity in his gaze. “Yeah.”
Her stomach roiled. Claire swayed, steadied.
Ash pushed himself off the wall, staggered to stand upright. “So that’s finally enough to make you run?”
Claire raised her hand, traced the cheek of the girl on the wall. Thirteen, with a family who loved her, with no idea what waited and what she would do.
“Get me out,” she said.