Chapter 17
Clara lasted fourteen minutes before trying to corner Bea.
Rowan intercepted her beside the terrace doors.
“No.”
“You do not know what I was about to do.”
“You were about to ask your aunt a question in front of two Ashfords, two council members, and the mayor she just addressed by a buried name.”
“That was very specific for a guess.”
“It was not a guess.”
June appeared with two champagne flutes and alarming purpose.
“You need to dance,” she said.
Clara stared at her. “Have you been drinking?”
“Not enough. Listen to me. Half the town is watching you. Graham is watching Rowan. Celeste is watching everyone. If you two stand in the corner whisper-fighting, it looks like whisper-fighting. If you dance, it looks like romance, which this town understands better than evidence.”
Rowan looked pained. “That is not the worst tactical analysis I’ve heard.”
“I contain multitudes,” June said, and pushed a glass into Clara’s hand.
The band shifted into something slow.
Of course it did.
Rowan offered his hand with the grimness of a man approaching hostile terrain.
Clara looked at it. “You are enjoying this less than a root canal.”
“I’m trying not to enjoy it too much.”
That was unfair.
She put her hand in his.
The dance floor accepted them with a sweep of polished wood and curious eyes. Rowan’s hand settled at Clara’s back, warm through the thin fabric of her dress. He kept a careful distance at first, professional enough to be insulting.
Clara lifted an eyebrow. “This is a dance, not a deposition.”
His mouth almost moved. “I am aware.”
“Are you?”
His hand shifted slightly, drawing her closer.
That was worse.
The room blurred at the edges: Celeste in ivory near the bar, Bea near the terrace, Lillian speaking to a councilman, Graham pretending not to watch. The music covered them better than a closed door.
“What did Thomas tell you?” Clara asked.
Rowan’s gaze sharpened. “You do begin in the middle.”
“You like that about me.”
“I never said like.”
“No. You just keep showing up.”
His thumb moved once against her back. An accident, maybe. Clara doubted it.
“My father said Marianne should never have spoken aloud what she could not prove,” Rowan said.
Clara missed a step.
Rowan corrected for both of them before anyone noticed.
“He knew about the interview,” she said.
“I think so.”
“And Claire?”
His jaw tightened. “He said my mother tried to stop Marianne from taking it to Evelyn.”
“Stop her?”
“Or protect her. I don’t know.”
Clara looked over his shoulder at the room. “People keep calling protection by strange names in this town.”
“I know.”
His voice had changed. Lower. Rougher.
The music pulled them through another turn.
Clara said, “I left Magnolia Cove because of my mother. Because of Evelyn. Because every room in that house was full of people not saying things.”
“And?”
She hated that he heard the unfinished part.
“And because if I saw you, I might have stayed.”
His hand stilled at her back.
Clara should have looked away.
She did not.
“If I had stayed because of you,” she said, “I would have spent every day waiting for you to leave too.”
Rowan’s face changed slowly, like a locked room opening from the inside.
“I would have gone with you,” he said.
The words were quiet enough that no one else could have heard them.
They still rearranged the room.
For one dangerous moment, Clara forgot Celeste, Graham, Lillian, the tape, the locket, the murdered contractor, the missing folder, the old sins stacked like ledgers in Evelyn’s hidden room.
There was only Rowan’s hand at her back and the awful tenderness of what might have been.
Then Graham Ashford stepped into their path.
“Whitaker and Hale,” he said. “What a charmingly complicated tradition.”
Rowan stopped dancing.
Clara did not step out of his hold. She wanted Graham to notice that too.
“Graham,” she said. “Were you looking for attention, or did it find you by smell?”
His smile turned sharp. “Careful, Clara. Men with badges have a history of disappointing women in your family.”
Rowan’s hand tightened once at her back, then released.
Clara met Graham’s eyes. “Is that confession or gossip?”
“Truth,” Graham said. “Something your family never handled well.”
“My family kept records. Yours keeps attorneys.”
A few people nearby went quiet.
Graham leaned closer. Whiskey rode his breath. “You think you’re uncovering secrets, but all you’re doing is proving Evelyn was right to keep you away.”
Across the room, Bea turned as if someone had struck her name from a bell.
Clara saw her face.
Not surprise.
Recognition.
Graham had not guessed.
He had known.
Celeste reached them before Graham could say more. Her smile never touched her eyes.
“Graham, you are being tiresome.”
He looked at her. “I’m being honest.”
“No,” Celeste said. “You are being careless.”
That silenced him.
Rowan stepped between Graham and Clara fully now. “Walk away.”
Graham looked at Rowan, then Clara, then the room that had gone interested and still.
“Ask your aunt,” he said softly. “Ask her why Evelyn sent you away.”
Then he left with Celeste’s hand locked around his arm.
Clara turned toward Bea.
But Bea was already gone from the terrace doors, swallowed by the night beyond the yacht club lights.