Chapter Fifteen
She almost didn’t want to look. She didn’t want to find it changed – for her mother’s dressing room had always been the one place where time stood still.
Though the red velvet seats in the auditorium had begun to fray – the paint upon the ceilings had begun to flake – this room had looked much as it had when her mother had been alive.
‘Could use a good dusting,’ Mr Carter said, stepping past her.
Ava opened her eyes, and the relief hit her like a wave.
Her mother’s pictures still stood on the mirrored table – a portrait from her wedding day, and a drawing of Ava and Oliver that her mother had captured in thin, neat strokes.
The velvet settee still sat against one wall – the wardrobe against the other, one door hanging a little lower than the other.
‘Thank God,’ she breathed.
‘I didn’t realize this was a family business,’ Mr Carter said, peering up at the ceiling – damp spreading in great, dark rings. ‘Do you perform together?’
‘She passed,’ said Ava.
Mr Carter turned, his gaze flicking to hers. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘My mother passed, too – a long time ago. When did your mother—?’
‘Four years ago,’ said Ava. ‘And this dressing room – it’s the only place that’s still hers, so when I want to feel close to her – I come here.
’ She reached to brush the dust from the mirror, swiping a great handful of it away.
The face that stared back at her was paler, greyer than her mother’s had been – and pinched.
‘So … she was the Memory Binder before you?’
‘I don’t think I ever earned that name,’ Ava said, stepping towards the wardrobe.
‘I was just given it. But by the time I was performing as the Memory Binder, my act wasn’t anything like hers.
By then …’ Jem had broken with me. ‘By then I’d lost my nerve, and I didn’t want to pluck strangers from the crowd anymore.
I was just a … a storyteller. I wove tales together and sold them as truth, but they weren’t.
They were just stories – stories that tried to capture just an ounce of the magic she’d had. ’
He was halfway to lowering himself onto the dusty velvet settee in the corner when he hesitated. ‘I thought you said it wasn’t magic?’
‘It’s not,’ said Ava, pulling her mother’s coat from it.
It didn’t smell like her anymore, the floral scent of her perfume, the sweetness of the oil she ran through her hair.
Now the only thing Ava could smell was must, and smoke, and damp.
‘But her? She was magical. And it felt magical, watching her. Watching me – well …’ She hung the coat back up, watching it sway gently on the hanger, back and forth.
‘No one believed anything. And I suppose that was the problem.’
‘Is that why you quit?’
When she didn’t answer, he stood up, and crossed to the dressing table, plucking up the portrait of her parents.
‘Did your mother teach you how to do it? The mesmerism?’
‘I believe she tried.’ Ava swallowed a little, feeling how the words had begun to stick in her throat. ‘As much as she could.’
He looked at her, one eyebrow raised. ‘You speak as though you have no natural talent, Miss Adams. But if that were true, I don’t think you’d have quite the reputation you have in these parts. And I should know. I asked around before coming to see you.’
‘I was adequate for a time,’ Ava admitted. ‘But I was never her. That’s what I wanted – I wanted the audience to stare up at that stage and see her. Not me.’
That was what Lillian had wanted, too. For her to step into her mother’s shoes, to command the audience as her mother had. And for a long time she’d thought perhaps if she could do that, then she truly would be good enough. Good enough for Lillian, yes, but perhaps good enough for Jem, as well.
Mr Carter’s brow furrowed. ‘That’s what you wanted?’
He was watching her now – his dark green eyes unwavering.
‘Of course,’ she said. That was all she’d ever wanted.
His gaze flicked away. ‘Why didn’t you want them to see you?’
‘Because my mother was the Memory Binder,’ Ava said, shifting her gaze to her hands, the jagged lines of her fingernails. ‘Because I wanted to keep that alive. But it never felt like that. It always felt like …’ Like a lie. ‘Like a performance.’
Mr Carter plucked his silver spectacles from his face, wiping the glass with the sleeve of his shirt.
‘We can’t be somebody else, no matter how hard we might wish for it,’ he said.
‘We can imitate them, perhaps, mimic them – but we can’t become them.
It’s still just us, underneath. It would’ve always felt like an act. ’
Ava opened her mouth to reply to that – and then frowned. ‘I suppose I hadn’t considered it like that before.’
‘What if you did it your way?’ he asked. ‘And not hers?’
Ava shook her head. ‘I don’t know if I can do it any way. Not anymore.’
‘You’ll never know unless you try.’
She glanced up, her teeth skimming her bottom lip. For he was right, in a way. She wouldn’t know, would she?
‘Why?’ she asked. ‘Are you volunteering?’
‘Yes.’ He didn’t even hesitate. ‘If you’ll have me.’
She could see his hands in the mirror, could see how white his knuckles had become.
‘I thought you said it was a foolish idea.’
‘I still think it’s a foolish idea,’ he said, his voice a little overbright. ‘In fact, I’m just desperately hoping you prove yourself unable to actually do it.’
She laughed at that – a loud sound in the quiet between them. ‘Such a ringing endorsement.’
‘At least you won’t have to worry my expectations of you are too high,’ he said.
Her gaze flicked back to the mirror – to the woman staring back at her. She studied the pale shape of her eyebrows, the dark smudges beneath her eyes, and she thought of that word.
Peace.
Ava wanted to give that to her father. But more than anything, she wanted it for herself. And perhaps … perhaps Mr Carter was right. Perhaps she had been so focused on trying to become her mother, she’d lost sight of herself.
‘I suppose …’ she said slowly, the words like a dragging heat against her heart. ‘I suppose we could try. The worst that can happen is I fail.’
And she already knew what that felt like.
What would be the harm?