“And guess what I found out? Surprise! Clara Knowles is not who she says she is!” Lorraine lost her balance and fell backward to the floor with a loud thud.
Everyone gasped, and then there were fresh bursts of bright light as the photographers started snapping away.
Lorraine was splayed out with her skirt bunched up around her thighs, her pink floral underwear showing. Almost as quickly as she fell, she rolled to her knees, straightened up, and pointed at Clara with one unsteady finger. “You are a little tart, Clara Knowles. A smutty little vixen. What do you have to say about that?” Lorraine placed her hand demurely on her chest and burped. “Excuse me.”
Clara froze. Lorraine was clearly a mess, but she wasn’t wrong, either. She had found out about Harris. She’d exposed her “Country Clara” lie. What else did she know? Clara’s knees were trembling now, and she found herself making her way to Marcus. “Make her stop,” she said, tugging at his sleeve, trying not to break down completely. “Please.”
Marcus strode into the circle. “You aren’t welcome here, Lorraine. Leave at once—”
Raine did a jazzy dance step in the middle of the foyer. No one even laughed—people were appalled by her behavior, and the crazier she acted, the more nervous Clara got.
“Oh, Marcus,” Lorraine said, “my silly little Marcus. We’re just getting to the best part of the story—the part that you will especially want to hear.” There was an authority in her voice that made Marcus step back.
Clara’s head was filling up with air now, as if it were about to float away from her body. “Lorraine, I’m begging you—”
“Everyone thinks I’m a bad girl, showing up in places with too much makeup and too-short hair and a little too potted in booze.” She stared directly at Clara. “But ladies and gentlemen, sweet, innocent Clara Knowles was having an affair with Harris Brown. Bam! Zip! Pow! Even though he was engaged to be married to that French heiress. And you want to know how their sordid affair came to an end?” Lorraine raised her arm and pointed at the ceiling. “She had his baby! Clara Knowles had Harris Brown’s bastard child!”
The words struck Clara like an open hand.
And then she was blinded by light, burned and baptized by a hundred dazzling explosions as a dozen cameras clicked, capturing her pain, her shame, her grief, for all the world to see.
LORRAINE
This was not how it was supposed to happen. This was not happening.
And yet it was.
Everything was a confusing jumble in her head: the faces, their jaws dropped open; her dress smeared with fingerprints and dirt; Marcus and Gloria and that lying, two-faced Clara. And there were noises in there somewhere, too—her voice rising with a frenzied shrillness, saying what? She wasn’t sure. Then there was the taste of the alcohol turning sour in her throat.
And now Clara was crying. Fat tears of repentance, rolling down her perfect dewy cheeks, turning her into a pixieish martyr. The Mary Pickford–like darling of the press who could do no wrong. Lorraine remembered what she had said. Yes, she had revealed everything—everything!—and announced to the world that Clara Knowles was a fake, a liar, a sham.
So why wasn’t Clara running away in shame?
“It’s true,” Clara said. “Everything she says is true.”
That wasn’t what Lorraine was expecting.
“I might as well come clean, here and now. I don’t want to lie anymore.”
What else could possibly be left for Clara to confess?
Lorraine had dug up everything. She’d gotten the low-down from her friend Shelly Monaheim at Barnard. Shelly’s brother had gone to Harvard with Harris, knew him the way Lorraine knew her own hand—and Shelly had delivered all the dirt, every sordid detail. Clara’s affair with Harris. The baby.
Clara was ruined, and Gloria would finally understand that it was Clara who had spilled the details about the Green Mill, that it was Clara who had lied to everyone she’d ever met, that it was Clara who had betrayed her. Lorraine was the one who was truly devoted to Gloria, and now her best friend would simply have to take her back.
Wouldn’t she?
But Clara wouldn’t shut up. Why wouldn’t she shut up?
“I was seventeen and I—I was stupid. I was new in the city, and I was swept away by the excitement and the lights—and by a man, yes. Harris Brown. He swept me off my feet, and—” A sob choked her, and Lorraine thought, About time.
“No one wants to hear all the sordid details!” Lorraine said, but her mouth didn’t seem to be working right. Anyway, everyone—Gloria, Marcus, even Mrs. Carmody—shushed her.
“And I got pregnant.” Clara paused and looked down, sucked in a deep breath.
A whisper spread through the crowd. Was there a sympathetic edge to that whisper? What was going on here?
“She’s a whore,” Lorraine slurred—she recognized what was happening now, realized she might have had a little too much liquid courage before coming here.
But the crowd ignored her. Clara had everyone’s attention.
Clara’s voice grew steadier. “But I lost the baby.” She looked up and wiped away tears. “I lost it. I lost her. I miscarried in the thirteenth week.” She blew her nose and turned to Lorraine. “But thanks, Lorraine, for reminding me of who I used to be. I thought I would be able to escape my painful past by coming here, but I can see now I was wrong.”
Lorraine struggled again to figure out what was going on. The crowd around them was murmuring things—wicked comments about Lorraine—that she couldn’t bear. No, no, no—why was Lorraine being cast as the villain?
Clara turned to Gloria. “And for the record, cousin: I swear on my life, I didn’t say a word about the Green Mill. I owe everything to you, Gloria. And I would never do anything to jeopardize your true love.” Gloria clasped her hands, teary-eyed.
“Oh, come on,” Lorraine said, finally fed up. “Do you all believe this act? She’s a liar!”
Clara turned back to Lorraine, tears sparkling in her eyes. She looked sad, not angry. “I only lied about my past. I’m not as coldhearted as you are, Raine.”
Coldhearted?
She must have meant someone else. Lorraine felt only love for Gloria, and everyone knew that. Didn’t they? Lorraine had tried—was trying—to make sure of Gloria’s happiness! That was why she had come here tonight.
Wait. Why had she come here? The memory was hazy now: Lorraine had been going over her notes from Shelly, figuring out just how best to break the news to Gloria.
And then, because she’d been feeling a bit nervous, she’d gone for a drink at a speakeasy called Sub Rosa—a glass of wine that had turned into three or maybe four glasses. The wine was to bolster Lorraine’s courage—telling Gloria the scummy truth about Clara was going to be difficult, very difficult—and a way to distract herself from the engagement party that was going on without her.
There’d been a man with a mustache there, and he’d been very friendly. Maybe too friendly, now that she thought about it. He had kissed her, his rough hands dropping fast to her garter.
She had slapped him and run out to the street, her skirt twisted halfway around and riding up her legs. But she didn’t want him to catch her—the nerve of that man!—so she had run for all she was worth, but hadn’t noticed all the ice on the street from the cold snap.
And she had slipped and fallen on the frozen pavement and torn her stockings and the skin of her knee, and it had hurt, but there was no one there to help her, so she swallowed her tears and another slug from her flask and then found her car and got in. And that was when she saw it:
REDEMPTION
The word blinked in red. Followed by:
TRUTH
In green.
If that wasn’t a message from somebody up above, she didn’t know what one would look like. Sure, the sign was on the front of some sort of crazy downtown church—what kind of person went to church under a neon cross?—but she wasn’t going to be picky right then about where she found her d
ivine inspiration. So she had fired up the car and driven off toward Astor Street with a mission in mind.
But somehow it all had gone terribly wrong.
Clara was gone now, had rushed off in a storm of tears, Marcus running after her. The party was breaking up, the reporters slipping their notepads back into their bags. Guests were gathering their coats. Members of the orchestra were packing their instruments.
“I think it is high time that you leave this house, Lorraine Dyer. I want you to listen very carefully: Don’t you ever set foot under my roof again.” Mrs. Carmody’s hands were at the small of Lorraine’s back, pushing her toward the front door. Lorraine tried to resist, but the old biddy was like a force of nature, and anyway, Lorraine had lost a shoe somewhere.
Then they were on the porch, and Mrs. Carmody was handing the shoe to her, and Lorraine felt cold and confused and terribly, terribly alone.
“I’ve put up with a lot from you, Lorraine Dyer. I know your parents are mostly absent from your life, and I always wanted you to feel welcome here. But now look what you’ve done. This is the final straw. Never again go near my Gloria. For as long as you live.”
Sitting on a bench, shivering, Lorraine gazed up at the sky through bare branches.
Her nanny used to bring her and Gloria here to Astor Square Park when they were young girls—it was within walking distance of both of their homes—and they would play for hours. Now she was smoking a cigarette, alone, sober, her head still hammering. Her dress was filthy and ruined. She was the one who felt like crying now, but the raw wind was stinging her eyes dry.
She could barely make sense of what had transpired. If Lorraine had been in Clara’s shoes, surely she would have fallen prey to a man like Harris Brown—so handsome, so powerful. But a miscarriage? No girl deserved that kind of trauma.
She took out her silver Tiffany cigarette case, only to find it empty, gleaming at her almost malevolently, as if playing a cruel joke. She chucked it as far as she could into the darkness of the park.
She put her hands to her temples. There was a throbbing rhythm like feet tapping on her head. No, wait, those were actual footsteps. Heavy, like a man’s. And she was alone, at night, in a deserted park. Dressed like a floozy, and without the energy to run.
“Lose something?”
She recognized the voice immediately. But she was more surprised by her initial reaction—of relief?—than by the fact that it was Bastian Grey. He waved her cigarette case like a fan as he stepped out of the shadows. His bow tie was loose around his neck, and his shirt was hanging out over his formal trousers. “Or was that just your unconventional method of quitting? I hear it’s good for the lungs.”
“Since when are you concerned with my health?”
“Oh, don’t worry, I’m much more concerned with your unhealthy habits.” He sat down next to her on the bench. “Although, as far as I know, you have yet to display any healthy ones.”
Bastian’s motives were always suspect, but it was nice to have a warm body against hers—his mere presence distracted her from the unbearable tension of being alone. Plus, he had cigarettes. “Care to corrupt my lungs a little more?”
“The pleasure is all mine,” he said. He retrieved his own cigarette case and lit two in his mouth before handing her one. “Nice show you pulled tonight, by the way. You should really consider taking that act on the road.”
She wasn’t in the mood for his sarcastic banter. “Why did you follow me here?”
“I’m a gentleman at heart, Raine. And if Marcus was so gentlemanly as to follow the victim, I figured it was only fair to follow the villainess.”
Marcus. No matter what she did, Marcus would never want her. The realization was terribly sobering and made her body ache all the more.
She found herself leaning into Bastian’s wool coat, but quickly pulled away. “Fair? Since when do you believe in fairness?”
“Don’t they say all’s fair in love and war?”
“All is unfair in love and war.”
“You know what I think your problem is?” He turned to her, brushing a strand of hair out of her eyes. “You don’t know who your enemy is.”
She shivered at his touch. No, the problem was that everyone was her enemy.
“See, you chose to make war with the wrong person,” he continued. “In this town, bad press is the best press of all.”
Lorraine cringed. “Yeah, well, I didn’t know Clara was going to steal the story.”
“She actually came off pretty sympathetic,” Bastian said. “Everyone has a skeleton or two in his closet. Most people sympathize.” He cocked his head. “What they don’t necessarily like are the people who open the closet doors. Scares them.”
“If you’re trying to say I did the wrong thing, can it. Gloria deserved to know. Everyone deserved to know. Clara is a con artist.”
Bastian smirked. “Maybe she is, but she’s not the one who told me about the Green Mill.”
Lorraine was shocked. Somewhere along the way, she had miscalculated.
“At any rate,” Bastian continued, “she certainly has her claws securely into pretty boy Marcus Eastman. I wonder what they’re doing as we speak.”
Lorraine rubbed her arms. “I don’t care. I’m moving on to bigger and better things—I’m waiting for New York.”
New York. The city that never slept. New York would be where she would start over. Barnard would be her new home, where no one knew about her life in Chicago. Columbia was right across the street, filled with dozens—no, hundreds!—of gorgeous, smart, rich boys. Surely she would find one of them to date, to love, one who wouldn’t ignore her the way Marcus did or treat her like some little floozy, the way Bastian did. New York was where her life would change—and unlike Clara, she wouldn’t mess things up. Lorraine would do it right.
“And what will you do in the meantime?” Bastian casually draped his arm around her. “You’re too beautiful a girl to be by yourself.”
His arm brought her back to reality; instantly, she removed it. “Don’t even start with me, Bastian.”
“Come here,” he said, in almost a whisper. “Do you not trust me at all? I said, come here.” He gently pulled her against him, rubbing her arms to warm her up. “You were shivering.”
“Oh, thanks.” What was she thanking him for? This was just a ploy, some sick sexual ploy to draw her close to him—had she learned nothing from the past two times in his apartment? But her body was numb, and her fingers were numb, and her heart felt numb, too. She would let him warm her up, but that was all.
He rubbed her hands together, as if he were trying to spark a fire from two sticks. “Better?” he asked.
“A little,” she said, pulling her hands back and placing them in her lap.
They sat for a moment in silence, listening to the wind in the bare branches of the trees. Then he said, “I may have gotten a bit … out of line the last time I saw you—”
“ ‘Out of line’ is an understatement,” Lorraine said coldly.
“You’re right, and I’m sorry. You deserve to be treated with respect.”
“Respect?” She wiggled away. The outside of Bastian might have been gorgeous—that dark hair, those smoldering eyes—but his insides were surely rotten. “Cut the bushwa!”
“I’m serious, Raine. The Greys and the Dyers go way back. And if we can’t treat each other with respect, how do we expect the dirty lower classes to?” His expression nearly made Lorraine sick.
She looked at him squarely. “You are such a—”
“A what?” His eyes shimmered with amusement. “What title do you think you deserve after tonight? Good Samaritan? Savior? Oh, Saint Lorraine, please have a drink with me,” he pleaded. “Let me bask in your holy presence, and accept my paltry mortal offering.”
“And what is your offering, exactly?”
“A drink. At my place.”
Something inside her knew better than to accept Bastian’s offer. His intentions weren’t pure, and she was pret
ty sure he wanted to sleep with her. And while she didn’t want that to happen, Bastian was making her feel as if she hadn’t messed up her entire life half an hour earlier. Surely in the morning she would be grounded forever by her parents. She might even make the society papers alongside Clara.
Tonight might very well be her last night of freedom. Why not enjoy it?
“One drink,” she said. “That’s all.”
Bastian grinned and raised two fingers in a mock pledge of honor. “You make the rules, Miss Dyer. I simply follow your lead.”
All thoughts of Clara disappeared. All thoughts of Marcus vanished. Gloria, Mrs. Carmody, even Lorraine’s parents—gone. She could feel herself changing, something dark inside her rising, forcing its way to the surface. “Well, in that case,” she said, her voice newly energized, “let’s get sloppy.”
GLORIA
Now Gloria understood everything.
That was why Clara was here. To escape. All her talk about romantically following her heart was a sham—Clara had followed her heart, and look where it had led her: to shame, to loss. To disaster.
Gloria wouldn’t repeat her cousin’s mistakes. She’d go to the club and say goodbye to Jerome. Quick and simple. No room for failure. No room for regret.
Surely, her feelings for Jerome were nothing more than a childish infatuation—like Clara’s for Harris Brown. Gloria might have thought she shared something special with Jerome, but they had no future together. Where would they live? Where would their children go to school? Even though her life with Bastian might be dull, it would be respectable.
Gloria had said as much to Bastian in the aftermath of the engagement party. He had forgiven her, saying, “I’m happy to see that you’ve come to your senses.” Then he had kissed her goodnight and gone home.
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