by Gian Sardar
“I wouldn’t let him out of my sight,” Edith says.
Claire leans in toward the butterfly cage. Ten chrysalises have changed from jadeite green to opaquely transparent, revealing folded orange-and-black wings, ready to emerge.
“Those loose ends?” Edith continues. “They might have red nails, if you get my drift.”
“Edith.”
“What? I’d have gone with him.”
Edith grabs her car keys from a table by the door, alongside a tiny cloisonné box enameled with garnet-red and golden flowers that Claire picks up.
“Dorothy’s penny collection,” Edith says. “She lost it before she left. I just found it in with the milkweed. Which made no sense, until I realized the flowers on the box are almost identical to the ones on the plants. Such an eye, to notice that.”
They step out into the light of a sullen afternoon, muted and held back. “So, a few dresses,” Edith says. “Loose, nothing tight. Just for a month, nothing can cling to you. Not even William. A pregnant stomach is hard. You don’t want him too close, or he’ll know.”
Just one month, that’s all she needs. The Rochester business and house sold, connections severed. Then a tragedy. In her mind he holds her, afternoon sunlight on the bed.
Edith leans over to unlock her door, and that’s when—in a mere split-second glance, a most insignificant glimpse, one of millions per day—Claire sees a girl by the tree at the edge of the lake. Hidden but not completely. Easily within earshot. And though she has no way of being sure it’s her, the instinct that this is Eva, that red spark of a name her mother handed to her, is swift and searing.
Claire forces herself to continue looking around the lake, smile still in place, as if she’d not just seen what she had. Then she gets inside, hand shaking as she pulls the door shut.
27
Now
WHEN ABBY WAKES, she won’t open her eyes, as if keeping them shut will prolong the night, prolong what happened without letting in daylight’s inconsiderate edges. She pictures her body, starting with her head, feeling each part of her that’s touching him, isolating those spots—her neck against his arm, her back against his ribs, toes against his shin—and only then does she know it’s real, and only then does she open her eyes.
His arm is underneath her head and she’s curled on her side. Before her is his hand, his watch, his wrist, those little hairs that catch gold in the light. A slight tan, veins that branch along his forearm—she studies the parts of him she can see till his fingers curl and his muscles tense. He’s awake. This is that moment, a fold in time, consequences not yet gathered, repercussions too fine a mist. Stay in this room. If she could she would forever, safe from what’s happening in Makade, safe from hard conversations. Reality waits across the threshold.
Still, she doesn’t move, just lies there, picturing him beside her, staring up at the ceiling. He must think she’s asleep.
“I know you’re awake,” he says, and she smiles and rolls over, legs threading into his, one of his hands already in her hair, the other on her back, pressing her into him. For one moment she opens her eyes, just long enough to see his eyelashes as he kisses her, a slight glisten in the morning light.
When she leaves to go to her own room she eyes the lobby and the parking lot and moves quickly. And though she makes it unseen, guilt is set loose by the green chair, the perfectly made bed. She stares at the pillow and for a moment wonders if maybe she can pretend that none of this happened. Tell her skin to forget that touch. His touch. She closes her eyes. The one thing in the world she wants is to never forget.
And that’s when she sees her cell phone: Missed Call. Robert. Voicemail: Warners wants the script. They have a director attached, he’s got a deal at the studio. It’s already green-lit. Abby, this is a whole new ball game—it’s happening.
Everything’s collided. Robert, Aidan. Commitment and betrayal. She thinks of her life with marriage and a house and a husband who puts her first, but all without Aidan, and feels as if the air in the room has changed, a charge of panic. Just from the thought. So betrayal, yes, but which betrayal would be worse? Her own, by staying on a course she’s wondering if she even wants? Wouldn’t that be the greater falseness? A treachery of self?
What’s confusing is that even though she feels guilty, she does not feel wrong. Tomorrow we’re going to wake up, Aidan had said last night, and not for a second do I want you to feel bad. Because nothing before has felt right, not like this.
And she agreed. And still does. Everything was right. When she rolled over and met his gaze and felt his fingers on her shoulder blade. When the light fell steady on his chest and she felt her hand warm against his skin. She’d felt no need to look away.
28
Then
JUST FOR A MONTH. A month. The words somersault in Eva’s mind. In a month William will have sold his company, the house in Rochester, given up every remnant of Eva and made a new start, a pledge to his wife. In a month the baby will suddenly disappear, a saddened wife in its wake.
She knew. This whole time, Claire knew about Eva. Had simply not said anything because she had a plan, and this revelation is shocking not just in its truth but in the fact that Claire is no longer whom Eva thought. She’s underestimated her, a fatal mistake.
The walk around the lake passes in what seemed like only moments, and now she stands at a pay phone across from a delicatessen that’s packed with people, arms lifting for attention whenever the clerk looks up. Eva knows Claire’s not home, so she’ll leave a message: Iris called, it’s urgent. For the first time she feels real hope—what was in the way is no longer.
The phone rings several times before being answered by that maid with the heavy accent. Eva closes her eyes and says as smoothly, as liquidly as she can, “I’d like to leave a message for Mr. Ballantine, please.” She almost laughs at the sound of her own voice. This, she thinks, is something she’ll tell William. And I had to disguise my voice—like I was in a movie, some spy adventure with footsteps in the alley and silhouettes in the windows!
But the maid falls for it, and says something quickly and unintelligibly in return. Eva apologizes and asks if she could repeat that, and the woman sighs. “He is not here.” Each word is clipped with irritation.
“I understand. I’d like to leave him a message. But do you know when he’ll return?” Again she tries to be that graceful woman, the Eva she could be at some point if only given the chance, but there’s a long-drawn-out pause, and in contrast to the maid’s earlier pace, Eva understands whatever message she leaves will not be given to William.
“He is not here,” the maid says again.
“When will he be back?”
“Late, too late for phone calls. Especially from you.”
Eva’s thrown, all her words jostled loose. “Excuse me?” she finally manages. “This is—” But she stops, because she’s heard the click.
“Ma’am,” the operator says softly. “Ma’am, they disconnected. Would you like me to try again?”
There’s no point, Eva knows. Instead she asks to be connected to his office in Rochester, and his secretary answers on the first ring. “I need to leave a message for William, for when you speak to him. Please tell him that Eva called. I’m in Minneapolis.”
“Number, please.”
Eva realizes she doesn’t know the number at the Victorian where she’s staying. “Never mind. Tell him I’ll find him. Just tell him that.”
“I don’t understand, what—”
“Please write it like I said. I’m in Minneapolis and will find him. It’s important.”
“Yes, I’m putting the note on his desk right now.”
When again she hears the click, Eva’s about to hang up when the operator speaks. “I think he’ll get the message.” Her words are quiet but encouraging, and Eva’s steps are lighter as she passes the delicatessen, the view just a th
rong of people, jostled purses and newspapers beneath arms.
All their plans for the day were abandoned. Edith drove a few blocks and then turned around, declaring the street safe before returning home.
“I wouldn’t have given her this much credit,” Edith says to Claire as they wait for their lunch in Claire’s parlor. Now and then they look to the street. “You know it was her?”
“I’m sure of it. She was watching, Edith. And the look on her face—she heard us.” She takes her spot by the window, but scoots the chair back just a bit, as if seeking protection from the wall. “I feel hunted. Like she’s hunting us. Or we’re at war.”
“Oh, we’re at war, all right.”
“Mr. Ballantine called,” Ketty says as she appears with a tray and two plates mounded high with salad. “Meetings went long. He won’t come back tonight.”
Claire nods. One more night to figure out what to do. A small collection of hours before everything comes undone. She spreads her napkin on her lap. But Ketty doesn’t leave. She stands there, tray empty.
“And a girl called for him. She didn’t say her name.”
Claire realizes she’s still flattening the napkin on her lap. She stops, pressing the palm of her hand onto her thighs. “What did she say?”
“She wanted to know when he would be coming home. I said late, too late for phone calls.”
“Ketty,” Edith says, “now I know you’re smart and you’ve got an inkling about what all’s going on here. Maybe you know more than we do. I imagine that’s entirely possible.”
Ketty, at full attention, takes a deep, flattered breath.
“But what I’ll say is, that girl you spoke to? On the phone? She’s a threat. A real threat to Claire, to William, and to you. That’s what you need to know.”
Ketty glances at Claire for only a moment. “I am aware.”
Through the window, Claire watches a woman with a pram stop to check on the baby. The baby must have cried. Clouds in the distance are ash gray, like smoldering remains. When the woman straightens again, she looks up at the house and sees Claire in the window. Claire smiles, but the woman startles and looks away and her pace quickens. The pram jostles over a crack in the sidewalk and Claire leans forward, watching them disappear. It’s my window, she wants to say. I’m doing nothing wrong.
29
Now
RETURNING TO MAKADE has that end-of-vacation feel, the border between work and play, fantasy and reality. Shake the sand from your shoes, collect the mail, check to see if the car starts and if the plants are still alive. An inventory of potential damage, fallout from your fun. Real choices and real conversations.
And no longer are they safely tucked at the edge of the state, she sees that as they approach the town limits. A news van is parked right there, a woman in a red suit and perfect hair pointing to the sign as the camera rolls, an immediate reminder of what they return to. Aidan looks to his rearview mirror as they pass. “And back to work it is.”
Another song on the radio and they’re a block from her house. The drop-off. That moment when he pulls to the curb, the seconds before she pushes the door open. Will he lean over, will he kiss her? Or will their time be encapsulated, left in the woods by Morrow Lake? A kiss. A kiss in front of her house. She tells herself that’s all she wants, but the truth is, it’s just the start.
Just as he’s shut off the car, his phone rings. She only half listens to his side of the call, still thinking about the kiss. When he hangs up, he smiles. “Tomorrow,” he says, “we go into Claire Ballantine’s house.”
“You’re serious?” Something within her lists, just slightly. Fear that this is it, one of the last chances.
“That was the owner. I may have told her Claire was your grandmother’s sister.”
“Tomorrow?”
“I’m off by six AM, hopefully. Gonna need some sleep, so I could get you at noon? Be in Minneapolis at two? I’ll have the rest of the day off. Dinner?”
She nods. “Thank you,” she says, still thinking of the house, and in a rush of nerves and hope, she forgets everything else and reaches for the handle. But he reaches further and pulls her door back shut, his seat belt stretching, his hand turning her face to his, his mouth soft and vaguely minty. Her heart races.
She opens her eyes just a bit to see her bedroom window behind him, the place she used to sit, chin on the sill, watching moments like this and wishing it were her. That now it is her is a great righting of wrong, the explanation at the end of a following chapter. But this feeling, as amazing as it is, opens to something else entirely: a circular roundness to life that suddenly unnerves as much as it comforts.
Her world is folding over, pieces of her old self meeting her new, ends coming together.
30
Then
IN THE SKY is an orange parrot. It finds a branch and lands, unaware of its magnificence. Claire wonders if it belongs to someone, if it escaped. It skips to a lower branch and then another, and finally, restless, jumps into gray air and arcs into another tree, bright wings like fire.
The storm clouds are rolling in, a great tumbling darkness that combines with the night. Soon Claire can no longer see outside, but realizes anyone could see in. The girl could be anywhere. Watching.
Suddenly every move she makes feels followed, tracked—and the realization that a window is open hits her with a crack of cold. Against the side of the house, a window that faces Edith’s, the glass angled into the dark night. She’s there in a moment and the metal of the crank is cold, the trees outside frozen in apprehension, all black silhouette.
One by one Claire turns off the lights. First the small one on the game table, closest to the window, the shade like dripping icicles. Then the lamp on the library table, stained glass with metalwork at the top like lace, a woman’s draped shawl. Last by the chaise, her favorite, a Tiffany with bright yellow daffodils and vibrant green grass.
Now the only light is a small sconce by the door, but that is low and illuminates only a bit of the dark wood wall, just enough to see your way from the room. But she doesn’t leave. Instead she goes back to her place at the game table by the window, and waits.
From the second William enters into Rochester, he feels Eva’s presence the same as if she stood behind him. Undeniable. She must be there, he knows. She’s come to find him; he wouldn’t feel this if she weren’t here. He wants to sign the papers and be done with it, to see if there’s a basis to his feeling. Already he’s picturing her in the chair by the window, eyes closed, waiting.
What would one night do? What would be the point? He doesn’t know, but he wants it.
His secretary has put the papers on her desk outside his office, and he sees them the moment he walks in. He sits in her chair, too high, as he looks them over. He wants to leave. To not bother going into his office, to sign everything quickly and take the steps of the Rochester house two at a time so he can find Eva sleeping, black eyelashes against her pale cheeks. He needs to get there. With a swoop he begins the B of his signature.
When Eva arrives, William’s car is still gone. The houses look shut off, darkened windows and drawn shades. Claire, though, Claire is in her spot by the window, looking out into the gray evening, shoulders still and straight. She must be waiting for William to come home, expecting the bright swoop of his headlights any moment.
Bundled up inside Eva’s sweater is a towel she borrowed from the Victorian, which she lays at the base of the hidden tree as if she’s simply there for a late-night picnic. It’s cold. The sky slate and infuriated. She closes her eyes and breathes in, hoping for a moment to feel her way back to the day they ate alongside the Zumbro River, to feel William beside her, that delirious confusion of time that certain scents create. But all she smells is the storm. The moon, bold in the part of the sky not yet drenched in dark, pushes its light in a halo, bright echoes of itself like something about to burst.
When she looks back to the window Claire is gone and the lights are off. It’s startling, the sudden absence, and for a second she looks to the other windows as if her eyes had gone to the wrong spot. But no. The glass reflects the moon, the trees, images like a world dipped in dark, slick oil.
Claire must have gone upstairs. It must be after ten o’clock. Maybe she takes a bath before bed. The thought reminds Eva of William, of his legs pressed against hers, bubbles and Sinatra, and for a moment the drive of her plan—to tell William—is forgotten as the pain of missing him takes over. She misses him. There’s nothing simpler than that.
And then she hears a car and steps out from behind the tree.
Claire doesn’t know what she’s waiting for, but feels it as a jagged edge pressed against her, the tip of a bad thought. Impending. Something is impending. Maybe it’s just the storm. The energy, a gathering. She has, for a moment, a thought that if she goes to sleep, it will be different. She will deprive the night of its meal, steal the laughter from a joke. Things will be different. Just sleep and tomorrow will come.
But then there’s the sound of a car.
She turns to the street, the darkness of the room at her back, and sees the approaching headlights. Bit by bit the world is conjured and extinguished. Pavement. Elms. Cottonwoods. The car is getting closer. The black night bursts with images. Tangles of branches. Fallen leaves.
Then in a flash, a face. Staring right at her. Shocked white. Watching the house.
Claire backs from the window. Presses herself against the wall, then moves to the door, then into the bright hall, careful to avoid the windows, and backs into the depths of the house, toward the kitchen. In the maid’s quarters she hears Ketty’s music playing softly, Tommy Dorsey and his orchestra.