Forget This Ever Happened

by Cassandra Rose Clarke

“Really?” Julie takes the letter from Claire.

  “It’s at the bottom,” Claire says, “The second-to-last paragraph.”

  Julie skims down, and then begins to read.

  Marriage is an act of aggression. It’s war for a more civilized time. I don’t wish you to make the mistake of thinking I have any say in the matter of my impending marriage to Gregory Garner. It was a decision made by my parents, a stratagem to save the Sudek family that has nothing to do with love. I’ve come to understand love—that sort of love, the love between a man and a woman—only recently. As you know.

  “You see?” Claire says. “The Sudek family? You’re totally right, the dress must have been hers before she married. And then this: Only come to understand love recently? As you know. She’s totally talking about Javier!”

  “Yeah.” Julie stares down at the words. She can’t believe that her pet theory, born out of her own desire to be with a member of the Sudek family, actually has some weight.

  “I’m going to set that one aside,” Claire says.

  They go back to reading. The silence settles around them again, soft and romantic.

  And then Julie reads the first letter with a return address from Abigail Garner, not Sudek.

  I simply can’t not write to you, I’m afraid. I understand if you choose not to respond, but I assure you that Gregory will not be reading your missives. He’s simply too busy in the oilfields—why, he’s barely here most days! If I could have a letter from you, it would fill my hours with the warm memories of our time together.

  It’s a risk that pays off—Javier clearly keeps writing to her. They don’t exchange declarations of love, but she does continue to tell him of her day-to-day life. Eventually, Julie notices a recurring name: Emmert.

  I’m afraid Gregory has hired Mr. Emmert against my protestations. Yesterday he began work in our gardens, and I went out to ask him about the bougainvillea and the hibiscus, as a sort of test; don’t worry, I remembered your warning! He was quite knowledgeable, but I must say, I don’t care for him. He’s rather vulgar in dress and mannerisms and I find him untrustworthy—unsettling, really. I told Mr. Hemshaw to keep close watch on the silver whenever he was working. Only said it was a bit of women’s intuition, at which point Mr. Hemshaw nodded gravely and admitted he would never ignore such a thing. Amusing!

  From what Julie can infer, Emmert was some sort of hired hand whom Javier knew and didn’t trust, although Abigail never says explicitly why that might be. She mentions him in passing, usually as a complaint—that he makes her uncomfortable, that she wishes Gregory would get rid of him, but that he hasn’t done anything yet that would justify having him dismissed.

  Suddenly, Claire lets out a shout of delight, then immediately slaps her hand over her mouth.

  “What is it?” Julie looks up at her, surprised.

  “Oh my God,” Claire says. “Oh my God, listen to this.” She starts to read: “Whenever I hold Charlotte in my arms, I feel a deep, pervasive sadness. I love my daughter dearly, with all my heart, and yet I cannot bring myself to love Gregory as I should. My heart belongs to her, of course, but I must confess it also belongs to you, my dear Javier.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Julie snatches the letter from Claire, scans over it wildly. “Dude!” she says. “This is like a soap opera.”

  “I know! And check this out. It’s another letter, from about a month later.” Claire clears her throat. “My darling, your last missive brought me such joy. I could never abandon my daughter.” Julie watches Claire reading; her eyes are bright and glossy in the flashlight. “To know you would never ask that of me—my heart is overflowing with love for you.” She stops and sighs dreamily, pressing the letter to her chest. “So romantic.”

  Julie smiles at her, tries not to think about her own forbidden feelings. “I can’t disagree,” she says, her heart tight.

  They keep reading, the night silken around them. Julie keeps glancing up at Claire, thinking about her great-great-grandfather Javier, and what he did for Claire’s great-great-grandmother Abigail, and what it could say about the two of them, sitting here in the damp grass, a hundred years later.

  Then Julie finds an entire letter about Emmert.

  The most dreadful thing just happened, Abigail wrote.

  Oh, I wish Gregory could see Emmert for what he is! I have asked the morning girl to keep the windows open, as the heat has been unbearable these last few weeks. The wind from the ocean is quite blustery and always stirs up the curtains. I’ve never thought much of it, as my bedroom faces away from the garden, securing my privacy. But this morning, as I was dressing, I was horrified to find a narrow, leering face watching me: It was Mr. Emmert! I let out a horrified shriek and he scurried away, but when I took my concerns to Gregory, he once again utterly dismissed my complaints!

  I do not understand why he consistently refuses to see Mr. Emmert for the scoundrel he is. His presence has always discomfited me—I’ve told you about his persistent stares anytime I take Charlotte into the garden. But for him to peer through my window, so brazenly—it’s beyond comprehension! And Gregory simply will not listen to me!

  “Are you seeing the name Emmert?” Julie asks Claire. “He’s like a handyman or something for Abigail after she marries Gregory. She keeps talking about him. He sounds like a total creep.”

  Claire looks up from her letter. “Yeah, I’ve seen a few mentions. He sounds scary.”

  And then Julie comes to the final letter in her stack. It’s very short, and written in a scrawled, frantic hand:

  My darling, the final preparations are ready. I know we shouldn’t trust him; I know he’s an absolute cretin. But he’s the only one who can make the arrangements, especially with Charlotte so young. Soon, we’ll all be together. Soon, our lives will begin.

  “Claire.” Julie’s heart thumps. “I found something.”

  “What is it?” Claire leans over Julie’s shoulder, her breath a spot of warmth on Julie’s skin. “Does it talk more about their affair?”

  Julie only points to the letter. She rereads the lines along with Claire, her heart hammering the whole time, not only because of the discovery but because of Claire’s closeness.

  “She was going to meet Javier,” Claire says, pulling away a little. “They were going to run off together, with Charlotte!”

  “Damn,” Julie says. “And in the 1890s? I mean, damn.” She shakes her head. “But they didn’t. I mean, obviously.”

  She glances at Claire out of the corner of her eye. Still two separate families.

  “Maybe her husband found out,” Claire says. “Or—it looks like there was someone else involved, someone who was making the arrangements—” She taps the letter.

  “I think that’s Mr. Emmert,” Julie says. “Maybe? It’s someone she doesn’t trust but someone she and Javier both know. And he definitely sounds like he was a cretin. I wish there was more about him in the letters.”

  “You said you know for sure Javier’s your great-great-grandfather,” Claire says. “Are you sure Abigail’s not your great-great-grandmother?”

  “Totally sure. Her name was Constancia. There’s a picture of her in the motel.” She slumps back. “See, the story as I’ve always heard it is that my great-great-grandfather saved up his money to buy the Indianola Motel. He changed the name to the Alvarez Motel around the turn of the century, and then he married my great-great-grandmother. There’s a picture of both of them hanging in the lobby.”

  “So he definitely didn’t run off with Abigail and Charlotte,” Claire says. “What happened, do you think?”

  Julie shakes her head. She feels flushed, wild with the possibility that at one point in history Claire’s ancestor and Julie’s ancestor were in love with each other. She wonders idly if she and Claire could have the happy ending that Javier and Abigail didn’t get.

  No. Don’t think like that.

  Claire looks down at the letter in her lap, and her hair falls into her face. It shines in the moonligh
t like gold.

  “It’s dated,” she says. “The letter. See? July 18, 1893.”

  “Okay,” Julie says.

  Claire smiles. “There’s a library here, right? They’ve probably got old newspapers or something. We can look the date up, see if anything crazy happened around then. Maybe they just got caught. Or maybe something happened to stop them. It’s worth checking out, don’t you think?”

  “They keep old newspapers at the library?”

  “Yeah,” Claire says, laughing a little. “I know, I’m a nerd.”

  “I don’t think you’re a nerd,” Julie says softly.

  Clare ducks her head, smiling a little. Then she reaches over and plucks up the photograph of Abigail Garner. She holds it under the pool of light.

  “I want to know what happened,” Claire says. “She’s so pretty.”

  Silence. The night feels like it’s breathing.

  “You look like her,” Julie says, and then her throat dries out.

  Claire laughs. “You think I’m pretty?” She sounds pleased, maybe a little breathless.

  “Sure,” Julie says, and tells herself that straight girls do this all the time, they always compliment each other this way. It’s normal.

  “I find it hard to believe, is all.” Claire sets the picture down with the two set-aside letters. “Boys never like me.”

  And there it is, that fatal stab. Boys.

  But when Julie looks up at Claire, Claire is watching her with an unreadable expression. She doesn’t seem disgusted or put off. More—hopeful.

  “Boys are idiots,” Julie says. “You’re pretty.”

  Claire smiles. In that moment, in the honeyed nighttime, everything is all right.

  CHAPTER

  Nine

  CLAIRE

  It’s nearly four in the morning—Claire and Julie spent hours reading through the letters and working up their theory. Claire stretches out on her bed, on top of her blankets, and stares up at the ceiling, working backward through the night’s events.

  The most exciting moment had been when Julie knocked on her window. Claire thought she’d dreamed the noise at first, but she kept hearing that scratching along the screen. When she pulled apart the blinds she was afraid she would see a monster. Instead she’d seen Julie, and her fear had fizzled and transformed into delight.

  But Julie’s gone now, and Claire rolls over to her side, closes her eyes, wonders what her dreams will be like.

  Banging shatters through her thoughts.

  “Claire! Get up!”

  She lifts her pillow just enough to see the clock on the bedside table. A quarter after eight. She must have fallen right asleep. Usually she sleeps later than that, and Grammy never complains, as long as her cereal box and bowl are set out the night before, along with her morning pills.

  Claire hopes Grammy didn’t catch her out last night with Julie.

  “Is something wrong?” Claire sits up and rubs her eyes. Sunlight streams in through the blinds, bright and already hot. “Are you all right?”

  Grammy slams open the door and comes into Claire’s bedroom. She’s wearing her blue housedress, her hair pinned up away from her face. She doesn’t look all right, but then, she rarely does. Her skin is pale, like always, and her steps are shaky.

  “You don’t have plans today, do you?”

  A chill ripples through Claire. She thinks about the afternoon on the beach with Audrey, that weird, haunting game. “I was thinking of calling Julie,” she says carefully. Really, last night she and Julie made plans to go the library, but she doesn’t want Grammy to know that.

  Grammy’s face darkens. “That girl is a bad influence. I told you about the drinking, didn’t I?”

  “And I told you, all we do is play video games and watch movies.”

  Grammy snorts. “Video games. That right there is bad enough. Well, you’ll just have to cancel your plans. I think it’s time for some spring-cleaning.”

  Claire resists the urge to point out that it’s summer.

  “I haven’t had a chance to do a thorough cleaning since I got sick,” Grammy says. “And I know I won’t be able to manage on my own, not in my condition.”

  Claire sighs and slumps back against the headboard. Cleaning. It’s better than being forced to spend the afternoon with Audrey.

  Still, Claire has to wonder how dirty the house really is. She did clean the place when she first arrived, although that wasn’t a true deep cleaning. She wonders if this isn’t some ploy to get her away from Julie. Or if Grammy did see her last night, and this is some sort of passive-aggressive punishment.

  “I’d like it done today,” Grammy says, and whisks out of the room.

  Claire sighs, but she rolls out of bed, combs a few fingers through her hair, pulls on some ratty old shorts and a T-shirt. She wonders what would happen if she refused. If she snuck out her window and rode her bike down to Julie’s house, to the beach, to the Pirate’s Den. Anywhere but here.

  She doesn’t, though. Instead she goes into the bathroom and brushes her teeth. Then she grabs her Walkman and her R.E.M. tape and strides into the living room, where Grammy has already settled down for a day of rest and watching TV. Claire misses watching TV—she’d give anything to catch an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation or The Simpsons, but Grammy never leaves her chair or her game shows.

  “Where do you want me to start?” Claire asks.

  Grammy glances over at her. “The bedrooms would be nice,” she says. “Especially the closets. I’ve got so much crammed into them I forget what’s there. If you could just do some sorting—we can take things down to the church charity once you’re done.” She turns back to her game show.

  Claire sighs. She doubts those bedrooms have been properly cleaned out since the seventies. This is definitely about keeping her away from Julie. At least when she cleans the house at home, it’s for her own benefit. Her mother doesn’t keep up with the housework, and when Claire can’t stand the sight of the kitchen counter piled high with food-covered pans, she’ll scrub at them and put them away. Same thing with the bathroom. Not that her mother ever thanks her for it.

  Claire loops on her earphones, starts up her music, grabs a banana out of the kitchen, and trudges to the second bedroom, the one done up in shades of yellow. She’ll start there, move over to Grammy’s, save her own room for last.

  This is going to take forever.

  The yellow bedroom is fairly empty, at least compared to her own room, with just a twin bed, a chest of drawers, and a big metal standing fan. Claire pulls open the top drawer. The sharp scent of mothballs drifts up in the air. The drawer is full of ugly sixties schoolgirl clothes. Claire lifts up the top item, a navy skirt sized for a little girl. Probably belonged to her mom or aunt at some point.

  She works steadily through the morning, tossing everything she finds into categorized piles—girls’ clothes, women’s clothes, jewelry, holiday decorations, photo albums, weird inspirational books with pictures of tall grass and sunlight on the covers. She finishes the yellow room around the same time R.E.M. plays their last song on the tape. Claire swaps them out for Melissa Etheridge, although she’s played that tape so much the songs are too gratingly familiar. She really needs some new music. Maybe she could ask Julie to make her a tape of the bands that she’s always playing in her car. Claire isn’t totally sure she likes that music, but it’s so wild and intense that it reminds her of a thunderstorm, and she’s always liked thunderstorms. The music reminds her of Julie too.

  But, since Grammy has Claire cleaning out her junk rather than calling up Julie, Claire has to make do with Melissa.

  Grammy’s room is decorated in green, and the way the light filters through the gauzy green curtains makes Claire feel like she’s underwater. There’s a sickly sweet gardenia scent that isn’t in the rest of the house. The music whines in her ear, and she turns it down, then shuts it off completely. The quiet hums. She loops her earphones around the back of her neck. It feels like trespass
ing, being in here.

  “Here we go,” Claire mutters. She opens up the closet.

  Grammy’s clothes hang in neat rows, her shoes lined up beneath them, the hat shelf above them full of boxes. Claire pulls one down. Dust explodes in a thick cloud, and Claire drops the box, coughing. The lid slides off.

  Photographs.

  Claire kneels and riffles through them. They’re old, all people Claire has never seen before. She flips one over and it’s dated 1935. She digs around a little deeper and pulls out a photograph of a woman in an elegant Victorian gown, her light hair piled up on her head in a series of impressive architectural whorls.

  It’s the same woman as the one in the picture Julie brought over last night.

  It’s Abigail.

  The air suddenly seems taut. Claire flips the photograph over, but there’s no writing on it, no scrawled name. She turns it over again and studies the soft lines of Abigail’s face.

  You look like her.

  Claire flushes with a strange heat. She slips the photograph into her pocket, shoves the box back into the closet.

  She goes into the narrow bathroom attached to Grammy’s room. It’s green too, green tile and green-and-white wallpaper, and the scent of gardenias is even stronger. Claire fills the toothbrush cup with water and takes a sip. She leans up against the wall, next to the window. Her heart is pounding and she can’t say why.

  Outside, the wind picks up, rattling the window’s glass. Claire finishes her water and sets the cup back on the counter. She glances at herself in the mirror. The greenish light makes her look sick.

  She turns toward the door, and as she does she catches sight of something in the trash can. A brilliant strip of color. She bends down and picks it up: It’s a label, the sort that goes on an aspirin bottle. Weird. Who would pull the label off an aspirin bottle?

  Grammy, apparently.

  Claire tosses the label back into the trash and pulls open the medicine cabinet. It’s mostly empty save for toothpaste and floss—and a bottle of aspirin. This one has its label on.

  Claire takes a step back. Her heart’s pounding again, even though she knows it’s stupid. All she found was a label, it doesn’t mean anything.