The Slow Rise of Clara Daniels Read online

  Clara, who never touched a woman voluntarily, who guarded herself like a citadel, reached out and kissed her aunt’s cheek. Aunt April held herself still. Though her eyes were luminous, April smiled.

  She pressed her niece’s hand. “My driver’s waiting for me. I have a flight to catch.”

  “Of course.”

  April touched her cheek. “I’m going to Palm Springs. I’d like you to join me there for a day, if you can spare the time.”

  Clara felt Fred’s hand press heavily into her back, and she smiled. She didn’t need his prompting.

  “Of course, I’ll come,” she heard herself say.

  People were waiting to congratulate her, so April squeezed her hand and disappeared into the crowd.

  Clara spent the rest of the evening shaking hands, kissing cheeks, and thanking everyone for their good wishes and their votes. She couldn’t remember later who she’d seen that night after her aunt left, except for Pat Mulligan. He’d kissed her hand and whispered congratulations in her ear in the soft burr that always made her shiver. She saw Fred frown as Pat wandered away, and she laughed.

  “He’s married, Fred.”

  He looked down at her with a sardonic smile. “Since when has that ever stopped you?”

  She turned and kissed him, heedless of the people watching them. “I stopped doing that sort of thing when I started seeing you.”

  He drew her against him, his arm around her waist. He kept his arm around her until Donna got them to the car that waited for them outside. Donna smiled to see Clara so obviously in love but knew better than to comment on it.

  “I’ll call you tomorrow, Clara.”

  “Not before noon.”

  Donna laughed with a sidelong glance at Fred. “Of course not.”

  Clara laughed, too, as the limousine pulled away from the curb.

  Her thoughts came back to the present as she leaned against the edge of the tub, watching Fred step naked out of her bedroom and onto the cedar wood deck. She watched the play of his muscles as he slid into the water beside her. He handed her a glass of chardonnay, kissing her. She took the wine but pulled back from the kiss. If he was surprised, he didn’t show it, but sat back and watched her.

  Clara looked up into the night sky. A few feeble stars could be seen beyond the bright lights from the city. A warm breeze stirred her hair, and she sighed. Fred sat as if waiting for her to speak. She stared back at him in the candlelight, taking a sip of her wine.

  “Fred, I need a straight answer from you.”

  “That’s good. I only give straight answers.”

  “How did you know I wanted to see my aunt again?”

  He didn’t answer, but drank his wine, then set it on the rim of the Jacuzzi.

  “I’ve made a point of avoiding her almost all my life, but somehow you knew I wanted to see her, in spite of that.”

  Fred shrugged one shoulder, a gesture she knew he’d picked up from her.

  “I took a gamble.”

  “I don’t think so. You never gamble. Everything you do, you always know what the outcome will be before you do it.”

  “Clara—”

  She held up a hand, and he fell silent. “Let me finish. You knew that your other project would make more money for the studio than my costume drama. My drama made a lot of money, thanks to Chuck, but your space thriller made more.”

  “That’s just knowing the market, Clara.”

  She looked at him, her gaze not leaving his face. He looked back at her, and the silence stretched between them. She spoke again, sensing that he was ready to tell her the truth.

  “It was more than market research, wasn’t it, Fred?” Her voice was deceptively calm.

  She could feel the rapid beat of her pulse, and she took a deep breath in an effort to steady it.

  He didn’t look away from her. “Yes, it was more than research.”

  Clara felt a little light-headed, and she knew it was more than exhaustion. For the first time in her life, she was afraid. She couldn’t remember ever having been afraid before, except perhaps while she was watching her mother die.

  “You can see into people’s heads, can’t you?” she asked.

  Fred was silent for a moment, running his fingertips over the rim of his wine glass.

  “What do you mean, exactly?”

  “When you look at a person, you can see behind their eyes. You can see what their thoughts are, what motivates them, what they want and how they plan to get it. You can see into their souls.”

  “I usually don’t look that deep.”

  His answer stood alone in the silence that followed. Clara could hear the chiming of the grandfather clock from its perch in her living room. She could hear, distantly, the sound of traffic on the highway. She couldn’t hear his thoughts, just as she never could.

  “You looked into my soul, didn’t you?”

  He didn’t flinch or look away from her. “Yes.”

  Clara sat still. She had suspected he had the gift, and now she knew. She was numb, as if she’d run a mile through the snow without boots. She knew that pain would follow when the numbness wore off.

  Fred was touching her, and his hands felt the same as they always had. He tilted her chin until she was looking into his eyes. He held her gaze and wouldn’t let her look away.

  “Clara, I love you. I saw into your mind the first night I met you, and I’ve loved you ever since.”

  “You can see all of me. And you always have.” Clara’s voice was accusing, but she didn’t pull away. She sounded like an angry child to her own ears. She thought for a moment that she might weep.

  He drew her closer to him on the bench and cradled her head against his chest. “That isn’t such a bad thing, Clara. You’re just learning to see good things about yourself. I saw them from the beginning.”

  “You know that I can read people, too?”

  “Yes, but I don’t know why you’ve never been able to read me. If you had, we would have been together a long time ago, I think.”

  Clara laughed in spite of herself. “No, I would have run you out of town.”

  He laughed with her. “The hell you would have. There’s room enough in this town for two seers.”

  Clara was quiet for a while, her mind numb, her heart full, listening to the sound of the ocean below her house as it rose and fell, its eternal motion soothing her, lulling her, just as his hands did as they touched her. She wasn’t able to see into his mind or his soul, so she would have to trust herself and trust him. She would have to rely on her instincts.

  “How do you know we’re the only ones?” she asked, her fear and anger slipping away in the warmth of his smile.

  “I don’t.”

  He saw the look of horror on her face, and smiled.

  28

  Palm Springs, 2020

  Clara stood on the front terrace of her mother’s house. She had come alone, as April had requested. Fred was going to follow later that morning, giving her a little time with her aunt in her childhood home.

  Clara looked out over the front lawn, which was as manicured as it had ever been. The green shown like deep velvet, and where the sprinklers had been running, Clara could see the water collecting like dew. April’s rented Lincoln was parked in the circular driveway. Clara waited for the real estate woman to appear, but no one came.

  The front door of the house opened, and April stepped out. The house key was on the same plastic ring the real estate woman had held the last time Clara had been there.

  April stood in the doorway, silent. Clara heard the air conditioner humming deep within the house.

  “I’m early.” Clara’s voice was hoarse.

  She cleared her throat, finding it difficult to speak to April after so many years apart. They had left so much unsaid for so long that simple conversation was an effort.

  Clara noticed a glint of silver in her aunt’s hair as April turned her head to look out over the front lawn, and she remembered her mother. Jessica would have
colored her hair rather than let silver show.

  April met Clara’s gaze. “I’m glad you’re here.”

  She stepped into the house, and Clara followed her, though she found herself reluctant to walk into that house again. She wondered who had bought it, and how she was going to stand being there with her aunt again, even for an hour.

  Clara walked inside, and April closed the heavy mahogany door behind her.

  “Will you come into the conservatory?” April asked. “I know it was your favorite room.”

  “All right.”

  The morning sunlight slanted in through the heavy plate glass windows. The room was hot as it always was, in spite of the air conditioner running at full speed. Clara smiled as she looked through the windows. She could see the desert shimmering at the edge of the garden. Many things changed, but the desert was always there. The sight of it, and the feel of that heat, gave her comfort.

  Clara spoke, her words coming more easily than they had before. “Mother’s ashes were scattered over that desert.”

  “I know.”

  She turned to look at her aunt and saw the pain in her face. “Did you hate my mother, April?”

  April started to cry, silently, but her expression didn’t change. The tears just ran in streams down her cheeks. She blinked to see past them but took no other notice of them.

  “I loved her very much.”

  “I wonder if she loved you.” Clara was surprised at her own cruelty.

  She didn’t take the words back once they were spoken but let them linger between them. The twelve-year-old who still lived inside her wanted to hear her aunt’s answer.

  “We’ll never know that, Clara.”

  “No, I guess we won’t.”

  Clara stepped over to the window and pressed her hand against the glass. It was hot to the touch. The mountains in the distance looked like a mirage as the morning heat rose in front of them in waves.

  Clara spoke again, her voice low. “I wonder if she loved me.”

  April reached out for her sister’s daughter. Clara found herself in her aunt’s embrace, and she stood stiffly for a long moment, unable to breathe. Then the scent of her aunt’s perfume slipped past her defenses, and she sighed, leaning against her. She hadn’t touched April that way since her twelfth birthday, the day she’d gone away.

  Her aunt’s arms were the haven they’d been in her childhood. Her aunt was thin and her arms bony, but Clara had never felt as safe anywhere else. Not with any man other than Fred, and certainly not with any woman. The apple green silk of April’s suit was soft against Clara’s cheek.

  April’s tears had stopped. “Jessica made a lot of bad choices, but she always loved you.”

  Clara drew back to look into her aunt’s face. She opened herself to peer into her aunt’s mind, to see if she was telling the truth. As always, her aunt’s mind was a closed door.

  April laid her hand against Clara’s cheek, wiping the tears away. Clara wasn’t sure if April was telling the truth, but she did know that her aunt wanted her to believe that Jessica had loved her, in spite of all appearances to the contrary.

  Perhaps Jessica had loved her daughter the way a spoiled child loves a favorite doll, a doll that it only now and then remembers to bring out of its toy chest.

  For the first time in Clara’s life, the memory of her mother didn’t bring her pain. She smiled at her aunt, and April pulled away, reaching into her Hermes bag. Clara started to reach for her own purse, but April stopped her, wiping Clara’s tears away with her own handkerchief. Clara stood still and let her do it.

  April wiped away all traces of her own tears. “I have news, Clara.”

  “What is it?”

  April’s smile was bright and devoid of pain. “I’ve bought the house.”

  “What house?”

  “This one. Your mother’s house. My mother’s house.”

  Clara stepped back, her knees weak. She would have sat on the parquet floor but stayed upright from long habit of supporting herself.

  “You bought this house?”

  April laughed a little, tossing her head so that her earrings danced. “Do you think I would let some stranger buy it? Your mother was born in this house. Did you know that, Clara?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “She was born here because Mother was too stubborn to go into town. She insisted on having her at home. She said the doctors hadn’t done a thing to help her when I was born, and she’d be damned if she’d leave the comfort of her bed to convenience them a second time.” April laughed. “So Daddy brought a bevy of doctors out here. Of course, by the time he got back with them, your mom was already born and wrapped in a blanket.” April laughed harder. “Daddy was fit to be tied. Mother just said, ‘Do you expect me to hold up nature for you, Seymour?’ ”

  Clara laughed at that. She had never before heard any stories about her grandparents. She took in the knowledge and filed it away so she might draw it out again later, when she was alone.

  April opened the terrace door, and they stepped outside. “Would you like to walk to the desert?” she asked.

  Clara nodded, and they fell into step beside each other, the cool grass under their feet warring with the heat of the morning.

  “I’m going to live here for part of the year from now on.” April didn’t miss a step. “I want you to have a key so you can come here whenever you want. Hollywood may be tough to take, from time to time. When it is, you can come home.”

  Clara stopped walking. She looked into her aunt’s eyes and found that her voice had deserted her.

  April lost her smile. “Promise me you’ll come.”

  “I will. I promise.”

  They walked the rest of the way to the desert in silence. That was where Fred found them half an hour later. Two slender women standing together on the edge of the desert, sunlight glinting on their blonde hair.

  They watched as the sun rose above the mountains in the distance. It blinded them with its radiance.

  Dear reader,

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  About the Author

  A graduate of Duke University, Christy English is the author of the historical fiction novels The Queen’s Pawn (2010) and To Be Queen: A Novel of The Early Life of Eleanor of Aquitaine (2011), from New American Library, a division of Penguin Random House. She has also written two historical romance series for Sourcebooks Casablanca—Shakespeare in Love (2012-2013) and Broadswords and Ballrooms (2015-2016). When she’s not writing, she loves to walk the mountain trails near her home in western North Carolina.

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