Chương 10
Another, written when Claire was six:
I saw you on television opening the children’s hospital wing. You said no parent should have to choose between fear and love. I turned it off.
Claire had to stop reading after that one.
The final letter was dated nine months before Evelyn died.
Mom,
Claire is twenty-one now.
She thinks I am brave.
That is the biggest lie I ever told without speaking.
Charles has been dead five years. I still have not called you.
For a long time I said I stayed away because of him. That was true.
Then I said I stayed away because of what you did. Also true.
Now I stay away because I do not know how to become the person who comes back after twenty-two years.
I have punished you longer than he ever could.
I have punished myself too.
Claire deserves the truth.
I keep waiting until I can tell it without looking ugly.
Apparently I am still vain.
I think I will write again tomorrow.
She never did.
Claire sat on the floor beside her bed and cried until her nose hurt.
Not because Evelyn had lied.
Because Evelyn had known.
She had understood exactly what she was doing and still failed to do the better thing.
That made her more real and less safe.
For months Claire had built her mother into the only reliable victim in the story.
Now Evelyn stepped down from that place.
She became a frightened twenty-year-old.
A stubborn thirty-year-old.
A grieving widow.
A mother who had protected Claire fiercely and also denied her something enormous.
A woman who had waited too long because tomorrow was easier.
Claire called Eleanor at 1:14 in the morning.
Eleanor answered.
“Claire?”
“I found letters.”
Silence.
“From her.”
Eleanor’s breathing changed.
“She wrote to you.”
Claire heard the distinction.
Not sent.
Wrote.
“Yes.”
“Do you want me to come?”
Claire almost said no.
Then looked around her dark apartment.
“Yes.”
Eleanor arrived twenty-eight minutes later in black pants, flat shoes and a raincoat thrown over what looked like pajamas.
Claire stared when she opened the door.
Eleanor looked down at herself.
“I was asleep.”
“I didn’t think you owned sweatpants.”
“They’re cashmere.”
Claire laughed through tears.
Eleanor almost smiled.
Then she saw the letters.
They sat on the floor because Claire was already there and neither suggested moving.
For a long time Eleanor did not touch the pages.
Claire handed her the final one.
“She was going to tell me.”
Eleanor read.
Her lips moved silently over Evelyn’s handwriting.
When she finished, she put the letter in her lap.
“She blamed herself.”
“Yes.”
“She should not have.”
Claire looked at her.
“Not for what happened at twenty.”
“No.”
“But later?”
Eleanor looked down.
Claire waited.
“She had choices later,” Eleanor said.
“So did you.”
“Yes.”
“You could have questioned Charles.”
“Yes.”
“You could have asked why there was no DNA.”
“Yes.”
“You could have opened the locked drawer six years ago.”
“Yes.”
Claire’s anger rose.
“Stop agreeing with me.”
Eleanor looked up.
“What would you prefer?”
“I don’t know.”
“That makes two of us.”
Claire wiped her face.
“I want somebody to be clearly wrong.”
“Charles?”
“He’s dead. That’s inconvenient.”
Eleanor laughed.
It sounded shocked coming from her.
Claire laughed too.
Then she began crying again.
“I’m angry at her.”
“I know.”
“I’m so angry at her.”
Eleanor put both hands flat on the carpet.
She did not reach for Claire.
“I was angry with her for years after she died.”
Claire looked at her.
“That makes no sense.”
“I know.”
“For dying?”
“For leaving first.”
Claire stared.
Eleanor looked toward the letters.
“Grief is not especially interested in fairness.”
Claire leaned back against the bed.
They sat there until almost four.
Eleanor told her small things.
Evelyn hated pears.
Claire knew that.
Evelyn cheated at Scrabble.
Claire knew that too.
Evelyn slept with socks on even in summer.
Claire did not know that.
At three fifteen, Claire made toast because there was nothing else in the apartment.
Eleanor ate one piece standing over the sink.
“You burn it.”
“My toaster burns it.”
“You can adjust the setting.”
“The dial is decorative.”
Eleanor inspected it.
“It is set to six.”
“It has betrayed me at three.”
Eleanor turned the dial.
Claire watched.
“You cannot fix twenty-three years with a toaster.”
“I am aware.”
“Just checking.”
At four, Eleanor left.
Before she reached the door, Claire said, “Wait.”
Eleanor turned.
Claire picked up the small jade pendant from the dresser.
The clasp had finally been repaired.
“I want to know where these came from.”
Eleanor touched her own pendant.
“My mother bought the original stone in San Francisco in 1978. Not from some ancient dynasty. Not from royalty. A jewelry dealer in Chinatown.”
Claire smiled faintly.
“My mother said rich families make everything sound older.”
“She was correct.”
Eleanor unclasped her necklace.
She held the larger stone beside Claire’s.
The pale green current met across the gap.
“My mother had the stone cut into two pieces when Evelyn was born,” Eleanor said. “I wore one. Evelyn received the other when she turned sixteen.”
Claire looked at the pattern.
“She kept it.”
“Yes.”
“Even after everything.”
“Yes.”
Claire swallowed.
Eleanor started to put her necklace back on.
“Don’t.”
She stopped.
Claire did not know what she meant until she said it.
“Leave it here tonight.”
Eleanor’s fingers closed around the pendant.
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
Eleanor looked at her for a long moment.
Then she set the larger jade piece beside Evelyn’s letters.
“All right.”
The Harrow Foundation board did not remove Eleanor.
It did, however, strip her of unilateral authority over several family-controlled funds and appoint two independent directors.
Eleanor complained bitterly about one of them.
Claire found this reassuring.
“You’re supposed to be learning humility.”
“I am learning it. I am not required to enjoy the instructor.”
“That sounds like my mother.”
“Yes.”
May you like
Claire began to understand that resemblance could be irritating.
Reporters eventually lost interest when Claire refused interviews.
