Part 3
Claire studied her aunt’s face and found, beneath the sternness, something much less controlled. Panic had not disappeared. It had simply put on Vivian’s clothes.
Miriam touched Claire’s wrist.
“Please,” she whispered. “Just through dinner.”
That was how it had always been phrased in the Mercer family. Just through dinner. Just through Christmas. Just until the guests left. Just until the check cleared. Just until Grandmother’s blood pressure came down. A request for temporary silence that became permanent by morning.
Claire freed her wrist.
“I won’t announce anything,” she said. “But I won’t lie.”
Vivian gave a brittle smile. “You always enjoy the distinction.”
The dinner lasted one hour and forty-seven minutes.
Claire knew because she checked the clock above the dining-room fireplace often enough that the movement became embarrassing.
Daniel’s empty chair remained beside Vivian. She told the guests he had developed a migraine, and she performed concern with impressive precision. When the university president asked whether he needed a doctor, Vivian said the medication would work soon. When a trustee offered to drive Daniel home, she smiled and explained that he was already resting in the south wing.
Claire sat six places away with her mother and grandmother.
Eleanor Mercer turned eighty that evening. She had founded the estate’s historical foundation after her husband’s death and still possessed the unsettling ability to detect weak explanations from across a crowded room.
“Daniel doesn’t get migraines,” she said while the soup was served.
Miriam reached for her wine. “He had one last spring.”
“He had food poisoning.”
“It may be the same kind of thing.”
“A migraine is not a kind of food poisoning.”
Eleanor looked toward Vivian, who was laughing at something a donor had said. “Where’s Evan?”
Claire’s spoon struck the side of her bowl.
Her grandmother noticed.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“That was not a nothing sound.”
Miriam leaned closer. “Mother, eat your soup.”
“At eighty, one should not be ordered to eat soup. One should be congratulated for continuing to recognize it.”
Claire nearly smiled.
Across the room, Vivian met her eyes.
The warning was unmistakable.
Claire lowered her gaze to the tablecloth.
The evening proceeded through roasted salmon, speeches, a short film about the estate’s restoration, and a birthday cake decorated with sugared violets. Claire heard almost none of it. She watched the empty chair beside Vivian. She watched Vivian touch it twice as though expecting Daniel to return. She watched her aunt check her phone beneath the table.
No messages came.
After dessert, guests drifted into the drawing room for coffee. The rain had strengthened, beating against the windows in uneven bursts. The quartet packed their instruments while donors congratulated Eleanor and promised support for the archive.
Claire carried two coffee cups toward a side table because standing without purpose invited questions.
A trustee named Bernard Shaw—not the playwright, as he told everyone within three minutes of meeting them—stopped her near the doors.
“Your aunt says you’ve been doing wonders with the correspondence collection.”
“I’ve been removing rusted paper clips.”
“History rests on glamorous shoulders.”
“So I’ve discovered.”
He laughed. Then he lowered his voice. “Is Daniel all right?”
“I don’t know.”
“Vivian said he was resting.”
“I haven’t seen him.”
Bernard studied her for half a second too long. He had spent thirty years in commercial banking and seemed incapable of hearing an answer without evaluating the collateral behind it.
“Tell him I asked.”
“I will.”
When he moved away, Miriam appeared at Claire’s side.
“You could have said yes.”
“I could also have said he had food poisoning.”
“Don’t be clever.”
“I’m not.”
“That’s worse.”
Miriam took one of the coffee cups and drank from it, though Claire had added sugar and her mother disliked sweet coffee.
“Vivian wants you to go home.”
“I live here.”
“Then go to the carriage house.”
Claire occupied the two-bedroom apartment above the estate’s old carriage house. The arrangement had begun six months earlier, after she left her museum job in Philadelphia and returned to help the foundation catalogue forty years of neglected records. Vivian called it temporary whenever she wanted Claire to feel grateful and permanent whenever she needed Claire to work weekends.
“Did Daniel come back?” Claire asked.
“No.”
“Has anyone called him?”
“Vivian has.”
“And?”
“He isn’t answering.”
Claire looked toward the library doors. The cushions were back in place. A staff member had closed the lid and restored the room before dinner. From the drawing room, it looked untouched.
“Where did Evan go?”
“I don’t know.”
“You watched him leave.”
“I had thirty guests to manage.”
“No, Vivian had thirty guests to manage. You had me to manage.”
Miriam glanced around. “Lower your voice.”
“It is low.”
“That doesn’t make it kind.”
Claire set down her coffee.
Her mother looked tired. Miriam had worn a navy dress with a narrow belt, and sometime during dinner the belt had twisted to one side. Claire wanted to reach over and straighten it. She did not.
“What did you know?” Claire asked.
“Nothing.”
“Before tonight.”
“I knew Vivian and Daniel were having trouble.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“The kind married people have.”
“That means nothing.”
“It means it is none of ours.”
“Evan was Daniel’s best man.”
Miriam pressed her lips together.
Claire saw the answer in the silence.
“You suspected.”
“I suspected Vivian was lonely.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
“Your aunt has been under enormous pressure. The restoration is behind schedule. Donations are down. Daniel has been traveling to Boston every week because of his father. People make poor decisions when they feel abandoned.”
Claire stared at her.
“You’re already defending her.”
“I am explaining that a marriage cannot be understood from a single moment.”
“It was a fairly informative moment.”
May you like
Miriam looked toward Eleanor, who sat beneath a portrait of her late husband while three donors discussed the relative merits of public and private archives over her head.
“You think truth is clean,” Miriam said. “It isn’t. It lands on people who had nothing to do with it.”
