Epub her younger self co.., p.8
epub HER YOUNGER SELF Copy, page 8
She nods.
“Not one bit of this makes sense. Mom is heartbroken. Dad is…well, too drunk to fully accept what’s going on, as usual…and getting them through this is hard enough without saying what I really think. But I don’t believe Paxton was suicidal. Sure, he’d had his dark moments, especially after last year, but I can’t see this happening the way they say it did.”
Claudia is quiet.
“I may be reaching,” TessAnne continues, “but I don’t think this was suicide. I think someone killed him.”
It’s on the tip of Claudia’s tongue to agree. But despite her own certainty, she has no real evidence. Amazon packages, a grocery delivery, and a friend acting suspicious at a funeral don’t add up to much. “You do?” she asks, instead, leaning forward. “But, who could have done that?”
“I don’t know. But trust me when I say I’m going to find out.”
Claudia reaches for a business card from her desk and passes it over. “Here. It’s got my phone number and email. If I can help, let me know.” She pauses. “I mean it.”
***
“We’re done here,” Marilyn says a short while later, though Claudia hasn’t seen TessAnne or Marilyn actually move anything out.
“Already?”
TessAnne nods. “We don’t know where most of that stuff came from, and we don’t care what happens to it. Trash, Goodwill, whatever. Can you have someone take care of it? Whatever it costs, just send us a bill. We hate to ask, but it's just too much for us to worry about right now.”
Claudia wouldn’t dream of actually sending them a bill. “Of course.” Marilyn’s eyes are red-rimmed. “Is there anything else I can do for you?”
“You can’t bring my son back, can you?” Marilyn laughs, a hysterical sound. Claudia is speechless. “No, I know you can’t. I’m sorry.”
TessAnne puts her arm around Marilyn’s shoulder. “Come on Mom. Let’s go. Claudia, we appreciate your help.”
“Of course,” she says.
She watches the Gale women leave, certain she’ll never see or hear from them again.
CHAPTER 11
Graham arrives at work to find Claudia still shaken from her meeting with the Gale women. She fills him in on the details and watches his jaw drop.
“Wait, they didn’t know he lived here?”
Claudia shakes her head. “The entire thing was a complete shock to both of them.”
“How is that even possible?”
“I’m trying to figure that out. I’ve sent a request to Tenant Secure for the income information he provided to try and find out how he qualified to live here in the first place if his parents didn’t even know about it.”
“Huh.” Graham twists the watch on his wrist. “Did they clean out the apartment?”
“No, they didn’t take much of anything.” She’s been back in there already. Paxton’s family had left most everything behind: the clothes, the furniture, and all of the art on the walls. “I guess I’ll call tomorrow to schedule a furniture pickup.” The local Habitat for Humanity ReStore will come get it for free. “You don’t want anything from up there, do you?”
Graham shudders. “Definitely not.”
“I figured.”
“Wow. I don’t really know what to say about all of this.”
“Yeah, me neither.” After a few quiet moments, Claudia goes back to her rent roll and Graham starts returning phone calls. Liza is off today, and Claudia finds that she’s relieved. She doesn’t want to have to deal with any more drama. She should have fired Liza, she knows that, but she’s invested so much time in Liza’s training and she can’t start all over again. Not right now. So when Liza had apologized profusely for advertising Paxton’s death and swore to put more effort into her work, Claudia had reluctantly agreed to give her a warning instead of firing her on the spot.
Now, Claudia needs to get her own act together. She can’t abandon her investigation of Paxton’s death—she’s onto something, she knows it—but she’s got to stop adding Killian into the mix. Finding out the truth about Paxton won’t bring Killian back, and losing Killian was painful enough the first time around.
Her heart can’t take it again.
***
At the end of the work day, after Graham has gone home, Claudia locks up her office and takes the elevator to the eleventh floor of the building. There’s a gorgeous model apartment up there. Decorated to the nines, fully done, and vacant. She looks around to make sure no one sees her slipping inside, not that it matters. She’s gotten used to being furtive, but she has every right to be in this apartment.
It’s chilly inside, the air turned down low to counteract the Georgia heat. She adjusts the thermostat, then fishes out the bottle of elderflower liqueur and the highball glass she keeps hidden in the back of one of the kitchen cabinets. A former resident had gifted her the bottle and a set of two glasses, and she’s been sipping on the liqueur ever since. Sometimes she’s not ready to go home when the day ends, doesn’t want to drag her work stress home with her or face the loneliness that awaits her there even when her husband is in the same room. She doesn’t remember when they stopped really talking.
Claudia starts a playlist on her phone, volume turned low, and settles into the uncomfortable sofa. The apartment is meant to look beautiful, not to actually be lived in. She kicks off her heels and looks out the floor-to-ceiling windows. The views from here are spectacular. In another hour or so, the sun will sink below the horizon, bleeding into the mountains as it goes and turning the sky red and orange. She sips the syrupy liqueur and leans back into the sofa cushions. Elderflower isn’t really her thing, but she’s not going to let this expensive bottle go to waste. She wonders how long she could stay here before Beau would even think to call her. He isn’t the kind of person who worries. It’s one of the things that used to fascinate her about him. Claudia was relaxed like that too once, before Killian, but now if someone is even ten minutes late, she’s convinced a tragedy has occurred. Sometimes, when she starts to think of all the ways people can die, she forgets how to breathe and she has to remind herself to do it over and over for a few minutes until it becomes automatic again.
Claudia is finally coming down from this sad, hectic day. It’s not smart, spending time up here on her own. She should call her friends, confide in someone. But she doesn’t reach for her phone.
The sound of the apartment door unlocking makes her jump, and she hides the bottle of liqueur and the glass on the floor beside the sofa. The maintenance team has long since left for the day, and no one else outside of the staff has a key to the apartment.
Graham looks startled to see her there. He’s still wearing his work clothes, the tie around his neck loosened to the point that it’s absurd to still have it on at all.
“Hey,” she says, trying not to sound irritated. She doesn’t want to hide what she’s doing, and she’s not in the mood for company.
“What are you doing here? I thought you’d left for the day.”
“Soon. What are you doing here?”
He looks sheepish. “My roommate’s home. I kind of wanted some time alone.”
I nod.
“I can go.” He gestures to the door. “I’ll go. Sorry for interrupting. I should be at the gym, anyway.” When he's not at work or at school, Graham is an avid rock-climber who takes advantage of the giant climbing wall in the state-of-the-art Prestige gym when he can't get out to the actual cliffs.
Claudia watches his back, the tailored button-down shirt, the flex of his arms as he reaches for the door. She sighs. “Wait,” she says. “You can stay, if you want.”
He turns, smiling. “You sure?”
She nods.
“Are you going to share the booze?”
“What?”
“The fancy liqueur.”
“How do you know about that?”
He closes and locks the door. “You’ve never noticed? I may have had a little bit on occasion. Didn’t think you’d mind.”
“Naughty.”
“Makes two of us, I guess. For real, do you mind the company?”
“No,” she lies. He removes the tie completely, finally, and drapes it over the back of the sofa. His hair is already free from its ponytail. She reaches for the glass and takes a long sip. Then she refills it and offers it to him.
“You okay with sharing?” he asks.
“Apparently I’ve already been sharing, I just didn’t know it.” She watches as he takes the glass, lips touching the exact spot where her lipstick marks the rim. He doesn’t notice. It’s intimate though, like a kiss but not. She thinks again of touching him, wonders how his skin would feel beneath the slow caress of her palm.
“Why do you think Paxton did it?” she asks, when he passes the glass back. It’s a trick, a tactic to lead Graham to the same conclusion she’s come to. That Paxton didn’t do it at all.
“I don’t know. I mean, why does anyone do something like that? Do you think he was depressed? I mean, he must have been, right?”
“I guess.”
“He’d just rescued that puppy.”
“Yeah.”
“I knew someone,” Claudia blurts. She doesn’t know why she’s sharing this. She sets the highball glass down too hard on the table and it almost tips over. No one knows about Killian. “We were close, in college. He…he died by suicide. That’s the right way of putting it, isn’t it?”
“Oh my god. What happened?”
“Pills. I didn’t know. It didn’t even occur to me that he needed help. Or, it did, looking back, but I ignored it because I was a terrible person back then. Maybe I still am.” Graham opens his mouth to speak, but she keeps going. “Anyway, I found him. When he did it. It was…” she trails off, unable to think of a word that conveys what it had been like to find Killian that morning.
“Wow. Claudia, I’m sorry. That really sucks.”
She can’t hold back a rueful laugh in the face of this simple, basic truth.
It does suck.
***
“Late night?” Beau asks, when Claudia finally gets home from work. He’s watching the news.
“Yeah,” she says. “Why, were you worried?” She’s been wrong about him before.
“Hungry, mostly.” After a beat, he smiles. “Kidding. I’m glad you’re home.” The smile looks good on him. She forgets, sometimes, but she’s as attracted to him as she was when they first met.
She shakes her head, but she smiles too. She doesn’t mind being the one in charge of cooking; Beau does other things. They fell into their roles naturally, without ever really talking about it. She kicks off her shoes and heads to the kitchen, where she pulls vegetables from the fridge and heats the stovetop.
She wonders what had made her tell Graham, her coworker, about Killian. It had been such a relief to open up, to share things long hidden. A part of her wants to keep doing it: share things, talk to someone who is actually interested in her thoughts and ideas and feelings.
She doesn’t know why she never told her husband about Killian. She thinks of telling him now. She could. If not about her past with Killian, then at least about Paxton, about how committed she’s become to finding out the truth of his death. But Beau won’t approve, if he hears her at all. If he loses interest in what she’s saying before she’s even revealed the depth of her convictions about Paxton, it will gut her.
Any of these excuses may be true, but it’s also true that she doesn’t want her husband to know how deeply invested she’s become in learning Paxton’s secrets.
Finding Paxton’s killer is her own private pursuit.
CHAPTER 12
Beau is on the back porch sipping coffee when Claudia pads out of the bedroom the next morning. Her phone rings as she’s pouring her cup.
“Morning sunshine!” Ruby says. “I know it’s been a shit week,” (and she doesn’t know the half of it, since Claudia hasn’t given either of her friends a full update on Paxton since Monday’s coffee date), “but you’ll still be at the Golden Hour Gathering tonight, right?”
“Of course, but is Ingrid actually going to be there? With everything that’s going on with her father? Have you talked to her?”
“Only briefly, but she basically planned the whole thing. She’ll be there.”
“The rest of the Foxglove Society could handle it without her. With your help.”
“I know, that’s what I told her, but you know how Ingrid is.”
“The entire world could be crumbling around her and she’d still show up.”
The Foxglove Society takes pride in the work they put into their fundraisers, but they also have a contract with the best event planner in town—Ruby Duvall. Between Ingrid and Ruby, Claudia has been subjected to every detail of the planning for the Golden Hour Gathering for months now. Just like every year.
It’s not enough for Ingrid Wyatt to be the president of WMB Real Estate. Overachiever that she is, she’s also the president of the fancy local women’s group. The Foxglove Society is a hoity-toity group of women all trying to one-up each other, if you ask Claudia. But fundraisers are their thing, and they do a damned good job.
Ingrid isn’t in it for the good deeds, though, and they all know it. She’s in the Foxglove Society because her father expects her to be, just like her mother was once upon a time, and her paternal grandmother before that. All “respectable” young ladies in Ellen Point are supposed to aspire to be members, but it takes more than aspiration to get you in. You also have to pass a rigorous interview process and put yourself up for a vote. A vote. Ingrid has been tireless in her efforts to get her two best friends to apply for membership, but Ruby’s business keeps her too busy on the weekends, and Claudia doesn’t think joining a club should require so much effort. Her small group of close friends is more than enough for her.
“Want to ride with Beau and me?” Claudia asks. Beau loves this event. Give the man all the charcuterie, the live music, the mountain sunsets. He's more excited about it than she is.
“No thanks. I’ll be there early getting set up, and I’m bringing someone with me, so we’ll just see you there.”
“Ooh. Can’t wait to meet him.” Ruby forms casual attachments to the men she meets on dating apps, bringing them everywhere with her for a week or two before she just…lets them loose. She’s upfront about her intentions, and so good-natured about it that she somehow rarely leaves angry exes in her wake.
Claudia is jealous of Ruby sometimes, of how untethered she is, but it was Claudia’s own decision to be tied down. She wanted Beau and this stability.
“You’ll like him, I think.”
“I’ll let you know. See you later.”
Claudia ends the call and pushes open the door to the back porch. “Morning,” she says to Beau.
“Morning.” He’s stretched out in an Adirondack chair, his empty coffee mug on the table in front of him.
“You remember the Golden Hour thing is tonight, right?”
“Of course. Is the food going to be as good as last year?” He smiles.
“Better, probably. Hey, how was Ingrid at work yesterday? Stressed about the event?”
“I don’t know. I was tied up with meetings, but I think she left work at lunchtime.”
“Probably to start setting up,” Claudia says. “I’ve been trying to catch up with her and I'm starting to get a little worried.”
“You know Willard fell, right?”
She nods.
“I think things have been worse than normal.” Ingrid’s father’s health has been on the decline for over a year now. It’s cancer, though her father doesn’t want it broadcast all over town.
It seems like a lot of things are worse than normal, Claudia thinks, ruefully, as she sips her coffee and they settle into silence.
***
The Foxglove Society’s annual Golden Hour Gathering is held on the property of a restored farmhouse in a mountainside meadow on the north side of Ellen Point. It's the perfect wedding venue for much of the year, save for when the bitter cold of winter rolls in and snow makes the drive impossible, or when the summer heat is so stifling no amount of decorative paper fans would make an outdoor wedding bearable. This evening, though, the light of the setting sun spills over rows of wooden tables set with flickering lanterns, wildflowers, and crisp linen runners. Small batch wines, craft ciders, and spiced pear cocktails and mocktails are served at a wooden outdoor bar, and appetizers of charcuterie cups and herb-buttered focaccia are delivered on trays by a catering team dressed like extras from Little House on the Prairie. A well-known local artist has set up an easel near the barn where he sketches the scene in delicate charcoal lines, a string quartet plays on the farmhouse steps, and woven blankets and low tables make small conversation areas for guests to lounge before dinner is served. Children in summer sundresses and linen pants rolled up at the bottom chase one another through the grass, their gleeful squeals competing with the music. The weather might still read summer, but the light has shifted, softer and richer. Women wear flowing dresses and men wear slacks with button-down shirts rolled up to the elbow. It's a last savoring of long days of summer, a celebration of nature, a fancy whimsical affair.
“Looks good this year,” Beau says, admiring the set-up. “Want a drink?"
Claudia nods her head and Beau sets off toward the bar.
“Hey Claudia!” She spins around and finds Ruby, dressed in a long, bold floral print dress and sandals.
“You look fantastic,” Claudia says, after a hug from her friend, and Ruby does a little twirl.
"Thank you, dear. And so do you." Claudia's dress is simple, sleeveless, dark and mid-length with a scoop neck.
"Thanks." Claudia looks around. “Where’s the guy?”
Ruby shrugs. “He couldn’t make it after all.”
“You okay with that?”
“Yeah, just, you know, things didn’t work out.”
Beau returns, arms laden with drinks. He must have seen Claudia chatting with Ruby, because he magically has a stemless wine glass for her as well.
