The first age, p.51
epub HER YOUNGER SELF Copy, page 51
Also by Haley Harrigan:
Secrets of Southern Girls
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
HER YOUNGER SELF. Copyright © 2024 by Haley Harrigan. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced without written permission. For information, address Silver Wren Books, LLC.
First edition.
Cover art by Rachel Christley at The Author Buddy.
Content note: This work contains storylines related to suicide, mental illness, infidelity, and emotional abuse.
For the good girls who grew up and rebelled, trading expectation for
authenticity and seizing control of their own damned smiles.
CONTENTS
PART ONE
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
PART TWO
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
PART 3
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
If you Enjoyed...
Acknowledgments
About the Author
PART ONE
CHAPTER 1
This bathtub could swallow her whole.
Claudia is steeped in bubbles and hot water, trying—and failing—to relax. An unopened paperback sits on the floor next to the tub, some spicy romance she’s been struggling to get through. She considers picking it up, her fingers wet against the spine, and skipping to the good parts. It’s not like she has to worry about Beau walking in on her. He’s probably sprawled out on the sofa in the living room, scrolling through photos of anonymous bikini-clad women on one of those apps that market to “nice guys” by tossing in a few jokes, dog pics, and inspirational stories to break up all that flesh.
She gets it. Really, she does. Sometimes it’s easier to take care of things on your own.
It’s hard to believe now, but there was a time when Beau used to sit on the linoleum floor of the bathroom in their first rental house and talk to her while she soaked in the tub. He would pick up the book she was reading (it wasn’t always steamy romance—but sometimes it was) and read aloud from it, or he’d bring in magazines and read articles he thought she would like. It was calming to have him there with her, freshly showered and leaning against the bathroom cabinet in his worn sweatpants with no shirt on, the curls of his auburn hair still damp against his forehead and his silver-rimmed glasses perched on his nose. It was all new then, their marriage. This life. Claudia would sit back in the tiny bathtub and watch his mouth as he read. I married him, she would think to herself. I am a wife. It was what she’d wanted. And still it felt surreal, like she’d stumbled into someone else’s narrative.
Beau doesn’t read to her these days, though Claudia can’t remember when it stopped. Now he looks forward to her nightly bathtime ritual for a different reason; he knows it’s time he’ll have to himself, away from her. Sometimes late in the evenings, when they’ve been sharing the same space for too long, he’ll look at her and ask isn’t it time for your bath?
A burst of sound in the small room makes her jump. Her phone’s ringtone is turned up too loud. Water splashes over the sides of the soaker tub and onto the cover of the book as the phone dances around on the ceramic tile, chiming and vibrating and begging for attention. A photo of Graham, her assistant, flashes onto her screen. She sighs. It’s Sunday night. She’s been trying to avoid work business on weekends, but Graham and Liza both know that. So if one of them is calling, it had better be important. Claudia reaches for the towel on the floor and attempts to wipe the suds from her hands. Her fingers are moist and wrinkled when she reaches for the phone, and it almost slips from her
grasp.
“Hey,” she says, after a clumsy recovery.
“Hey Claudia. Listen, I think you need to get over to the property. Like, nowish.”
Graham is naturally dramatic, so she doesn’t automatically react. Things happen all the time. A few months ago, a drunk college kid kicked an elevator door off track, which put the elevator out of service entirely. Thankfully there are three elevators in the building or Claudia never would have heard the end of it from the other residents. At a luxury apartment community built exclusively for college students, this kind of thing isn’t exactly uncommon.
“Hello to you too. What’s going on?” I will not get stressed about this, I will not get stressed about this. She repeats the mantra in her head, over and over. She takes her job too seriously. It’s entirely possible for her to get worked up over the smallest details, but she’s trying to do better. The whole “no work business on weekends” thing is part of that. Beau says he can look at her and see that her mind is still at The Prestige at Ellen Point, even when she’s at home sitting next to him. Not that he has any room to talk. When he’s at home, Beau keeps his phone practically glued to his hand. He may save the risqué photos for private moments, but he’ll answer work emails, check sports scores, and read news articles right in the middle of dinner.
“Graham, what’s up?” she asks again. She tries not to sound as impatient as she feels.
“I don’t know. I think…I think someone died.”
“Wait, what?”
“There are cops here, and an ambulance outside. I came home early from a concert and ended up on the elevator with the police. They were talking to each other about calling the coroner. I asked what was going on, but they wouldn’t say. They looked at me like I was mining for gossip or something.”
“Someone died?” Claudia is frozen in the sweltering bath water, fixated on the faucet, shiny and silver. She and Beau have talked about a bathroom remodel, but they’ve yet to actually do it. Beau is very handy, when he’s working on other people’s houses.
Graham is talking, but it’s not sinking in. Someone in the building she manages is dead.
“Who?” she interrupts. “Do you know who?”
“No. But…the cops got off on the sixth floor.”
“I’m on my way,” Claudia says. “Give me ten minutes.”
She drops the phone against the tile and grabs her towel from its plush heap on the floor. The drain makes a slow swooshing sound as water circles down and when she opens the bathroom door, steam billows out into the bedroom, hovers, disperses into nothing. She pulls open three dresser drawers before finding a pair of wadded-up blue jeans. She thought she’d be putting on pajamas next, crawling into bed with her book. Instead, she’s struggling into jeans, pulling on one of Beau’s Ellen Point University long-sleeved t-shirts, and sliding her feet into tennis shoes so she can drive over to The Prestige.
She rushes out of the bedroom and down the hallway to find Beau lounging on the sofa.
“I’m leaving,” she says quickly, grabbing her purse from a hook by the door. “Work. Someone…died. I’ve got to go.”
Beau’s eyes jump up from the phone. “Wait, what?”
She’s already halfway out the front door. “Graham called. He thinks someone died in the building. I’ve got to go.”
“Shit,” Beau says, sitting up. “I’ll come with you. Just let me get some shoes on.”
“No, it’s fine.” It’s not, but she can’t wait. “I’ll be fine. I’ve got to go.” And then she leaves before he can argue.
“Claudia!” He calls out as she’s closing the door, but she doesn’t turn back.
She can’t worry about her preoccupied husband right now. She’s got to go find out which of her residents is dead.
CHAPTER 2
She should have waited for Beau. He knows how much she cares about these residents, and he’ll be worried sick about her. It was stupid rushing out like that, and now her foot is trembling and it’s difficult to keep it steady on the gas pedal as she turns onto the steep lane that leads to The Prestige. She’s in no shape to drive.
Claudia thinks of the students who live on the sixth floor. She knows them all, and some of them she’s friendly with. She thinks of Lily, the sweet law student with long dark hair and the addiction to reality TV. And DJ, the philosophy grad student who can’t keep his apartment tidy. Claudia schedules his cleaning service every week. She thinks of Amy and Carlos, the only married students in the building. They eloped as juniors, and even though Amy’s parents pointedly DO NOT APPROVE, they still foot the bill for the rent. I won’t have my daughter living in squalor because she rushed into marriage, Amy's father told Claudia over the phone before they moved in. She thinks of Taylor, the undergrad English student who cried at Claudia’s desk last week because her mother sig ned her up for a weight-loss meal subscription service without telling her. She found out she was “changing her eating habits” when the first box of food arrived in the mail.
There are others too. So many. Their faces flash through Claudia’s mind.
Please don’t let it be Lily, she finds herself hoping. Please not Carlos, not Amy. She’s not willing to part with any of them, not like this. Usually her residents leave the building when they graduate, from undergrad or grad school (or law school or med school) and then they move on and become successful adults in some other city—Atlanta or Knoxville or Chattanooga, or farther away sometimes. New York or L.A, even Europe. Nothing is out of reach for these kids.
She can’t help it; she starts to barter in her mind. If she had to choose, she would sacrifice DJ over Lily. Lily over Amy or Carlos. Taylor over Lily. She’s a terrible person, thinking like this, trying to determine whose life is more valuable. Like it’s even up to her.
It occurs to her (and she should have thought of it sooner) that the person who died could be a guest, and not a resident of the building at all. She clings to this selfish hope. Let it be someone else entirely.
Claudia should have accepted the offer from Margo, her boss at the corporate office, to live on-site at The Prestige at a discounted rate. Then she would be there already. But she’d wanted more privacy, and then Beau had come along and there was no way he would have given up their little slice of Southern mountain suburbia for a building made for college students. Residents would have been knocking on her door at all hours of the night, and the whole “no work business on weekends” idea would have been shot all to hell. It wouldn’t have been a smart move, not really. And she only lives ten minutes away, if anything should happen.
But something is happening, and ten minutes away is too far.
The Prestige at Ellen Point is a sparkling gem in the small but prestigious college town nestled in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The building is tall and elegant, with warm light from the oversized sconces bathing the sidewalk. It's the only place like it in town and it’s where everyone wants to live, though not everyone can afford it. It wouldn’t even occur to you to think that someone might be dead inside right now, if not for the three police cars parked at the curb. Claudia remembers Graham mentioning an ambulance, but she doesn’t see one. This gives her hope; maybe the resident (or guest) isn’t dead at all, just injured or ill and the ambulance has taken that person away to the hospital to be put back together somehow.
She fumbles with her garage remote, presses it, waits four hundred years for the ornate iron gate to slide open. Finally she pulls through, circling the levels until she pulls into her reserved space. She steps onto the nearest elevator and it takes her to the main lobby, where Graham is pacing back and forth. The night security guard is behind the lobby desk. “Ma’am,” he says, nodding his head. “I would’ve called, but Graham here beat me to it.”
“They tell you anything?” she asks him.
“Only that they were headed up to the sixth floor.” She doesn’t know why she bothered asking. The guard doesn’t exactly run a tight ship; he’s a happy, bumbling guy, there more for show than staunch security detail. Last weekend, a troublemaking resident riding an electric skateboard had stolen a NO PARKING sign and led the guard through the parking garage on the world’s slowest foot chase.
Claudia’s best friends, Ingrid and Ruby, had laughed so hard when she’d relayed the story during their weekly coffee date that Ruby spit her matcha latte across the table.
The resident made off with the sign, though the security camera footage later implicated him in the heist. It doesn’t surprise Claudia one bit that the real police didn’t brief the guard on this situation.
“It looks like they went to 607,” Graham says.
Claudia’s stomach sinks. Paxton Gale. She hadn’t thought to bargain for him. As if that’s a thing that matters.
“I’m going up,” she says.
Graham nods. “I’ll come too.”
Claudia grabs a handful of her business cards from an artfully arranged table near the elevator. With her messy hair and wrinkled clothes, it may take some convincing to prove that she’s the person in charge here. Graham is dressed casually too, but more presentable than she is in a pair of relaxed khakis and a white t-shirt with a logo for an indie band Claudia has never heard of. They step into the elevator together, and he clasps and unclasps his hands as they ride up, his smart watch illuminated on his wrist. He’s obviously nervous. She forgets, sometimes, how young he is, only twenty-three, in a graduate program for Real Estate Management. One day he’ll have her job, or a job like hers but better. His brown eyes are on her, and it occurs to her that she should probably say something to show him she has the situation under control. Something comforting, at least. But all she can do is stare at the closed stainless steel elevator doors and think about what’s going to happen when they open.
She wants someone to comfort her.
“Floor. Six,” the automated female elevator voice says, and they step out into the sixth-floor hallway with its fancy chandeliers and hotel-style carpet. The walls are painted light, inoffensive gray, and in between each apartment door is an ornate faux column, Greek in architectural style and protruding from the wall. It’s meant to make every apartment feel like it has its own private entryway. Silver-framed black-and-white photos line the walls between the columns, not of the town of Ellen Point but of exotic locales, beaches and snowcapped Swiss peaks and Parisian cafes. The Prestige at EP isn’t selling “local”; it’s selling grandeur, adventure, luxury.
Two policemen stand in the hallway talking quietly with two crying young women. Across from them, a thick strand of yellow “Caution” tape blocks the doorway to apartment 607. Claudia recognizes one of the women as Amberly Vance, who lives on the eighth floor. The other young woman doesn’t live here in the building, but Claudia recalls seeing her around the property with Amberly. A shaggy golden puppy lies at their feet, bored with the whole thing. The puppy belongs to Paxton Gale. Paxton, who Claudia doesn’t see anywhere. Paxton, Amberly’s sometimes-boyfriend. Amberly’s face is tear-streaked and red. Her friend stares down at the floor.
A third policeman steps out of Paxton’s apartment, removing and then reattaching the tape. “Excuse me,” Claudia says. “I’m the manager of the building.” When he looks skeptical, she holds out her business card. The officer takes it, inspects it like there’s more there than her name and title. “I’m Claudia Aldridge. Can you tell me what’s going on?”
He finally shrugs. “Well, the kid is deceased.”
She’d known to expect it, but hearing it aloud is still a shock. She’d been clinging to some small hope that there was a different explanation, some non-fatal event: a fight or an accident or literally anything else. Her chest feels tight, suddenly. “Kid?” she asks. “Do you mean Paxton Gale?”
The cop motions back to the door of unit 607. “Is that the occupant of this apartment?”
She nods. He hasn’t even bothered to commit Paxton’s name to memory.
“Paxton Gale,” she repeats. She thinks again of how she hadn’t mentally bargained for him. That’s not the reason he’s dead. “What happened?” Explanations pop into her head at random as she rubs her hand against her collarbones. It’s probably alcohol-related (in a college town, when young people die, alcohol is usually involved). Or a terrible accident, or something unfair but natural.
“Suicide,” the cop—Officer Stewart, according to his name tag, though he hasn’t introduced himself—says, in his matter-of-fact manner. He seems completely unaffected by the word, though it nearly knocks Claudia off her feet. It should have been her first guess.
“How?” Claudia asks. She draws a deep breath, even though it feels like there isn’t enough room for it in her lungs. “I mean, can you share that information?”
“Asphyxiation.” She doesn’t know what that means, but she doesn’t push for more details.
“How do you know it was suicide?” she asks instead. “Are you sure? Could it have been something else?”
