1.
Claire Grace is not the child of two selfish parents who leave their innocent premature daughter behind because she's a mistake—a mistake killed by the powerful Newman narrative with her existence erased from their family and the world. All to garner sympathy. But still, Claire is told that she is lucky. A lucky girl who survives loneliness, who dodges the shame of overlooked by this influential family.
The Newman family has all the money in the world, can afford every treasure they desire. Their empire is large, well-known and they are hateful people who bend the world to their will. They're dysfunctional. They're above it all. Sanctimonious monsters who need to be hurt—no, killed (put down, her aunt phrases it)—for the greater good, Aunt Jordan drums into her psyche until it's all she knows, all she believes, and until Claire becomes corrosive with the same venom the Newmans put into the world.
The Newmans' abandonment of her and their treatment of her grandmother, Eve, is an injustice. Aunt Jordan tells her she's safe from them. The Newmans may have expensive trinkets and live wasteful, expensive lives, Aunt Jordan tells her she's lucky.
Not safe. Not wanted. Not cared for.
Just lucky.
—
Aunt Jordan steals her.
Aunt—no, Claire has to correct that but it's so damn hard—
Jordan steals her. From five years old, Claire is rooted in the idea, the truth of being unlovable because her relatives deem her as just that. She's unlovable and unwanted until she chooses to be the monster people call her. It changes everything. This revelation leaves her untethered, and unmoored. All this time she knows herself to a granddaughter, a daughter, a niece, a cousin, an older sister to two brothers and a baby sister and she's been alienated from it. She's a good loyal soldier to the cause, the mission, the endgame because she must be the one to right the wrong. But it's all gone, disappeared. It dissolves to…nothing.
She's nothing.
—
Here's the other thing Claire realizes in hindsight: she's directly involved in Nikki's kidnapping and shoves her into the abyss of alcoholism.
There's her grandfather—Victor Newman, who threatens her with a fate worse than Hell itself.
Nicholas Newman—her uncle—is all charm, philanthropy (New Hope, according to her extensive research, is an amalgamation of low-income affordable, something about the intersections of sports and mental health) and yet, he generates millions as one of many six owners of the Milwaukee Bucks. What a paradox of a person. He's bleeding, hurt and about to die just like the rest, but Claire sees the fury in his eyes. Cole coaches him to stay with them and applies pressure to the wound Aunt Jordan gives him.
"Claire… Claire!" Victoria yells, despite the wheezing she hears just as loud as her desperation. Fresh tears pool in her eyes. "Claire! Please. I'm begging you. We're dying! My brother is dying and he's bleeding…" her voice cracks as her breath grows laboured and she coughs. "Cole and I are the ones you're angry with. Leave everyone else out of it. All you need to do is call an ambulance. Please!"
"Claire…" Cole says, and for reasons she can't understand, feels her heart skip. "Deep down…" he continues, locking gazes with her. A sharp intake of breath. He sounds steady. "Whatever you've been told by Jordan… this is wrong. Do the right thing. You're not a killer. I know you're capable being a good person if you allow yourself…"
"No matter how this all plays out…" Victoria says again, momentarily distracted by Nick's groan and swearing under his breath about getting that fucking antidote if he's dying. Claire nearly jumps at the fire of fury in his eyes. He mutters about having nothing to lose but it's interwoven by him talking to Cassie, her cousin. Claire remembers the collection of newspapers she stores on the accident, and the trial afterwards. Cassie dies in a car accident at fourteen. A redheaded girl with sparkling eyes and a bright smile. She will always be fourteen. Her uncle is talking to her dead cousin and Claire knows the veil between here and there is thinning for him. Her uncle. Claire hears him ask Cassie to help him make a decision before Victoria yells at him, sharply. "Nick! Don't fall asleep! Think of your kids! Noah, Faith, Summer need you! Christian is too young to lose his dad! Stay awake, Nick. Please."
There's noise in the room and it's even louder in her head. She has a bleeding uncle being helped by her father. She has cousins: Noah, Faith, Summer, Christian— Victoria turns to her and swears to help her. Help. Jordan tells her about the Newman brand of help. Their help means jail, a life of misery, a life of inflicted pain that will not stop planned and delivered by the patriarch himself. Help means the ground opening up underneath her feet and falling through the large crevice beneath, still alone and still in the dark.
"You'll help…me?"
"Yes. All you need to do is make a decision."
All she knows is how to obey. She's a good solider. If obedience is an Olympic sport, Claire is a shoe-in for the gold medal. Victoria, even close to death, challenges her in turn. If she's truly done with Jordan, then prove it. Don't listen to her. Don't listen to the lie. For the first time ever, don't listen to this misguided, misplaced hatred that festers until it's all she knows. She's not that and doesn't have to be her view. Not anymore, Claire.
Claire feels her own heart palpitations, her own vertigo, her own sense of self in question. The threads that hold what she knows together are unspooling and unravelling. Her mind races with calculating how long it takes before digoxin toxicity accomplishes its purpose. Her head tries to counts the small bottles throughout this simple unassuming house where her true education begins. There are two bottles she knows of in the drawer with their phones.
She sees it. Claire sees past the stories and this anger that grows with her.
For the first time since the age of five, she sees them.
Claire sees the truth in Victoria's expressive blue eyes and Cole has the kindest eyes she's ever seen. They look at her, even with their adamant doubt, like she matters.
Like…she's wanted.
2.
She grabs the set of keys that unlocks the drawers with their phones and spies them. The two little bottles of the antidote.
"Here," she urges, adrenaline spurring her to turn around to find the other five in her mind. Victoria forces herself to stand up. Her hands shake as she hands them off to Victoria and notices her hands, slender and soft, are sweaty and clammy. Claire realizes stories of her accomplishments are the tip of the iceberg. This woman is small, but she really is all steel and iron will. "Victoria, please. Drink it before it's too late. It'll counteract the poison."
"No. My parents drink first."
"No, no. Nikki wasn't poisoned. She didn't have any of the digoxin. Just an IV of alcohol."
Victoria tosses her a look full of confusion, muted rage and there's a spark in the Ice Queen's eyes. A spark of question but only has one question. Why? Maybe even a second one. How? Aunt Jordan teaches her how to read between the lines and read people. But before she can read Victoria, the woman closes off and goes into being a leader. Diligent in making sure everyone has the antidote before herself.
Aunt Jordan calls her weak, a failure and a desperate. Aunt Jordan labels her soft for not understanding how the world works anymore. But it doesn't matter. She may be all of those things. She's the monster kids at school call her before Aunt Jordan pulls her out of school in the tenth grade. Maybe she's the freak she's branded as when her first kiss isn't with a boy but a girl named Sophia who smells like apple body wash and tastes like cherry-flavoured gum the year before. Claire never allows people to get too close to her like Aunt Jordan instructs. Social workers are parasites who feed on the deficits of people and teachers need to feel like they care to be able to sleep at night.
They have no idea how to shape the minds of the future and they certainly, Aunt Jordan says as she runs a brush through her hair before sleep as is the routine, have no idea how to hers. It's a beautiful, brilliant mind Eve would adore and the Newmans would corrupt.
Claire confesses and it's good for the soul, they say. Whoever they are.
It's now Claire who can't breathe because it's Aunt Jordan who corrupts her. Then again, Claire is aware of her compliance and culpability in all this.
Of course, she confesses but Claire has no soul.
—
Claire runs into the kitchen, pulls the drawers and cabinets open until she finds the other bottles in an old ceramic vase. What she doesn't know—until this very moment—is that this vase also contains a lock of blonde hair that's lost its lustre. Eve's hair.
—
Claire runs into the kitchen with the other five jars and doesn't think about it when she starts giving them out. It's her tunnel vision, her one-track mind. The same mind that questions what will happen with four bodies in the house—five because the alcohol combined with Nikki's multiple sclerosis will finish her off—and how do they clear this part of their mission after the Newman family falls?
She remembers asking it: what will happen when this well-known family goes missing but their corpses decompose here? Jordan, who knows and plans everything, doesn't answer.
"Remember, Claire," she replies, placing her hands on her face. Phase One is complete. She's the best assistant ever. Compliant. Helpful. Willing to please and eager to make Mrs. Newman's life as easy as possible. "Obedience is the product of complete trust. Obey, Claire."
Claire nods, and smiles. "Of course," she says, demurely. "I'll go put on the kettle now."
"Excellent, sweetheart. You know I love you, don't you? It's just us."
"I know you do. Always us, Aunt Jordan," Claire replies like clockwork because it's truly just them. "I love you, too."
Claire walks off to get her great-aunt some tea while they strategize for Phase Two.
She bites the soft, fleshy inside of her cheek. She never questions Aunt Jordan after that because she knows best. She wants what's best.
—
When Sophia moves away, Aunt Jordan assures her of her innocence in the matter. It hurts because Sophia in one of the few kids to be nice to her. When Claire apologizes for kissing her, Sophia blushes and tells her it's okay. Sophia is one of the few to be nice to her but she moves away from Oregon a week later. Another state.
Out of the country, Claire doesn't know.
But it's only reinforcement of the obvious: people always leave. They always leave her.
Claire decides not to question Aunt Jordan this time and rests her hands on the small kitchen counter as the kettle hisses with steam before it whistles. She exhales, squeezing sweet, kind Sophia out of her mind until she fades away. Maybe Sophia is never really that nice. At least not from a true place. It's just pity. It's hard to be nice to Claire The Freak. It's hard to be kind to the school monster, but it's easy to pity someone. Because pity means Sophia lies to her and convinces her she's a treasure when she's trash.
Obey, Claire. Do what you're told, Claire, is her mantra. Obedience is all she has.
That, and Aunt Jordan.
3.
Claire loses her virginity on her sixteenth birthday. November 9th.
Most sixteen-year-olds get a big party, a token of passing from girl to woman (she thinks pearls are pretty), even a brand-new car. She does study to get her full driver's license made easier due to her eidetic memory and her drive to learn, and analyze. Aunt Jordan never lets her drive her, old and beat up as it is, car much. When Claire gets to drive the old Honda, it's to the library to read, study and step into the recesses of her imagination. It's to retreat into the bookshelves and the works they hold.
On her birthday, she finds another book of poetry. Old, tattered with yellowing pages due to time. The cover is hardcover and a faded blue with a scratch texture. Clearly, the book jacket is missing but it is a public library after all. She shrugs, tucking a lock of her blonde hair behind an ear and stores it in her black book bag before striding off to her usual table to sit.
I felt a Funeral, in my Brain
And Mourners to and fro
Kept treading - treading - till it seemed
That Sense was breaking through –
She nears the third stanza of I felt a Funeral, in my Brain when he comes around again.
And then I heard them lift a Box
And creak across my Soul—
His name is Matt…something. She still doesn't know his last name after a year.
—
Claire discreetly pulls the sleeve of her long royal sweater over her hand to cover its trembling. It's not anxiety that sets this off but rage. Concentrated rage that seems to run through the same veins as her blood. Another birthday without acknowledgement. Another birthday of erasure and yet Matt asks if he can sit. He'll be quiet, he promises beaming at her. He'll study and not bother her. Claire smiles at him, says sure. Even jokes that even though the table is her domain she's pleased to oblige him.
She goes back to reading and discreetly reads him: a textbook on Biomedical Sciences, bright yellow highlighted pages, polished and scratched out. A lock of blonde hair falling over his paper. The slight curve of his notebook and the way Matt's left-handedness has him push his writing. The wrinkle in his brow when he concentrates. His green eyes sparkling under the library lights. The Cupid Bow in his lip. The course outline of a freshman nursing class with the name of the local community college typed in dark capital letters.
Claire feels Matt's gaze lift to her and that's enough curiosity.
When she gets up to go, Claire is stopped by Matt calling her. She puts the book in her bag ready to check it out, it'll be nice to read between the long periods of lull at her job at the local flower shop.
"Hey. Leaving?"
"Yes," Claire answers, politely just like Aunt Jordan teaches her. "I had plans with a friend, but it looks like I'll be staying in to continue reading."
"Sounds like a fun time," Matt answers. He rolls a yellow highlighter between his palms, a pregnant pause that has the boy thinking. Claire can see the wheels turning in his mind. He's going to see if she'll come back here. Maybe even ask her out on a date. His eyes are so earnest. "Well, perhaps… I can persuade you to stay? I don't know if that would be a weird."
Claire elects to stay longer, not to read but because Matt With No Last Name admits over the last year they see each other, he's attracted to her. Very.
—
Claire knows nothing of his family and she strategically makes sure Matt knows nothing about her aside from being the Library Girl.
Attraction isn't love, Claire thinks, rationalizing Matt's sincere admission.
He's another blonde guy. Doesn't matter what degree of blonde. Tall. Green eyes that remind her of a friendly cat. Matt Whatever He Last Name Is is just kind of guy the popular, pretty girls with upper crust families would go from and she hates that. Hates him.
And ultimately, Claire's hatred for them completes another successful trip in the nooks and crannies of her head, her eroding heart and whatever is left of her soul. Of course, she's unlovable and in turn, has none of it to give or experience. Sixteen isn't a big deal and neither is losing her virginity to this boy with no last name on the secluded fourth floor against the book shelves filled with English literature. Matt is frenzied, erratic and isn't gentle with her because she asks for necessary roughness. He kisses her. She asks him to be rough as the straight edges of the book shelves press against her skin. Why shouldn't she ask? Why shouldn't command and demand? It's her first time. Shouldn't Claire be in control? Of course, she should, so Claire will be. Control is survival. Control is everything—
Her plank of reason breaks.
It shatters and leaves Claire seeing with a brief flicker of something—maybe the ember of a melting birthday candle—before the familiar dark comes back and wishes her a happy birthday.
—
When she gets home, Claire finds Aunt Jordan sitting on her bed.
Her great-aunt isn't mad at her but there's amusement in her eyes when she startles.
"Aunt Jordan, I thought you would be in Eugene…"
"Plans changed," she replies with a dismissive wave of a hand. She stands. "You're sixteen. It's a momentous day."
Claire shrugs, face impassive. It's been eleven birthdays since.
Nothing momentous about that.
—
She takes her bag off, and hangs it on the back of her simple chair. Her room isn't extravagant, but it's enough. It's modestly decorated and as long as she has a roof over her head. It's enough. No, it isn't, a scratchy, soft voice that feels like razor blades. Her nerves thin stretched taut with harp strings. It's never enough.
Not when Cole Howard is a tenured professor in English Literature at Oxford University, and Victoria Newman roams the streets of Italy in luxury. Claire picks at one of her nails, chipping the dark blue, dollar store quality polish varnish further. She twists at the small piece of skin discreetly. It's a nervous habit. Aunt Jordan hates it, but if she can have sex within the shelves of a public library, picking at a hangnail is nothing in comparison. It should be, right?
"It's not a big deal."
"Oh, but it is," Jordan beams and presents her with a small rectangular box. "Open it."
Claire blinks in surprise and then reaches out to take it. She opens it, and it's a blue, circular necklace. A blue cameo outlined with gold that sits on a thin, gold chain. She entranced by it. Claire's never seen anything so simple yet beautiful. The cameo looks equal parts pearl, and equal parts sapphire and aquamarine because of the swirling shades of blue like water. She runs the thin gold chain between her fingers with reverence. Glass. Like glass. Like a treasure with the weight of years on it.
"Those people forgot you, but your grandmother would have adored you."
"This…was hers?"
"It was," Jordan nods. "One of the few things I received when she passed. This is the one piece of my sister I have. I want you to have it now. Happy birthday, Claire. When you wear it, remember her. Remember your training."
Claire's eyes tear up as she thanks her aunt for the gift. She remembers. Claire remembers the strategies that are still in progress, remembers the way the earth seems to tilt underneath her feet and the need to fix it like an itch that burrows beneath the skin.
She can't quite scratch it but she's determined to get it and destroy its source.
—
Aunt Jordan walks out, telling her—warning her, really—to stop picking at her nails. It's a habit that shows indecision.
She waits until her aunt strides away to release the breath she's holds. Claire doesn't realize it until the tightness in her chest is felt. The side of her nail stings sharply and blood wells up in the skinny ridge there. Her hand has a mind of its own and she wills her hand open up. Half-moon shaped imprints are in her palm, the cameo warm in it.
Truthfully, Claire loves pearls. They're simple, and elegant, but this cameo is means more.
Against her will, her chin trembles. A tear rolls down her cheek.
"Shit," Claire swears under her breath. Wiping it away roughly, she steels herself for a battle she doesn't quite understand. As she gets older, she knows it will be clearer to her.
She sits at her desk and pulls out her hauls from the library. The poetry book with the faded blue hard cover, and a worn copy of Sun Tzu's The Art of War in places of her other books and literature. She steels herself, steadies her shaking hands by compartmentalization. From a young age, Claire pushes away weakness, and becomes comfortable with her edges. She sharpens them, trains herself to cut others with them before anyone else has the chance to do the same to her. She even pushes away for her love for pearls because it would be selfish of her.
Claire works to open the clasp of her grandmother's necklace and slides it around her neck, bottom lip between her teeth in concentration. The cameo shimmers, the blue center giving the illusion of motion. She touches a hand to it as it lays flat on her chest.
Claire makes a decision on her birthday to never wish for her own string of pearls ever again.
They'll go to swine anyway as Aunt Jordan would say.
—
Even now, Claire can feel the cameo against her chest underneath her sweater.
"She's dead, right?" Claire hears Cole ask Victoria. For the first time, Claire sees uncertainty in Cole's eyes. Unshed tears glimmer in his head and she wants to scream that she's right here. She is Baby Eve. She's little, premature Eve Nicole Howard, born on a fall November night in Genoa City, Wisconsin. "She has to be dead. We buried her…"
Claire sees the steel and ice in Victoria's eyes and the pin prick of recognition shoots through her.
"Yes, Cole. Eve is dead. Our baby girl is dead."
Claire likes to stare into mirrors sometimes and has her mother's face imprinted in her mind. She recalls that steel, a pinpoint of recognition shooting through her like an arrow sailing through the air to its bullseye. Victoria is a fencer, an archer and a horse-riding champion as a teenager for four consecutive years. Claire knows this like the rest of her world. But the rest of the world doesn't have this steel and ice behind the eyes. Just Victoria…and Claire. Claire has her mother's eyes. I have your eyes, Victoria! Please look at me again, she wants to plead but her voice fails her.
Aunt Jordan is gone. Nothing is true. There's nothing to correct because her world tilts so far, she can no longer stand. Claire's legs buckle beneath and she slides down the wall.
Obedience. The thing that gives her life context and shade. Obedience. The undercurrent that informs every decision made, every action she takes and thing that feeds her demons and keeps her hatred alive and kicking.
—
A police officer appears in front of her like magic and instructs her to stand, turn around and place her hands behind her back. She follows their orders to the letter in that order. While the cool metal of handcuffs is snapped on her wrists, its ridges dig into her skin to tighten them. Paramedics flit about this small house like fireflies glowing in the dark. One checks the poisoned people out. Another fully examines Nikki despite insisting she's okay.
The leader—he's blonde, green eyes—gives out instructions and coordinates with law enforcement while bandaging Nick.
For a brief moment, he glances up at her and a flash of recognition lights his eyes up. You, they say to her. She looks away. Yeah. Me. The blonde library girl you fucked for the first time against library shelves with a book of Poe's poems above her head.
A younger paramedic breaks it and everything goes back to normal speed.
"Whittaker, St. Charles is ready for us."
"Thanks, Viv."
She looks again briefly using her peripheral vision, slightly jostled.
Matt The Library Guy has a last name and is a paramedic. Whittaker. It's him. He never looks at her again.
—
Matt goes back to being the focused paramedic and it's time for her to do the same. Claire's only focus now is to listen and apply her talent for strict obedience elsewhere. Claire doesn't trust the police, but she doesn't have a choice here.
She has to unlearn a lot, it seems. Her head rattles. There's an earthquake in her head and the plates that hold her skull together starts to separate.
And I dropped down, and down -
And hit a World, at every plunge,
And Finished knowing - then -
"Claire Grace, you have the right to remain silent. Any statement that you make can be used against you in a court of law. You also have the right to an attorney. If you cannot retain one, one will be appointed to you. Do you understand your rights as I have stated them to you?"
"Yes," she replies, automatically.
Before she's taken away, Claire gets one last look at these people intermingled with other law enforcement and paramedics in this home she will never see again. She's sure of it. It's a crime scene. Victor's voice sounds from behind her. It's like thunder. She can't help but allow the corners of her mouth to pull upwards. This grandfather of hers is as authoritative as ever and will see to her misery in jail. Victor Newman never forgets a slight. Even poisoned, the man commands a room.
Another thing Aunt Jordan is wrong about.
Aunt Jordan's voice is like smoke, curling and twisting. She fits into every part of her. She squeezes into the halves of her brain, twists down her spine like a serpent and bites.
All you had to do is obey me, Claire. Now, you have failed and you will continue to fail.
This new kind of venom forces the breath out of her lungs and cause her grandmother's cameo necklace to burn against her skin.
Who will love you now? Aunt Jordan asks and laughs. It goes into the ether and echoes.
—
Police officers come from the kitchen, leave the backdoor, and enter the front. Her house is a highway and break of into smaller trails of detective work. A woman enters with the house. Her dark hair is tied into a high bun. She wears normal clothes, a winter jacket, black leather coat and ankle boots, but there's a gun on her right hip and her police badge on the left. Victor says something but finding Aunt Jordan but she doesn't hear anything. She's just fighting to stay upright.
The officer nods, and Claire accepts her fate. Until the female detective stride over to her.
"Ms. Grace," Detective Michelle Reyes introduces herself. Her eyes are scrutinizing and the colour of dark soil. Her face looks like it's carved from marble. Aquiline nose, high cheekbones, dark yet perfect brows and full lips. There's glossed a soft pink, but they are pressed in a thin line. "Where's your aunt?"
"I… I don't know."
Detective Reyes places her hands on her hips, raising a brow.
"Are you sure you're not covering for her? You understand aiding and abetting is just as serious as your other charges, right?"
"Surely, you know where she is, Claire!" Nikki snaps, and then rubs her forearm as Victor puts an arm around her shoulders.
Claire shakes her head, feeling like the kid shrinking and curling into herself to protect her from the playground taunts. Claire The Freak. Claire The Scarecrow. Claire The Monster and her personal favourite, Claire The Trash Troll.
"I swear, I don't know where she is…"
"Let's talk further at the station, Ms. Grace."
Claire feels the officer start to push her toward the door but she stops just before it.
She swears she hears something upstairs, but then again, she continues to hear Aunt Jordan's laughter. It's loud, long and it continues to split her head and heart apart. Emily Dickinson is brilliant writer, one of the first people to exist in her imagination until Aunt Jordan hollows it out.
Hope is the thing with feathers, she writes. But Emily Dickinson lies. Hope is the thing with feathers, but it's also the thing that gets swallowed up by teeth, claws, and fangs.
Be cunning, Claire. Be affable. Always be dangerous beneath the affable surface.
Hope is for the weak. Hope is fanciful and will not tell you about the ways of the world, Claire.
4.
Claire's eyes mist over with tears and she catches Victoria's glance first.
"Victoria…" she says, and then stops because Aunt Jordan's right. But it's all unravelled. This insular world, this bubble Aunt Jordan creates pops and Claire is scared shitless. Victoria looks back at her. Claire doesn't know if Victoria will truly help her.
In this woman's eyes, Claire finds her looking into a wide expanse of water.
She can't know for sure if Victoria will throw her a life raft so she can float. For all Claire knows—she knows, Aunt Jordan tells her so—Victoria will drown her and it would be deserved.
"I'm sorry, everyone. I…don't even know who I am anymore."
She says the last part to more herself than the others.
Baby Eve is a premature baby girl who disappears into the night despite having young parents. But her parents want her. That baby girl's parents adore her. Claire Grace just…is.
—
Claire not knowing about herself is not entirely true.
After her first kiss with Sophia, and the loss of her virginity to Matt the Current Paramedic with a few non-memorable sexual encounters with both men and women, Claire knows that she is bisexual.
Her attraction to men is just as present as her attraction to women.
Claire is disciplined, operates in a very driven, hyper-focused way and never allows anyone to get too close. She doesn't sleep with anyone long enough to form anything meaningful. Claire never speaks of her dalliances because sex is like another need like hunger, sleep, and oxygen.
Being a bisexual woman is the only honest thing Claire knows about herself.
—
Here's the thing about obedience: there's still one person she can obey. Herself.
She can entertain Victoria's life raft, Cole's outstretched hand offering her new air, and something else above the surface when all she knows this ocean of…hate. If all fails, Claire thinks when she's guided into the back of the police car, she will decide to fall deeper and tell herself to let herself sink.
At least, it will be quiet.
It will be like being safe and warm in Victoria's—her mother's—womb again.