I swallow hard and listen, because seeing her with the light in her eyes dimming, I think she deserves to be listened to.
“Vaughn,” she blinks up at me, and a single tear escapes the corner of her eye. “I was sent to a convent to finish high school. I sold my eggs and plasma to pay for my first apartment when I graduated at eighteen. I worked my way through college with two jobs and made a life for myself when everyone thought I was nothing. Told me I was nothing. My father couldn’t stand to be in the same room as me because I looked just like her. He just pushed me out of a car that night and found a whole new family to replace us. I haven’t seen him since.”
Damn.
More tears race down her cheeks. “I have lived in the shadow of our parents’ affair since I was fifteen years old. I have been called the worst names because of what my mother did, not me.”
I lean forward and slide my whiskey on the table. Listening attentively.
“I have been followed and treated like shit in every relationship, because of what your mother and sister said about me. Even what you said about me.” She sniffles and wipes the back of her hand under her nose. “You were my family,” her voice cracks, “and you threw me away for things I had no control over. Vaughn, I walked into the same room as you that night, and I was just as shocked as you.” Her eyes, shiny and wet, dart up to one of their pictures that hang on the wall, both of them smiling and laughing as the sun sets behind them.
She licks her lips and sits up straighter. “I just can’t believe they kept it up this whole time.” She’s quiet for a moment, contemplating. “Do you think they loved each other?”
“What they did wasn’t love,” I say quietly.
Her breath catches. It’s barely an audible sound, but I hear it well. “Then what was it?” she asks, with a short sob. “You think my mother had some golden vagina and your father showered her with this lifestyle for nothing?” The tone of her voice gets higher. “You think my mother gave up everything in her life just for your father’s average-sized penis?”
“What they did tore my family apart, how could you stand there and stand up for their actions and ask if it was love?”
“Stand up for them?” she screeches. “No fucking way! I hated what they did, what both of them did. But goddamn, Vaughn, I have to believe in something other than it being some magical Montgomery sex as the reason she would leave me for him!”
Leave her for him?
She felt abandoned.
And it’s the truth, isn’t it? They absolutely deserted her and went on with their lives like she never existed. I ball my hands into tight hard fists. That’s what she’s saying, that’s how she’s felt all this time. Her mother and father abandoned her for their own selfish needs.
And so did my family.
Especially me and Chloe.
“I needed her, and she told me she couldn’t help with anything. It didn’t have to be money, Vaughn. I just needed a mom.” Her shoulders tremble as she talks. “Just someone to help me find my way. I’ve been so fucking lost.” Her face drains of color and her eyes lock on mine. “And all the while, she lived here. With a rotisserie oven. Thousand-dollar robes. Some very old, expensive whiskey. And worst of all…a Montgomery.”
I shift on the couch, dreading where this conversation is going. She has every right to hate me and my family. “I didn’t know, Claire…I can’t believe you had to go through that.”
One side of her lip lifts and I can physically see her strength. “One thing I’ve learned by going through it is that you can keep on surviving long after you think you can’t.”
“But everyone has an emotional stake in this story, don’t they?” I ask, scooting forward, touching my knees back to hers. I bring my hand up and trace my fingers along the tops of her legs, just because I feel this overwhelming need to be close to her. “I don’t want to believe they loved each other because that means he must not have loved my mother. Or me and Chloe. It’s stupid, I guess. I’m not a child anymore. I need to let it go. I just always thought your mom, and you, were in it for the money.”
Her head tilts down and her eyes follow the slow movements of my fingers across her skin. “Maybe it was the money for her, Vaughn. I don’t think we’ll ever know the truth.” Her eyes lift and meet mine, with a sad, pleading expression. “But how could any woman give up their only child just to be someone’s mistress? And if it was all for money, how much was it worth to her to throw me away and forget about me?”
I shake my head, because there’s nothing I could possibly say as a justifiable answer. Nothing at all.
I softly wipe away her tears, for a moment it makes them come faster, I’m not sure why, maybe I’m doing things all wrong. I’m sure there’s a lot she can think of, but she’s here right now in front of me and I want to take her hurt away.
“Vaughn? Why would you ever think I lived here with them? And why, please be honest, why did you hate me so much that you never wanted to see me again?” Her eyes are so blue I’m lost in them. “You never called me back or answered my letters. You all just disappeared.”
“I remember thinking you must have known. All the times they met, how could have not known. My father was always away on business and he was with your mother. How could you not have realized? Chloe said you needed to talk to her about something that night, something serious. Important. She thought you knew too.”
“I never knew, I swear it.” She laughs a bitter laugh and says, “And the important thing I had to tell Chloe that night was that I was absolutely, unconditionally in love with her stupid asshole of a brother. I wanted to make sure it was okay with her; I wanted her blessing. I was a stupid kid, and I thought I meant more to you than I actually did.”
My heart hammers with a kind of thought that has never entered my mind: Claire and I should have been married now with a family of our own. The picture is clear in my head, me and her, a white picket fence, two kids, even one of those little yapping dogs. I jerk back and shift uncomfortably. It’s the most unnerving feeling, the most unsettling thought.
Claire doesn’t understand my reaction. I can read it in her expression, her cheeks flush and a vein twinges in the middle of her forehead. “Here’s the thing, Vaughn. I don’t care if you believe me,” she snaps. “I know the truth. I know what I knew and what I didn’t. And I know that your father lied, and while my parents went through a horribly public divorce, then abandoned me, your father was the one who still chose to stay with your mother and mine.”
“Claire, stop, don’t. I believe you.” I feel fifteen again. To think I could blame her for something she had no part in. I always thought she helped to keep their secret. And it’s unbearable to think that she suffered for their sins every day since. I was so hurt by what our parents did, I never stopped to think she was as innocent as me.
But what good is knowing all this now, though? It’s all too late for us.
My mother would never forgive her, neither would her clone Chloe. Claire and I could never be anything more than what our parents were, secrets to each other. It’s not like I could ever take her home to meet my family, right?