The Marriage Contract

A landscaper had taken over the old ice-cream shop. The local newspaper had bought out Mrs. Clark’s sewing-and-crafts shop and added on to their property.

Clair fought back unwanted tears. The sheer, comforting familiarity of these streets and buildings brought her past back to her. Her memories hadn’t just been myths she’d created to help her survive in foster care.

She turned down the town’s outer road toward the high school where she’d been in her first year when her parents had died. Those rooms hadn’t left a strong impression. Nor had the apartment block behind the school, where they’d lived until her father died, a victim of his own sense of failure after he’d lost their house to Senator Dylan. After her father’s death, her mother lost interest in everything. Including her own life. Within months she’d suffered a heart attack and followed her husband to the grave.

Clair looked up the hill. If her home still existed, thick evergreens hid it from her, but the Dylan home remained as commanding as ever. An image of Nick flashed through her mind, but his stunned expression got all mixed up with his father’s customary contempt.

She turned away from that house, determined to conquer the pain that still tore at her. She shouldn’t have come this way. She drove straight to Mrs. Franklin’s bed-and-breakfast, determined to live in peace with her memories of the Dylans.

Her other choice was revenge. A pointless exercise that couldn’t bring back the parents and the home she’d lost.

Clair parked at the bottom of the steps in front of the bed-and-breakfast and climbed out of the car. She swung her backpack over one shoulder. Caution moistened her hands and dried her mouth.

She marched up the stairs and then curled her fingers around the cool brass door handle. Counting two quick breaths, she pushed the door open and stepped into a shadowy hall. Overhead, a fan’s blades whiffed in rhythmic puffs of sound. She waited for her eyes to grow accustomed to the subdued light.

“Clair, you’ve come home.”

Her heart hammered. Home. She knew this woman’s voice—rich, ragged around the edges. Selina Franklin had been a frequent visitor at Clair’s house. She’d brought homemade oatmeal cookies and sock puppets with black button eyes.

The shadow in front of Clair slowly formed itself into a woman who seemed too short to be Mrs. Franklin. Clair had last seen her through the back of that Social Services van. Her memory of her mother’s friend was all bound up with a painful mantra the woman who’d driven her to D.C. kept repeating. “You can’t stay. You have no one here to take care of you.”

That memory had become a nightmare. Mrs. Franklin must have known how she’d felt. Old resentment she no longer wanted to feel rose in her and she swallowed convulsively.

The other woman lifted pale hands to her own throat. “Can you be Clair?” A slight change in the arrangement of lines around her mouth conveyed her welcome. “You look so much like your mother that for a moment I thought you were her. Sylvie was your age when I first met her, when she came here to teach. What are you now? Twenty-four?”

“Twenty-six.” Clair drank in the other woman’s delicate features, pale blue eyes she remembered laughing at her mother’s jokes, a generous mouth that had grown thin after her parents’ deaths. “How is the judge?”

“He lived up to your dad’s expectations. The governor appointed him to the bench about ten years ago.” Mrs. Franklin turned to pluck an object from a cubby behind her desk. “I’m so glad you’ve come. I’ve given you a room, because I thought you’d be more comfortable on your own than staying in my guest room.” She slid a big old-fashioned key across the desktop. “I’m not sure how many of your friends are still in town. Most of our young people seem to leave these days. Except for Nick Dylan.” Clair stiffened at her mention of the Dylan name, but Mrs. Franklin went on, her words tumbling over each other. “He took over Dr. Truman’s practice last year, and he refuses to leave.”

“Refuses?”

“Apparently. Because every time I go past his office it’s empty. People don’t go to him unless they need serious help fast. Maybe he should advertise.”

Trying not to see his shocked face in her mind again, Clair reached for the registration book on its spindle. Mrs. Franklin spun it away from her.

“Don’t bother. You’re my guest. You know, you’ll probably see Nick sometimes. You can understand the quandary folks find themselves in. Honestly, who wants to take her bunions to Senator Jeffrey Dylan’s boy?”

Clair concentrated on Mrs. Franklin’s widow’s peak. Why did the woman go on so about the Dylans?

“I guess you heard about Jeff?” Mrs. Franklin said.

She meant the fact that he’d died a month ago. The nation had mourned him. Clair could not. She adjusted her backpack strap. “I heard.” She searched her key for a room number, but nothing marred the smooth swirls of old brass. “Which room should I put my things in?”

“The Concord. A few years ago, I named the rooms for Revolutionary War sites. The tourists seem to like it.” Mrs. Franklin patted the scarred top of her eighteenth-century accountant’s desk.

Clair worked at a smile, bewildered by Mrs. Franklin’s rapid chatter and the watchful gaze that vied with her light tone. “How do I get to the Concord?” she asked.

“Take the elevator to the second floor and turn right. Three doors down on the left.”

“Thanks.”

“You haven’t said how long you plan to stay.”

Had she been wise to come at all? “I’m not sure. I’m kind of between jobs.”

A frown crisscrossed the older woman’s forehead. “We’ll talk about that when you come back down. I want to know everything you’ve been doing.”

Clair turned away from the desk, cast adrift. The woman looked like Mrs. Franklin, but she sure didn’t act like her. What had made her so nervous? Did she regret her invitation?

Clair glanced back with a smile as she stepped onto the elevator. As soon as the doors closed, she sank against the paneled back wall. She’d carried enough clothes for tonight in her backpack. Maybe she wouldn’t stay any longer.

In the upstairs hall, a wide brass plate announced the third door on the left as the entry to the Concord. Clair opened it and stepped into a room with just enough clutter to feel cozy. She dropped her backpack on the bench at the end of the bed and crossed to the windows to pull back the velvet drapes. Sunlight spilled over a fragile writing desk, tracing patterns on the floor.

Clair laughed. In work boots and jeans and a thermal turtleneck, she was the room’s jarring note. She opened the bathroom door and promised herself a soak in the claw-footed tub. She took a soap from the marble dish on the counter and sniffed its fragrance. She was washing her face when she thought she heard a knock at the door.

Straightening, she blotted her face with a towel and the tapping was repeated. She crossed the room, still holding the towel as she opened the door. It was Selina.

“You probably think I’m a nut,” the other woman said.

“Different from how I remember you,” Clair admitted, smiling to soften her words.

“I haven’t been honest.”

Clair dropped the towel. After a nonplussed moment, she scooped it up again. “Do I want you to be?”

“I have to tell you the truth, because I’d like you to stay in Fairlove.”

Dread weighed on Clair’s shoulders, but she’d perfected a knack for floating with unexpected punches. “What’s your secret?”

“Your parents’ other friends and the judge and I—” Selina broke off, clearing her throat. “We let Social Services put you in foster care.”

She’d known her family’s friends hadn’t stopped her from leaving, but she’d never imagined they’d decided not to help her. Backing blindly toward the bench, Clair managed to sink onto her backpack. Metal rings and rough canvas didn’t hurt half as much as the truth.

“Why would you do that to me? Didn’t you love my parents?”

“We loved you. We had to let you go.”

CHAPTER TWO

“YOU LOVED ME, so you decided to make me live with strangers? My parents trusted all of you, but no one thought I might be better off with a family who cared about me?” Clair curled her fingers into the towel, wadding it against her stomach. Unbelievable.

“You don’t understand. We weren’t able to protect David and Sylvie, and we didn’t think we could save you from Jeff Dylan, either.”

Clair licked her dry lips. “You looked for me now because he died?”

“When you first left, I used my husband’s influence to watch over you. I made sure you stayed around the D.C. area, and my friend in Social Services led all Jeff Dylan’s inquiries astray. I know this may not comfort you, but we worked hard to keep him from finding you.”

“He could have hired detectives.”