Chapter 6: What Clara Saw
She sat down at the table.
I sat across from her.
Lily stayed where she was, close enough to hear, far enough to give us space.
"I was at your parents' house that night because your father had asked me to come," Clara said.
"He told me you and Lily had been arguing and that Lily was unstable and that I should be there to help calm things down.
I was your girlfriend.
I thought he was asking me because he trusted me." She paused.
"I understand now that he was asking me because he needed a witness he could control."
"What did you see?"
"I was upstairs in the guest room when I heard shouting in the garden.
I went to the window." She folded her hands on the table.
"You and Lily were on the back path.
She was showing you something — papers, I think, folded in her hand.
You were reading them.
And then your father came out of the house behind you."
She stopped.
"Clara."
"He was moving fast.
You didn't hear him because Lily was talking.
And then—" She pressed her lips together.
"You went down.
Your father stepped back.
Lily screamed and dropped the papers and the wind took some of them across the garden.
Your father picked up the ones he could reach.
Then he went inside and called an ambulance."
The kitchen was very quiet.
"He pushed me," I said.
"I don't know if it was a push or a shove or a — I don't know the exact word.
It was fast.
But it was not an accident."
"And you said nothing."
"He came upstairs twenty minutes later while you were still unconscious in the garden waiting for the ambulance.
He sat down across from me in that guest room and he told me, very quietly, that what I had seen was my boyfriend losing his balance on wet stones.
He told me that if I said anything different, he would make sure I lost you.
That he would tell you I had been the one encouraging Lily's instability.
That he had letters I had written — I had written letters to Lily, trying to help her, trying to understand what she was going through — and that he could make those letters look like something else entirely."
"So you stayed quiet."
"I was twenty-two years old and I was in love with you and I was terrified." She looked at me.
"That is not an excuse.
I know it isn't.
I'm telling you because you asked me what I saw, and I am done not answering when you ask me things directly."
Lily spoke from across the room.
"She did keep me alive, William.
Whatever else she did or didn't do — she kept me fed.
She made sure the space was heated in winter.
She left books.
She left a lamp.
She fought with your father twice that I heard through the floor about conditions.
She was not my jailer.
She was someone who was trapped the same way I was, just with more room to move."
I looked at Clara.
"Is that true?"
"I tried," she said.
"It was never enough.
But I tried."
I thought about the locked kitchen door.
The damp smell.
The food that disappeared.
The cassette player in the bottom drawer, kept and waiting.
The way she had not tried to stop me when I opened the box.
"You kept the player," I said.
"I always knew you would need it one day.
I just couldn't be the one to give it to you.
He would have known.
He watches everything." She looked at the window.
"He still watches everything."
My phone buzzed on the table.
Unknown number.
I picked it up.
"William Ashford." A man's voice.
Smooth.
Unhurried.
The voice of someone who had been making uncomfortable calls for a long time.
"My name is Harold Harlan.
I think it's time you and I had a conversation before this situation gets away from everyone involved."
Lily was on her feet before I could respond.
She crossed the room in three steps and put her hand over the phone.
"Don't agree to meet him," she said quietly.
"Don't agree to anything.
Just listen."
I put the call on speaker and set the phone on the table between us.
"Mr.
May you like
Harlan," I said.
"I'm listening."
