Voicemail, Simon Reamer
Her mother. Was Simon calling because Clare couldn’t? Had something happened to their mom? Clare had moved Ella into that retirement home right before Eileen and her family had gone out there for Christmas. The Regency in San Francisco, the best care facility to treat Alzheimer’s patients Clare’s money would buy, and close so Clare could visit her regularly.
Had her mother died? Is that why Simon, who never called her, was calling her now? She finished packing up her equipment, dreading every second that passed, knowing in only a few more moments she would need to stand here and listen to exactly what was going on. She tried to reassure herself that it was likely nothing—but she felt almost certain something was wrong.
She twisted the last of her collapsible light reflectors down into a smaller circle and pushed it into its black zipper case. The sound of her phone ringing again ripped the silence and sent an alarm out across her central nervous system. She lunged for her tote and grabbed her phone.
Simon Reamer
Eileen stared at it while it rang twice more, finally swiping to answer right before it could roll over to voicemail again. “Hello?”
Silence. Did they have a bad connection?
“Hello? Simon?”
“Eileen…Eileen,” Simon said, his voice strained. Was he crying?
She tried to picture Simon crying… She couldn’t. “Simon, is something wrong?” she asked. Her limbs suddenly weak, she sat down in the grass next to her bags.
A loud sob, unmistakable, erupted from Simon on the other end of the line. Eileen could hear his breathing, erratic and broken. Guttural sounds, like a wounded animal, kept him from speaking. “She… Oh my God. Oh, my God, Eileen. I’m sorry I can’t say it.”
Eileen’s heart stopped. Dead in her chest. Frozen, her phone clutched in her hand, she waited for disaster.
“Clare!” he shouted, his sobbing wild with obvious grief. “She…she…”
“Simon,” Eileen whispered into the phone, tears now streaming down her own face even though she had no idea what had happened. “Simon, please. Please tell me what’s happened.”
“She, oh…no, no, no. She’s… I can’t say it. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
“Simon!” Eileen shouted. “What? What is it?”
A long silence stretched across the connection between them. Had she lost him? Had he hung up? A second later, she heard him gasp, then clear his throat. “She’s dead,” he blurted. His next inhale was deep. He held it for a long time. “I’m sorry, but she’s dead. I needed to tell you myself…before you heard it…somewhere else.”
“Clare?” Eileen whispered. “Clare?”
Another sob from Simon. “Clare,” he said.
A feather, long and bright white, lay in a tangle of brown grass and small stones a few feet away. Eileen stared at it. Cameron would want that. She should collect it and bring it home for him.
“Eileen? Are you there?”
“Yes, I’m here.”
“Can you…can you come? I need, um…I need help.”
“Yes. I’ll come,” she said, pulling her eyes from the feather. “How? What happened?” And when? Hadn’t she just this morning read about Clare attending the premiere of her movie last night? Was this even possible?
Simon sobbed uncontrollably into the phone.
“Simon.” She kept her voice steady, her mom voice, the one she’d used when Ryan broke his arm. “I’m coming. I’ll get a flight today. Tonight,” she corrected. She’d need to make so many arrangements before walking out of her house with a suitcase. “But please, try to tell me what happened.” Because Simon was right, the news would be reporting on Clare’s death soon. They might already have more details than Eileen did. She didn’t want to hear about it from the internet.
“Eileen…she shot herself.” His voice was barely audible over the cell connection, but Eileen heard enough to understand perfectly.
She just couldn’t believe it.
“No,” Eileen said, her voice more matter-of-fact than she had intended. “Clare wouldn’t…” Would she?
“People are here… I have to go. There’s some other problem. Please let me know what flight you’re on,” Simon said, and hung up.
She sat, her phone pressed to her ear for a long time after the call had ended. Clare Collins was beautiful, talented, successful, internationally adored—but that wasn’t what made it impossible for Eileen to believe her sister had committed suicide.
Long before Clare had become Clare Collins, she had been a force in the world. Audacious, fearless even. It didn’t add up. It didn’t make sense.
Why?
Why?
“Why would you do it, Clare?” she breathed.
She looked for the feather to take home for Cameron, but it was gone.
Chapter 3
Simon
Two years before Clare’s death
“Simon!” Clare called. Her bare feet raced one after the other down the west side of the split marble staircase. “Simon! The internet is down!”
Simon Reamer, Clare Collins’s husband and literary agent, sat at their kitchen table listening to his wife’s voice echo through the hallways of their massive home. Think, think, think, he pleaded with his brain to come up with an acceptable excuse that she would believe. Because if she knew he had unplugged their modem to keep her from reading the New York Times Book Review—she would kill him.
“Simon!”
“In here!” he called back, his eyes closed, dreading the whole rest of this Sunday.
He couldn’t keep it from her forever. He had slipped from their bed while it was still dark out, long before her alarm was set to go off, careful to take Charlie from his dog bed with him so the six-month-old Maltese wouldn’t wake her. He had a bad feeling about this book. He needed to see for himself before Clare did.
With the puppy curled on his lap, Simon had pulled up the review section prepared to scan for the write-up of Clare’s latest release, If You Knew Her. He didn’t need to hunt for it; If You Knew Her was this week’s lead title.
With one hand resting on Charlie’s soft head, he scrolled down the page as his eyes raced over the recent National Book Award-winner, Donna Mehan’s, scathing takedown of Clare’s book. He finally reached its painful final conclusion, “Collins seems to have lost her footing, or perhaps worse, taken on characters and subjects beyond her ability to effectively convey.” Simon sat back in his leather office chair and tilted his head back, eyes focused on the ceiling above him where his wife, and client, still slept, blissfully unaware of this public fallout.