Read The Ashford Affair for Free Online Page B

clothes. All the character that had animated her was gone.
    “That’s right, Mrs. Desborough,” said the nurse in a singsong. “You take a nice rest.”
    Clemmie cleared her throat. “Is she like this a lot?”
    The nurse exchanged a glance with Clemmie’s mother. “It’s the first time she’s been this bad,” said the nurse. She put the wheelchair smoothly in gear. “It’s probably just these new pills, nothing to worry about. Don’t worry, we’ll tell her you were here.”
    As Clemmie watched, she wheeled the chair away, through the living room, past the oblivious, chattering guests, Granny Addie asleep now, her face still damp with tears.
    “How long has she been on those pills?” Clemmie demanded.
    “I’m not one of your witnesses, Clementine,” said her mother crossly. “There’s no need to interrogate me.”
    “Sorry,” Clemmie mumbled.
    “I’ll call the doctor tomorrow. She was a little disoriented earlier, but the doctor said it would pass.” Mother clicked her tongue against her teeth. “Clearly, he was wrong.”
    “Why did Granny keep calling me Bea?”
    “For heaven’s sake, Clementine, do you think I know everything? I need to talk to Donna. Get people into the dining room, will you? It’s just a buffet. I thought something like this might happen.”
    Her mother disappeared through the den, in the direction of Granny Addie’s bedroom. It took Clemmie a moment to realize that Donna must be the nurse.
    This was not good.
    Clemmie clung to the nurse’s soothing words, that the day had been too much, that this was just an aberration, nothing to worry about, but, deep in the pit of her stomach, she knew that it wasn’t true. Granny Addie was fading fast. She hadn’t been like this the last time Clemmie had seen her. When had that been? Two months ago? Three? No, more. It had been August. She remembered because she had been complaining about the heat, her shell clinging stickily to her suit jacket. Nearly four months. Clemmie’s conscience smote her. She lived in the same damn city. She really had no excuse.
    Especially since it was Granny Addie, to whom she owed so very much. They had lived here briefly—very briefly—when Clemmie and her mother had moved from California after the divorce. Clemmie had been only four, too young to remember it well, but she did remember the strangeness of it. Her mother had been gone most of the time, and when she was around she was busy studying, cramming for the paralegal course that was meant to be their ticket to independence.
    Grandpa Frederick, long since retired, had taken Clemmie for walks in the park, buying her illicit ice-cream cones from the Mister Softee truck. Granny Addie had been busier, occupied with her boards and committees, but she had still found the time to take Clemmie to the Museum of the City of New York, to the dollhouses, a hundred different households in miniature. Most nights, Clemmie’s mother wouldn’t get home until after bedtime, but Granny Addie was always there to tuck her in, sometimes in going-out clothes, petticoats rustling as she sat down on the side of Addie’s bed, bringing with her the scent of expensive powder and old, dried flowers.
    She would, Clemmie thought, have been perfectly happy to have had them stay, but Clemmie’s mother had found a job and an apartment of her own, a tiny apartment in Yorkville, a second-floor walk-up. The only financial help Mother would accept from Granny Addie had been the cost of Clemmie’s private-school tuition. It was arranged between them that in those awkward after-school hours Clemmie would come to the apartment on 85th and 5th. She had done her homework there, had friends over for sleepovers, traded stickers, gossiped on the phone about Buckley boys and Nightingale girls, filled out her college applications at Granny Addie’s kitchen table.
    Clemmie couldn’t imagine a world without Granny Addie in it.
    Clemmie swiped at her hair, pushing it back out of her face.