Charlotte’s Story (24 page)

Although I had no weapon, I followed after it, searching the servants’ wing, but all the doors were closed. Was it a cat? I wasn’t sure because it seemed too big. I went downstairs and searched every room.

The cry came again, reverberating in the hallway from above. This time so loud and long that I was sure it would wake Michael. I hurried up to the third floor, but the theater and ballroom doors were closed and it wasn’t in the hallway or any other of the rooms. So I went back down to the servants’ wing, and grabbed a broom to shoo whatever it was outside. I opened every door.

“Nothing?” J.C. looked concerned.

“For God sakes, Charlotte. This isn’t helping us find Michael.” Press ran his hand through his hair. “You must have fallen asleep.”

“Of course I didn’t fall asleep! I told you I was reading a magazine.” Although I knew it was a fair assumption, it made me angry that he would accuse me.

I described how I had looked down into the hall again from the second-floor gallery to see a fox skirting the wall near the front door. As it trotted, it made a kind of hissing sound as though it were talking to itself, or calling to someone—something—else. Then it disappeared into the dining room. I started down the stairs, but I thought of Michael and I turned back. And when I reached the top, I started for the nursery.

Again, I hesitated. What I couldn’t tell them was how it had seemed that time had slipped, just as it had when I was in the
forsythia looking for the rabbit. Over an hour had been lost, but I knew that I hadn’t been asleep.

“What did you see?” J.C. had come to stand very close to me. There was no skepticism on her face, as there was on Press’s. Only concern.

“It ran into his room.” Now my voice was almost a whisper. “The door was open, and it ran into his room, and when I got there, neither of them was inside.”

No one else spoke for a moment.

“Jesus Christ.” Press ran his hand down his face, covered his mouth.

J.C. touched my arm. I didn’t move but only stared at her. “There’s not time to explain, Charlotte. But I need you to trust me right now. Will you try?”

The stairway leading to the door to the roof was as claustrophobic as a dark, unwanted thought, and the air was heady with humidity from the rain on the other side of the door. I imagined Michael carefully climbing the deep wooden stairs, pressing his dimpled hand against the wall for balance. I could imagine it, but I didn’t believe it. It seemed like madness.

Press turned the key in the lock one way, and then the other. The bolt clicked into place.

“It wasn’t locked. How did you know?” Looking back at J.C., I heard the wonder in my own voice and all the horrible implications. Michael had never been in this stairwell, had never even been in the small room beside the theater where the stairs began—at least not with me. It was impossible.

“Let me by!” I didn’t wait for J.C. to answer, but squeezed by Press to turn the key again myself, and pushed open the door.

Blinded by the brilliant sheen of silvery gray sky, I stumbled out onto the tar-covered roof. When I blinked, I could see the stark
black outline of the dome, the two blocks of rooms, and the short iron railing around the edge of the roof. I squeezed my eyes shut until the shapes dissipated.

Press was behind me. “Terrance, you go on to the far south section. Charlotte, for God’s sake, just wait here with J.C.”

Ignoring Press’s ridiculous admonition to stay where I was, I circled back around the odd little shelter that embraced the doorway, with Press calling after me.

“Dammit. Why won’t you listen, Charlotte? Stop!”

“I’ll go with her.” J.C.’s footsteps followed behind me on the gritty rooftop.

The dome, with its circlet of narrow windows, rose in front of me to a height of about eight feet. The windows were not particularly clean but were spattered with bird droppings and grime, and streaked where the rain had come down hard against the glass. Though I hardly gave it a thought then, I wondered later at the state of the windows. From far below, the windows seemed clear as new glass, filling the hall with sunlight. But, then, who would come out to clean the windows? Much later, when I had time to think about it, I wondered why it hadn’t bothered Olivia. Perhaps her vision hadn’t been what it had used to be. Still, it seemed a strange oversight.

As I walked around the dome, I had the feeling that we were wasting time. Of course Michael wasn’t up there! J.C. was still following, not saying a word, when I went to the front railing and looked out over the drive. Old Gate rested in the northern distance, oblivious to what was happening far above it. As I watched, the view shimmered with bands of moisture like some kind of mirage, the steeple of the Presbyterian church the only thing that seemed to remain firm and upright. Behind me, far on the other end of the roof, I could hear Press opening and shutting the creaking doors of the old storage sheds far beyond the dome and calling Michael’s name.

“Michael,” I whispered. “Where are you, baby?”

I forced myself to look down into the circle of the drive, moving my gaze cautiously closer to the house, which was where he would be if he’d fallen. Michael was a climber. Curious. He always wanted to be close to the things he was curious about: examining them intently, sticking them in his mouth if he could. Once, when Nonie had brought him into her room to watch a news program, he had crawled to the television cabinet and pulled himself up. Holding firmly to either side, he had pressed his face against the screen and made a loud humming noise, causing us to laugh. When he pulled away, he had left behind a wet, round smear on the glass.

Having once been close to the small sheds Press was searching, I didn’t want to go near them again. He’d told me they were filled with paneling, old tools, furniture, and trunks. Who knew what the extremes of heat and cold had done to the contents? Everything was probably worthless by now. Worthless, but perhaps concealing a little boy. I turned back to look, but the dome was in the way.

I made my way back toward Press along the western edge of the roof, whose lines were unbroken except for the upright brick rectangles of yellow brick chimneys. The shallow wing’s rooftop was a half dozen feet lower than the rooftop I was on now, and it held no strange dwellings or doorway shelters. Below were the garden and maze.

“Charlotte! J.C.!”

Press called from an open doorway in the farthest strip of rooms. I felt the new, constant pain in my stomach slip, lighten for the briefest second. The rush of hope propelled me toward his voice. J.C. was suddenly ahead of me.

But I saw movement in another direction. Something, perhaps an animal, had just disappeared around the curve of the dome. Dropping to one knee, I tried to peer through the windows, but the angle from where I was seemed all wrong, and the windows were too dirty. Yet there
was
something moving. And quickly.

Press called my name again, but I had to know what I’d seen. Brushing off a bit of loose, tarry gravel from my knee, I stood up. By now, the wetness of the roof had permeated the thin leather soles of my heels. Michael had been in bed barefoot and was too young to put on his own shoes, let alone tie them. What might the coarse rooftop do to
his
tender feet? (In a split second, I had a sudden memory of Eva as I’d seen her in the morning room. When she’d died, she been wearing the pink playsuit I’d put her down for her nap in, but why had she come to me wearing muddy sandals as well? And the ribbon. What about the hair ribbon?)

Ignoring Press, I hurried around the dome, staying close by the windows.

I called Michael’s name. A clammy breeze picked at my hair and blew across my neck, giving me a chill; and with it came a certainty that the thing I had glimpsed was no animal, but Michael himself. Press called to me again, but the breeze carried his voice away. I heard it only as someone might hear from deep under water.

Yes! It was Michael!

Perhaps it was momentary joy that brightened the gray afternoon for me; but whatever it was, the light grew brilliant as a vast, newly stoked flame, and when my son stopped briefly and grinned back at me, naked as a cherub, he was the color of a golden peach.

I ran, but my feet were clumsy. My low heels weren’t made for running, and I stumbled a second time, this time falling, falling, my arms reaching for Michael, my cheek scraping the crumbled tar.

I screamed Michael’s name and pulled myself up onto my hands, mindless of the scrapes, to see him at the northern lip of the roof, squeezing his plump little body through the decorative iron trim. He didn’t look back again, but disappeared over the edge of the roof without a sound.

Press shouted for me, but before he could reach me I was up, running for the edge of the roof. Was I screaming? Maybe. I do remember hearing the wind in my ears as I ran. Just as I reached
the edge, two firm hands tried to pull me backwards from the waist. I couldn’t see! Fighting him, holding hard to the iron trim, I strained to see the ground below.

Finally, for the briefest of seconds, the hands loosened and I collapsed over the railing so that I was staring at the ground. There, curled into a helpless crescent, was the body of a fox, the creamy-white tip of its tail stark against the stone of the patio below.

When I opened my eyes again, it was dusk, and the light of a single lamp groped pitifully in the overwhelming dark of the big room.

Oh, God. Was it happening again? It couldn’t be.

I was afraid to turn my head, lest the person I sensed nearby turn out to be Rachel. Now Michael would be dead. I squeezed my eyes shut again. It was hard to think because my brain was fogged, but I knew enough to be afraid.

“Charlotte. Charlotte, you should wake up.”

A woman’s voice. I turned my head cautiously.

J.C. had pulled a chair up beside the sofa so that her angular body threw its shadow over me. “You’ll never forgive yourself if you don’t wake up. I’ve been waiting.” The gloom made it difficult to see her face clearly. What I
could
see was her worry.

“Have they found him? Where is he?” I tried to sit up. Jack had promised that the shot he was going to give me would help me stay calm enough to keep searching for Michael without knocking me out. Clearly he had lied.

“I told Press it wasn’t fair to you. Here’s some water.” She helped me sit up and gave me a tall glass of tepid water that I downed in just a few swallows. “Now that you’re awake, we can both search for him.”

When she took the glass back, and I thanked her, she sat back in her chair. “Does Press always treat you like this?”

My head ached. I wanted to get up and look for Michael, but I found it hard to move. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You’re not a stupid woman. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with you.”

“Is that what Press told you? That I’m crazy?”

“It doesn’t matter what he’s said to me, Charlotte. I’ve seen you with my own eyes. I’m no fool either.”

“I thought I was ‘Precious Bride’ to you.” I didn’t bother to keep the sarcasm from my voice.

“That’s just business, honey. We all play different roles, and it’s never good to be serious all the time. You’ll understand one day.” She gave me a rueful smile. “Listen. I don’t like what’s going on here. There’s too much pain.” She glanced around the room as though pain were something one could see stuck to the walls or the ceiling, something to be disguised with a throw rug or a swath of paint. “I think Jonathan is afraid to contact me.”

I stood up slowly, using the arm of the sofa for balance.

“I don’t know who in the hell you’re talking about. Where is everyone?”

J.C. followed me out of the salon. The chandelier was dark, and only a couple of lamps were on in the hall and along the upper galleries. I could hear voices coming from outside and the kitchen.

“The police and a lot of the neighbors’ hired men are out searching the woods and orchards. I heard someone say there were extra lanterns out front. We can get one and go out and join them.”

I didn’t answer, but started for the front door. I’d only gone a few feet before I realized my legs and feet were bare, and the front of my skirt and blouse were streaked with dirt and tar. Not only had I been out of my mind with worry and panic, I looked like a madwoman. It wasn’t any wonder that Jack had sedated me. Still, I wouldn’t forgive him unless he walked through the front door carrying Michael.