Charlotte’s Story (31 page)

We’d gone only a few feet when I jerked free and stopped.

“Enough.”

We faced each other.

“Jonathan was afraid. Do you know what it means when someone on the other side is afraid?”

“Why are you even here? You didn’t need to be here for the stupid renovation. I know you’re here for Press, whatever
that
means to the two of you. Have you had your little laugh over fooling the
precious bride
?”

J.C.’s panicked face tightened further, and I knew I had struck some truth. Before I could continue, she interrupted.

“Jonathan has never abandoned me when I’ve asked him to come. There were too many others here. Too much was disturbed. What do you know, Charlotte? What did you see? I know you saw something.”

“I saw what you—or was it you and Press?—wanted me to see. Everyone saw the girl.”

“I didn’t want to be part of that. I swear I didn’t. You don’t know what he’s like, Charlotte.”

As shocked as I was to hear that I’d been right, I couldn’t let her see it. “What I want to know is why,
Julianna
. You and Press were trying to—what? Frighten me? Make an ass out of me in front of Jack and Rachel and Hugh? I just want to know why.”

J.C. shook her head violently. “No! Charlotte, you and Michael shouldn’t stay here. Go to your father’s house. Anywhere. There’s nothing good for you here. Whatever you saw . . . whatever that was.
That
was real. Whatever is happening here is really happening. It’s not part of any game.”

She bit her bare lip as though she’d said too much.

“I don’t believe that bullshit about your brother, either,” I said, surprising myself with the profanity. “I’ve thought you were disgusting ever since Press introduced us. God knows what kind of people you spend your time with, and if you have a shred of decency, you’ll get the hell out of this house so I don’t have to look at you.”

“You’re wrong. I didn’t come here to hurt you.”

“Prove it.”

J.C. dropped back a foot or so, and into the reflection of my vanity mirror. Even in her dressing gown, her edges were so sharply defined that she hardly looked like a woman.

Was she human? Had we all become less than human? I’d never been so cruel before.

“You have to let go of your guilt about Eva.”

I moved toward her, wanting to shake her, to choke her. Anything to shut her up. “My God, you’re unbelievable. You’re not making any sense. You talk about my guilt when you don’t even know me. Get the hell out of this house. I don’t give a damn what Press thinks.”

“It doesn’t matter what you think of me. I’m trying to help you.”

“I don’t know why you hate me so much. If you really wanted to help me, you would start telling me the truth. But you obviously won’t.”

“There’s a difference between wanting badly to do something and knowing that you can’t.”

Furious as I was, I was struck by the change in her demeanor from the previous days. It was almost as though she were a different
person. She seemed resigned, if not contrite. Older. Her jowls sagged a bit and her shoulders slumped. We were two women separated by a small, fraught wedge of fear. Almost equals.

Yes, I was struck, but I refused to be moved.

She sighed. “It wasn’t just the séance, Charlotte. He brought me here to get me close to you. This has been planned for a long, long time.”

“What do you mean?”

“I told him you wouldn’t understand. Ask him. I’m sure he’ll be happy to tell you.”

When she left the room, closing the door behind her, I had to work to control my breathing, my rabbiting heart.

She would be gone. I didn’t have to think about her anymore.

I dressed and went downstairs to let Marlene know that it would be just the four of us, including Shelley, for dinner. She accepted the news in her usual calm manner, and when I asked if she could make up a small meal for Jack that I could drop by their house, she said she would have it ready in half an hour.

Grabbing a jacket from the mudroom, I went outside to spend a few minutes with Michael, my only respite.

Chapter 30

Seraphina

Sometimes I wonder at my younger self, unable to understand why I was so blind. I rarely questioned Press about what he was doing all those hours he was away from home. People told me how helpful he was to them as a lawyer, but to my knowledge he never did pro bono work for the poor, and I know he never presented a case to a jury. Now I think that I didn’t really want to know what he was doing. I lived in a kind of fog, strangely secure in Bliss House. I know now that it’s a world in itself, a world that exists on more than one level. But I could only perceive and understand one level in those early years.

Bliss House kept me from seeing the truth about what was going on around me. What Press was really like. What Terrance is—or was. Olivia showed me the truth about what she had endured. Surely no ill-intentioned spirit would try to make me more sympathetic to her than I already was. But perhaps I’m wrong. I lived for
so long under one delusion that I may have been rendered unable to know when I’m living under a different one.

Rachel was still under some kind of sedation when I arrived at the hospital. It was common then, but not nearly as common now. All but the poorest of women were expected to remain in the hospital four days or more after childbirth, recovering. We weren’t really delicate, though we were often plied with drugs to make us feel that way. But is it such a bad thing to put off the demands of children? We carry them for nine months, growing fatter and slower and worrying more and more, hearing nightmare stories from other women about the perils of breastfeeding and colic. How much nicer to have crisp young uniformed women and our own mothers (or friends) spoiling us for a bit. To delay that moment when the nurse puts your baby into your arms and says, “Off you go!” expecting you to understand that you’re responsible for it forever. You can’t give it back to her. It’s yours for the rest of your life, unless death intervenes.

Jack had privileges at both the Lynchburg and Charlottesville hospitals, but Rachel had chosen an obstetrician in Charlottesville because she thought him prestigious. For everyone visiting her, it just meant a longer drive. I didn’t mind being alone in the car for a while, but I couldn’t stop thinking about Michael’s birth, and how Eva had begged and begged to be allowed to come and visit the hospital. But Nonie was adamant that she stay home, and the hospitals had rules against child visitors.

While I felt a strange freedom being away from Bliss House, it remained in the back of my mind like a brooding shadow. Jonathan—if J.C. had ever truly had a brother named Jonathan—hadn’t felt safe there. I didn’t feel safe away from there.

Jack greeted me near the nurse’s desk, his eyes glassy with lack of sleep, his shock of white hair flattened on one side as though
he’d been sleeping on it. It was a careless look for someone who was usually so well groomed, but I didn’t comment because he was sensitive to criticism.

“Rachel’s hardly said a word. But she’ll be glad you’re here.” He kissed me on the cheek and I caught a scent of a familiar aftershave and cigarettes. Grandma is in the room with her, but Dr. Daddy is apparently
persona non grata
. She’s trying to talk Rachel into breastfeeding, but I think we all know that horse has already left the barn.”

“Did everything go all right?”

“As far as I know. She apparently told the OB she’d cut his balls off if he let them give her an episiotomy. But then they knocked her out, so everyone survived.”

I laughed, imagining Rachel threatening her nice old doctor.

“Are you okay?” Jack sounded almost shy. “Last night was strange.”

I thought of how he’d touched Press’s hand. That seemed strange to me, but I knew that wasn’t what he meant. I didn’t know what to think about Jack. I didn’t hate him, but I understood he wasn’t the person I had thought he was for so long. It made sense that Press had—
God help us all
—seduced him in some way, just as he had me, and J.C., and who knew who else.

One of the two nurses sitting at the nearby desk giggled, but I had no idea if it was directed at us. I had been out of the house so little that I hadn’t thought about people recognizing me as the woman who had been responsible for her own child’s death. Suddenly I was even more self-conscious than usual. I drew my light coat more closely around myself.

“I want to hear about the baby. Does she have a name?”

He smiled and ran a hand through his hair.

“Damn. Don’t know what’s wrong with me.” He took my arm. “The babies are down here.”

The nursery was a few doors down a nearby corridor. On the other side of its enormous window, bassinets with babies in them
were lined up in rows, each one bearing a sign with the baby’s name, mother’s name, and measurements. I found myself hanging a few inches behind Jack as he pointed to a bassinet far at the back. Rachel had been so very sure they’d have a boy. She hadn’t rejected having a girl out of hand, but neither had she really entertained the possibility. Rachel didn’t hide her feelings well, either. What would it be like to grow up having a mother like Rachel? A mother who had very clearly wanted a boy?

“Do you want to go in and hold her?” Jack asked. “I can get you in. You’ll just have to wear a mask.”

“Oh, no. I don’t think so.” Though I already felt pity for the poor child, I wasn’t ready to hold her. I wasn’t ready to watch her grow up, either, even though I was trying my best to be happy for them all. “What’s her name?”

“Seraphina,” Jack said, heading for the nursery. “Rachel didn’t have any girl names picked out, and her mother suggested it. It was Rachel’s great-grandmother’s name. I’ll bring her to the window.”

She was precious, tightly swaddled in a pale pink flannel blanket with her very tiny, very red little face peeking out. Her eyelids twitched against the bright lights of the room and she began to work her rough, pink lips as though wanting food or succor. I’ve never understood why newborns are supposed to be able to sleep in rooms lit like operating theaters. Her coloring was newborn, and her lush hair was jet black. Her features were perfectly formed, almost like an adult’s. She was a miniature of Rachel, but I saw nothing of Jack in her at all.

Forcing myself to smile and blow the baby a little kiss, I stepped back from the window while Jack put Seraphina back in her bassinet. Several of the other babies, disturbed by his presence, set up a righteous howl, and Jack left the nursery with the nurse on duty shaking her head behind him.

I met him in the hallway. “She’s lovely, Jack.”

“Seraphina? Yes, she is. She’s quiet. Not like those other loudmouth babies.”

I looked closely at him to see if he was joking, calling the other babies “loudmouth.” But his face held only irritation.

Holly Webb, Rachel’s mother, looked up from the piece of fabric in her lap. Both she and Rachel were quite good at smocking—the artful embroidery that makes fabric stretch prettily. Rachel had done it in quiet times in our dorm room, surprising me with her skill. Her mother had decorated a large wicker fishing creel for her supplies, which Rachel still used.