Charlotte’s Story (35 page)

The moon was high, so we weren’t in the house’s shadow for very long. Reaching the driveway, I tiptoed carefully, worried that my shoes would be too noisy, and when I reached the other side, I stayed in the grass all the way to the carriage house.

I hadn’t driven in days, and when I’d looked in the box on the wall in the butler’s pantry for my car keys after Terrance and
Marlene had gone to bed, I’d seen that both sets of keys to both cars were gone. My heart sank as I realized that Press was thinking ahead of me, and I knew we were in more danger than I’d first imagined. The Jeep keys were there, but it would’ve been foolish to try to sneak away in the growling, topless Jeep. It was as though he’d left its keys there to taunt me.

Panic set in for a moment, and then I remembered that he had ordered a third key for the Eldorado Brougham that had been delivered a few weeks after Olivia died. A key that he kept hidden in his golf bag in the garage. I prayed that he had forgotten about it.

I nearly wept when I found the single key in the bottom pocket of the golf bag.

Michael began to fret as I worked to strap him in the passenger seat. He was still far too small for the seatbelt, but he was much too big for the infant basket. “Shhhh. We’re going to see Grandpapa and Nonie. You want to see Nonie, don’t you? Look. I’ve brought Bear for you.” I tucked the bear against him, and he wrapped an arm around it, somewhat comforted. I didn’t have a plan for driving away with a screaming toddler, and had no idea what I would do if he didn’t sleep most of the way. Every other time we’d traveled, Nonie or Eva had been there to entertain him.

Headlights off, I drove the quietly rumbling Cadillac across the expanse of grass that met up with the driveway at the beginning of the lane’s line of trees. My heart seemed to skip a beat when I pressed on the gas pedal a bit too forcefully so that the tires skipped and spun as they finally met the gravel.

Good-bye, my darling Eva.

I dared not look in the rearview mirror as I continued, slowly, down the lane to the county road that led to town.

As we entered town, I couldn’t help but smile. I would be at my father’s house—home—in a matter of hours. By dawn. And twenty-four hours from that moment, I would be in the bed
I’d slept in for more than half of my life. I knew I would be welcome there, but I had no idea what would happen with Press. He would no doubt come after us, probably showing up on my father’s front porch, looking serious. What would he tell my father?

What would
I
tell my father? I had no proof. Only suspicions. I’d never given him reason not to trust me, had I? I prayed that he’d take me in his arms and tell me, “I’m glad you’ve left that worrisome place, Lottie.”

Chapter 35

Helen

So lost was I in my thoughts that when I noticed the red lights in my mirror, I suspected they had been there for an unconscionably long time. In the late 1950s, Old Gate was even smaller than it is now, and I never imagined that the county sheriff’s deputies would bother patrolling in the middle of the night. It wasn’t as though Old Gate was on the way to anywhere. The town’s two service stations even closed at 8:30 in the evening.

But, yes, the red lights were following me, so a half-mile from the two-lane highway that would take us to Highway 60 and closer to my father’s house and safety, I pulled to the shoulder. It was the second time in a month I’d been pulled over, and only the second time in my life. Michael didn’t stir.

As the patrol car pulled up behind me, the Cadillac filled with pulsing red light the color of a carnival candy apple. I couldn’t imagine why I was being stopped. I’d been careful coming through town, and definitely hadn’t been speeding despite being desperate to get to the highway.

I waited for what seemed like ten minutes before a man, silhouetted by the patrol car’s blazing headlights, appeared in my side mirror and then at my window.

Relieved to see Dennis Mueller’s attractive young face, I rolled down my window.

“Why, Dennis, we really have to stop meeting like this!” I tried to sound gay and charming, but my words came out in a staccato rush.

Dennis leaned forward and peered into the car. Seeing Michael, who was slumped over, asleep, he straightened again.

“I’ll need to see your license and registration, Mrs. Bliss. Please.” I wondered at his anxious formality.

“Is something wrong? I don’t think I was speeding.”

“Just your license and registration, please.”

As I looked up at him, another car—a Mercury coupe—passed us slowly. A woman’s face stared boldly from the passenger window, and they drove on.

“I don’t understand.” But I hurriedly took my driver’s license from my wallet and felt for the leather folder in the glove box that held the car’s registration. It surely couldn’t matter that the car was registered in Press’s name. I handed them to Dennis, whose lips pressed into a hard, narrow line as he shone his flashlight on them to read.

“I’ll need to keep these, Mrs. Bliss. I’m sure there’s some mistake, but this car was reported stolen yesterday, and the department has to take possession of it.”

I laughed nervously. “Of course there’s a mistake, Dennis. This is my husband’s car, and we certainly didn’t report it stolen.” My voice was raised, and Michael complained with a quick bleat of alarm and dropped back to sleep. “You must give those back to me. This car is obviously not stolen.”

“Ma’am, I can radio back to the station to have someone come and pick you up, but I can’t let you take the car. Your name isn’t on the registration, and I can’t let you drive it away.”

He was growing more agitated, his tightly controlled voice getting higher.

“That’s ridiculous. No one needs to call anyone.” My hands gripped the steering wheel so tightly, I could feel the ridges of it pressing into the pads of my palms. I couldn’t let anyone call Press. I wanted to believe that it had all been a stupid mistake, but in my heart I knew better.

“I don’t want to take you into custody, Mrs. Bliss. Your little boy, neither.”

But I wasn’t listening. I’d made a decision. Jerking the car into
DRIVE
, I pushed down the gas pedal and veered onto the road. I had an impression of Dennis Mueller reaching out after me, and, glancing in my mirror, saw him stumble and fall into the road. That he might have been seriously injured never occurred to me. My mind was blank with fear.

Moments later, the red lights behind me had disappeared, and I was nearly to the intersection that would take me out to Highway 29 toward Charlottesville.

“It’s going to be all right. It’s going to be all right,” I whispered to myself under my breath, grateful that Michael hadn’t woken up. Reaching the intersection, I stopped and looked in my rearview mirror. Dennis Mueller hadn’t followed me. There was no light at the intersection—just a stop sign. I turned. Accelerated. But I hadn’t driven more than a few hundred feet when I saw the woman in the road. She was barely dressed in a sagging satin bathing suit or leotard, her hair wild about her chalky face, across which was a slash of bright red lipstick or, perhaps, blood. Her legs were short and heavily fleshed, her feet bare. She turned her head as I stomped the brakes, and I saw that the side of her scalp was torn away, bloody. It was Helen Heaster.

The Eldorado’s brakes locked and we fishtailed so that I lost control. I cried out as the car left the shoulder and hurtled, bumping and sliding, down the brush-clogged slope.

Chapter 36

The Truth

I was unconscious for such a short amount of time that Michael’s cries hadn’t quite turned into full-blown screams. My head ached, but my first panicked thought was for him. I fumbled for my seatbelt; but as I shifted, I realized my left foot was caught beneath the seat, and I felt a terrible pain as I pulled it free.

“It’s okay, baby. You’re fine. Just fine.” I spoke to calm him, but I had no idea if he was actually fine. The seatbelt had loosened and twisted with the rolling of the car, and I found him sideways, the belt squeezing his small torso in two. “You’re okay. You’ll be all right.”

Ignoring the voice in my head that wanted to shout for help—to scream in horror of what I might have just done to my second and only child—I struggled to release him. The buckle was caught up beneath his arm, and my heart broke for him when he began to cry harder as I squeezed it that much tighter to loosen it. But in a few seconds the buckle released and he dropped, free, into my hands.

Heedless of any injuries that I couldn’t see in the dark, I pulled him close and kissed his soft hair and his cheek that was wet with tears. He was free and he was breathing. That was all that mattered.

Except that I knew we had to get out of that car. We had to get away.

The car had stopped just short of the bottom of the hill, but hadn’t rolled, thank God. I was able to open the passenger door easily and pull Michael out. I tried to put him down for a moment so I could get my purse, which lay on the floor of the back seat, but he clung to me, crying and terrified. I felt cruel, but I had to wrest him from my neck. When I set him on the weeds outside the car, he screamed louder.

“It’s okay, Michael. It’s all right. I just have to get my purse.”

He wasn’t hearing me. I bent back into the car to grab the handle of my purse, but when I jerked it from beneath the seat, something popped out with it. Even with the car’s dome light on, the floor was in shadow, so I pulled up both the purse and the thing beside it so I could see it in the light.

It was a small, mud-encrusted sandal. A sandal that, beneath the mud, had once been white leather. Eva’s sandal.

When had I seen it last? My head was pounding and Michael was screaming. When? Why was it in Press’s car?

Picking up Michael again, I had the presence of mind to shut the door and carefully climb around to the driver’s side and shut the car and headlights off. All the while, I was thinking about the sandal.

My leg hurt, and I had the worst headache of my life, but I didn’t think either one of us was bleeding. The night was quiet except for the sound of the occasional car up on the highway. No one was stopped above us. No one had found us, yet. I had to find a way out of town, but I knew I couldn’t go back up to the highway. The police would be looking for us.

“We have to run, darling. And I need you to be very quiet.” But Michael was crying harder.

We entered the woods at the bottom of the hill. The night was chilly, and my leg was stiff, but I walked as quickly as I could. I had to think.

The woods were sparse, revealing the lights of houses on the eastern edge of Old Gate. I had no plan except to get Michael somewhere warm that wasn’t the police station. I didn’t like heading back into town, and I racked my brain trying to think of people I knew on this side of town. In my fearful fantasies, I imagined every door being shut against us. My father and Nonie were the only people I could trust, and I had to find a way to call them. Shamefully, a part of me was even a little embarrassed that we were in such distress. The Bliss name wasn’t a particularly popular one, and Eva’s death had added to the air of scandal around it.

After a few minutes, still unable to hear any voices or footsteps behind us, I slowed—but not too much. I knew that if I stopped, my injured leg might keep me from starting again.

We were another half mile from Father Aaron and the church, where we might be safe, and I knew I couldn’t make it. Michael had quieted but was shivering in my arms.

“Soon. Soon we’ll be warm, baby.”

It was his shivering that made me remember: Eva—or Eva’s ghost—standing in front of me in the morning room, wearing the Wedgwood blue ribbon. Drenched. Water running into her muddy sandals.

Eva had died wearing her sandals and a ribbon that she’d gotten from Rachel. She wouldn’t have had either on if she’d been trying to take a bath. It was unthinkable. Eva hadn’t died in the house, and she hadn’t been alone.

“Oh, Michael. Your poor sister.”

Finally we reached the outermost road circling the town, and as I crossed a back yard littered with children’s toys, a swing set, and a rusting car, a dog I hadn’t noticed when I entered the yard lunged at us, barking madly. Michael screamed, terrified. He had
little experience of dogs because Press didn’t like them. Frightened that the dog would attack us, I began to run, but the barking didn’t get closer. When we passed close to the house, I saw that the dog was chained to a shed in a corner of the yard. I was so grateful.

No lights came on in the house, and I hurried on, finally deciding exactly where we might go.

Chapter 37

No Quarter

“
Someone
needs to look at Michael, Charlotte. If you don’t let David call Jack, then I have no choice but to call the hospital for an ambulance.”

Finally, Michael and I were both warm. Rachel’s father, David, had poked up the waning fire in the family room, and Holly had brought me tea and a cup of warm milk that I was letting Michael sip in my lap. There had been no use in lying about the wreck. The bruises on my face and the mud on my now-ruined loafers sitting by the front door told a large part of the story. They had answered the door together, Holly looking apprehensive and David irritated. He was like Rachel in that he didn’t suffer fools or interruptions patiently, and given that it was nearly three
A.M.
, our arrival had certainly interrupted his sleep. Now he stood at the entrance to the family room watching us silently. I knew that Holly didn’t care much for Press, but I had no idea how David felt.

“We’re both just tired. Don’t you see?” I knew I was being unreasonable. “David looked us both over.” But David didn’t let me finish.

“I told you that army field training from fifteen years ago doesn’t make me qualified to pass judgment on automobile accident injuries now.” Then he continued, more kindly, “I think Michael is all right, but I still believe you may have a concussion. You should both see a doctor.”

“There’s an eight-twenty morning train from Lynchburg, or you could drive us up to Charlottesville. We could be in Clareston before supper. I promise we’ll go by the hospital just as soon as we get there.” I could hear the panic rising in my voice, and knew I sounded insane to them. Holly had listened sympathetically when I told her that it was more than a small argument that I’d had with Press, and that I needed to get to my father’s house, or at least call him and let him know we needed to come home. But I couldn’t be certain they believed me. I took several deep breaths to calm myself. Michael, too, was upset, restless and fretful in my arms.