The Blackstone Chronicles (11 page)

“Help me,” she told Megan. “Just hold on to my hand.” As Megan came close to the window and gripped her mother’s wrist in both her hands, Elizabeth released her grip on the casement.

“Now,”
the voice whispered in Megan’s head.

Obeying the voice without question, Megan let go of her mother’s wrist. Elizabeth began to slide, her bare feet finding no purchase on the wet shingles. A second later her right foot caught in the rain gutter. For an instant she thought she was going to be all right. Reaching out, she snatched up the doll, but it was already too late. Her balance gone, and with nothing to catch herself on, Elizabeth pitched forward, plunging headfirst onto the flagstone terrace, the doll clutched protectively against her breast.

Leaving the window wide open, Megan left the nursery, made her way down the stairs, then ran through the living room to the library. Unlocking one of the French doors, she stepped out onto the terrace.

Her mother lay sprawled on her back, her head twisted at a strange angle, blood oozing through her blond hair.

In her arms was the doll, still pressed protectively against her breast. Squatting down, Megan carefully pried her mother’s hands loose from the doll, then cradled it against her own chest.

“It’s all right, Sam,” she whispered to the doll as she took it back into the house, quietly closing and relocking the French door. “It’s all right,” she repeated as, without so much as a glance back through the glass of the French doors, she left the library and carried her doll back up to her room. “You’re mine now. Nobody’s ever going to take you away from me again.”

Bill McGuire sensed nothing amiss when he came back to the house an hour later. The sweet smell of chocolate
chip cookies was wafting from the back of the house; Mrs. Goodrich was taking the last batch out of the oven as he entered the kitchen.

“Well, isn’t this good timing,” the old woman said as Bill helped himself to one of the cookies that were piled high on a platter on the table. “I was just going to take some up to Miss Elizabeth, but I’m not really sure my old bones could get me up there.”

“Don’t even think about it,” Bill told her. Putting half a dozen cookies on a smaller plate, he left the kitchen and went upstairs. As he was about to go into the room he and Elizabeth shared, though, he heard Megan singing softly.

Singing a lullaby.

Turning away from the master bedroom, he continued down the hall to his daughter’s room. The door stood wide open, and Megan was lying on her bed, propped up against a pile of ruffled pillows.

In her arms she held the doll.

When she saw her father standing in the doorway, the lullaby she’d been singing faded into silence.

“I thought we decided Sam could stay in the nursery for a while,” Bill said.

Megan smiled at him. “Mommy changed her mind,” she said. “She gave Sam back to me.”

“Are you sure?” Bill asked. “You didn’t just take her out of the crib?”

Megan shook her head. “Mommy said she knows Sam isn’t a real baby, and that she doesn’t want her anymore. She told me to take good care of her and always love her.”

As Bill listened to the words, a sense of uneasiness began to come over him. “Where is she?” he asked.

Megan shrugged. “I don’t know. After she gave Sam back to me, she went back in the nursery and closed the door.”

Bill’s uneasiness turned to fear. Telling Megan to stay in her room until he came back, he went to the nursery.
Opening the door, he was greeted by a blast of cold air surging in through the open window.

The doors to both the bathroom and the master bedroom beyond stood wide open. “Elizabeth?” he called. “Elizabeth!”

Going to the window, he started to close it. Before he could pull it shut, however, his eyes fixed on the roof outside.

Some of the shingles appeared to be hanging loose.

As if something had disrupted them, and then—

“Elizabeth!” he shouted, then turned and ran from the room.

A few seconds later he was in the library, at the French doors. Through the windows, he saw his wife, and a moment later, as he cradled her lifeless body in his arms, a terrible howl of grief erupted from his throat.

Upstairs in her room, Megan smiled at her doll. And the doll, she was almost certain, smiled back at her.

B
ill McGuire was utterly unconscious of the icy chill in the air on the day he buried his wife, for he was far too numb to be aware of anything as insignificant as the weather. Bareheaded, he stood at the head of Elizabeth’s grave. Megan was on one side of him, holding on to her father with her left hand as she clutched the doll in her right, pressing it against her breast almost as if to prevent it from seeing the coffin that stood only a few feet in front of them. On Bill’s other side was Mrs. Goodrich, one of her hands tucked into the crook of his arm, her face covered by a thick veil. The old woman seemed to have shrunk since Elizabeth died three days earlier, and though she had continued to go through the motions of taking care of Bill and Megan, the spirit had gone out of her. Bill could not help thinking that the Christmas rapidly approaching would be her last.

Even the house seemed to have gone into mourning; a silence had descended over it, broken only by Megan, for whom, Bill suspected, the truth of what had happened had not yet sunk in. Each night, as he tucked her into bed, she looked up into his eyes and repeated the same words.

“Mommy’s all right, isn’t she?”

“Of course she is,” Bill assured her. “She’s with God, and God is taking care of her.”

Last night, though, Megan had said something else: “Sam’s sorry,” she’d whispered.

“Sorry?” Bill had asked. “About what?”

“She’s sorry Mommy had to go away.”

Bill had assumed that, like so many children who lost a parent when they were very young, Megan was afraid that somehow she might have been the cause of her mother’s death. But the thoughts were far too painful to face directly, so she was projecting them onto the doll. “You tell Sam not to worry,” he told her. “What happened to Mommy wasn’t Sam’s fault, or your fault, or anyone else’s. It was just something that happens sometimes, and all of us must try to help each other get through it.”

But how was Megan going to help him get through it? How was he ever going to be able to forgive himself for leaving Elizabeth alone that morning? How must she have felt when she awakened?

Alone.

Grieving.

Bereft.

And remembering what had happened the night before, when she’d thought the doll was her baby. What must have gone through her mind? Had she thought she was going insane? Was she afraid she was going to end up like her sister, confined for the rest of her life in a sanitarium? And he hadn’t even been there to comfort her.

Surely he could have put Harvey Connally off for a few hours.

But he hadn’t, and for that he would never forgive himself.

Bill heard Lucas Iverson begin the final prayer, and as Elizabeth’s coffin began to descend slowly into the grave, Bill closed his eyes, unable to watch these final moments. When Rev. Iverson fell silent once again, Bill stooped down and picked up a clod of soil. Holding it over the coffin, he squeezed his fingers and the lump broke apart, dropping into the open grave.

The same way his life was breaking apart and falling away.

His eyes glazing with tears, he stepped back from the grave’s edge and stood silently as one by one his friends
and neighbors filed past to pay their last respects to Elizabeth, and offer their condolences to him.

Jules and Madeline Hartwick had come, along with their daughter and her fiancé. The banker paused, laying a gentle hand on Bill’s shoulder. “It’s hard, Bill. I know how you feel.”

But how could Jules know how he felt? he wondered. It wasn’t his wife who had died.

Ed Becker was there too, with Bonnie and their daughter, Amy, who was only a year younger than Megan. While Bonnie Becker murmured sympathetic words to him, he heard Amy speaking to Megan.

“What’s your dolly’s name?”

“Sam,” he heard Megan reply. “And she’s not a little boy. She’s a little girl, just like me.”

“Can I hold her?” Amy asked.

Megan shook her head. “She’s mine.”

Bill knelt down. “It’s all right, honey,” he said. “You can let Amy hold Sam.”

Again Megan shook her head, clutching the doll even tighter. Bill looked helplessly up at Bonnie Becker.

“You can hold her another time,” the lawyer’s wife said quickly, taking Amy by the hand. “Just tell Megan how sorry you are about her mother, and then we’ll go home. All right?”

Amy’s large dark eyes fixed on Megan’s. “I’m sorry about your mother,” she said.

This time Megan made no reply at all.

Rebecca Morrison, accompanied by her aunt, Martha Ward, was next. As Martha stood glaring at her niece, Rebecca struggled to speak, her eyes downcast in shy embarrassment.

“Thank you for coming, Rebecca,” Bill said, taking her hands in both his own.

“Tell him what you wanted to say, Rebecca,” Martha Ward urged her niece, causing Rebecca’s face to flush.

“I—I’m just so sorry—” Rebecca began, but her voice quickly trailed off as the words she and her aunt had rehearsed vanished from her memory.

“We’re so terribly sorry about poor Elizabeth,” Martha said, her eyes flicking toward her niece in disapproval. “It’s always such a tragedy when something like this happens. Elizabeth was never a very strong woman, was she? I always think—”

“Elizabeth bore more in her life than most of us have ever been asked to,” Bill cut in, his eyes fixed on Martha Ward. “We’ll all miss her a great deal.” He put just enough emphasis on the word “all” to throw Martha off her stride. Then, seeing how mortified Rebecca was by what her aunt had said, he managed to give her a friendly hug before turning to the next people in line.

The faces began to run together after a while. By the time Germaine Wagner approached, pushing her mother in a wheelchair, he barely recognized them. When Clara Wagner informed him in a stern voice that he “must come for dinner one night,” he had no idea how to respond. He knew Germaine from the library, of course, but had never been inside the Wagners’ house, and certainly had no desire to go there now.

“Thank you,” he managed to say, then turned quickly to Oliver Metcalf and Harvey Connally.

“Watch out for that one,” Connally warned dryly, watching Germaine push her mother away. “As far as she’s concerned, you’ve become fair game.”

“Jesus, Uncle Harvey!” Oliver Metcalf protested. “I’m sure Mrs. Wagner didn’t mean anything like—”

“Of course she did,” the old man cut in. “And don’t tell me I’m saying something inappropriate, Oliver. I’m eighty-three years old, and I shall say what I please.” But as he turned back to Bill McGuire, his tone softened. “It’s a terrible thing you’re going through, Bill, and there’s nothing any of us can say that’s going to make it easier. But if there’s anything I can do, you tell me, understand?”

Bill nodded. “Thanks, Mr. Connally,” he said. “I just keep wondering if maybe—” The words died on his lips as he felt Megan slip her hand into his.

“Don’t think that way,” Harvey Connally advised. “Things happen, and there’s no explaining them, and no changing them. All any of us can do is play the hand we’re dealt, the best way we can.”

Ten minutes later, when the little cemetery was empty save for the three of them, Harvey Connally’s words still echoed in Bill McGuire’s mind.

Play the hand we’re dealt, the best way we can
.

Gazing one last time at his wife’s coffin, Bill McGuire finally turned away from the grave and started out of the cemetery.

Mrs. Goodrich, leaning slightly forward, dropped a single rose onto the coffin, then reached down to take Megan’s hand.

But Megan lingered for a moment, and though she still faced the coffin, her eyes were fixed on the doll.

The doll gazed back at her.

Now they truly belonged to each other, and no one would ever take the doll away from her again.

Late that night, as Blackstone slept, the dark figure moved once more through the silent corridors of the abandoned Asylum, at last coming again to the room in which the secret trove of treasures was stored.

Glittering eyes flicked from one souvenir to another, and finally came to rest on a single sparkling object.

A hand, smoothly gloved, reached out and picked up a locket, holding it high so it glimmered silver in the moonlight.

It would make a perfect gift.

And the dark figure already knew who its recipient would be.

To be continued …