“You might ask where Press was during all this. Well, I called for him, and I called for Jack. I’m sure I did. But those two. . . .” She paused dramatically and whispered. “You don’t know what those two can get up to sometimes. They just don’t hear a thing, those boys, so it’s really not my fault, Charlotte. You didn’t think Jack was actually up to making a baby with me, did you?” She shook her head. “You don’t know how many times I wanted you to know, my dear. You’re almost too precious to live, you know that?”
I hadn’t missed the lascivious look in Rachel’s eyes when she’d teased about what Press and Jack might “get up to.” It was all too much. Seraphina was Press’s child. Another girl. It explained the pitiful flowers in the hospital. They were a statement of his disappointment in her. No wonder she had looked unhappy, even in sleep.
If only I could’ve closed my eyes to shut it all out. I couldn’t bear to hear any more. The drums played on, not quite drowning out the voices and the other hideous sounds beneath them. The drumbeat was in my head, thudding through my body, growing stronger.
“They chased her right into that water and she fell. It was comical, really. You might have laughed. I almost did. I mean, I wasn’t afraid for her or anything like that. She was a big girl, and the water wasn’t all that deep.”
Stop! Why couldn’t I stop her talking?
“I finally went down there myself, and, oh, Charlotte, I was so big. So slow. You understand. I was huge!”
With a vain touch, she smoothed her stomach, which was much smaller now. She wasn’t her old svelte self by any means, but she would have her figure back soon enough.
Please, God, make her stop talking. Please, please, please!
“Those birds!” Rachel’s face filled my vision. Tiny sprays of her saliva dotted my face. “I couldn’t chase them away. They were all over her, splashing and squawking. There was absolutely nothing I could do. Water was flying everywhere! Finally she let go of that stupid bag, though I’m sure there was nothing left by then. It was all wet and falling apart. But they went after it, every single one of those stupid birds.”
I knew that water. I had even imagined Eva falling into it, a less dramatic fall, with me right there to stand her up again and warn her about getting too close to the pond. The kind of tiny drama that plays out in the heads of all mothers who see their children near passive dangers. But not this. Not this terror.
Rachel closed her eyes, her sour breath spreading over my face. Her mascara was so thick that her false lashes clung together in fan-like arcs below her eyes. When she opened them, I saw madness.
“It was so easy, my Charlotte. She was just as big as a minute, and such a polite child. She hardly fought at all. All the fight had gone out of her from wrangling with those silly birds.”
I saw the water closing over my precious baby’s face. I’d imagined it a hundred times or more happening in the bathtub. But now the water was flecked with green and streaked with sunlight and the water far beneath her was as black as night. Rachel’s hand was spread over her chest. Pushing. Pushing down, until Eva closed her eyes forever.
“Press raced like the devil to get her home and in the tub before you woke up.” Rachel sighed deeply as though expelling her own life’s breath. “I almost wish you could’ve been there. She was so peaceful. Because everything was okay after that. What’s that phrase they used to use in chapel at school? ‘The peace of God, which passeth all understanding.’ That’s what she has now.”
No. There was no peace for Eva.
Chapter 42
Revenant
Before leaving me, Rachel wetted my lips with a finger-smear of wine and kissed my cheek with an exaggerated fondness. The small taste of that wine made me want to retch.
Around the room, bodies moved in shadow: touching, writhing, creating strange silhouettes that will be forever burned into my mind. I watched, but after a while it all became oddly distant, like the scenes that Olivia had shown me. It was happening to someone else.
For a long time, no one came near me. No one touched me, and I could imagine that I wasn’t really there. I didn’t want to close my eyes, because I would see Eva’s face. Eva’s vacant, water-ruined face, just as I’d been seeing it for weeks. Only now, Rachel would be there too. No matter how much I wanted to, I couldn’t save Eva’s life. She was gone. Maybe I could set her free from whatever haunted purgatory she was living in with Olivia, but I could do nothing beyond that. But Michael I could save. I was certain of it. Less certain, though, was I of my own survival.
While I was grateful that no one had come near me, I felt as though I were waiting for something. In my heart, I understood that that thing—that person—was Press. Or whoever he had become.