I could have wept with relief at her words. If only I had trusted her before it had become too late.
Now Rachel turned her attention to J.C. But before she could get a word out, Jack jerked her backwards.
“Be quiet, Rachel. Just shut up!”
He looked like a teenager playing dress-up in his silver leotard and tights. His wings were still stiff and cartoonish. There was something more than anger in his face. There was fear. Press was no longer there to protect them.
Hugh stood up.
“Yes. That’s exactly right.” He walked toward Jack and Rachel. “You need to get her under control, Jack. In fact, just take a quick look at him.” Here, he inclined his head toward Press. “Call the death. We’ll get a certificate later. Let’s get this place cleaned up and I’ll get the coroner and the funeral-home people here.”
“The coroner?” J.C. had crossed the room to come and stand beside me. When she touched my back, I felt myself shaking beneath her hand. I wasn’t sure I would ever stop shaking.
“It won’t be a problem.” Hugh’s voice was low. Not quite ashamed, but neither was it triumphant. “If that sounds good to you, Charlotte.”
I nodded. Press was dead, and yet his influence was still making sure that everything would be taken care of. No one who had been there that night would want it known that they’d been there—or what they’d been up to with Press and, earlier, Zion Heaster. They would want to keep their secrets and, in return, would keep mine.
After the wake, J.C. found me alone in the kitchen, sitting at the table in the butler’s pantry. There had been a frost the night before, and all of the more tender-leafed herbs in the garden outside the window had succumbed. The wilted plants were like slender, ruined creatures fighting to stay upright. I’d been thinking of Beatrix Potter and Peter Rabbit and the animals I’d planned to paint on the walls of the ballroom. I wouldn’t bother to try to have it painted again. The house obviously didn’t want the room to change. Whatever—whoever—was attached to it would never let it.
J.C. put a glass of Scotch along with a small glass of sherry on the table, and touched me on the shoulder as she sat down. Her makeup was heavy, but the swelling had abated so that her cheek and lips looked almost normal again. She kept her voice low. “I know we’ve said just about everything, Charlotte. Thank you for forgiving me.”
I nodded. We had said enough the night before as we sat talking in the morning room until nearly two A.M. She was ashamed of her affair with Press but had the dignity not to try to excuse it in light of the bizarre changes that had come over him during the past months. He’d brought her down, secretly, from the hotel a couple of times for the “parties” in Rachel and Jack’s barn, which explained Rachel’s animosity toward her. Of course Rachel would have been jealous. Hearing that, I confessed that I was rather glad she had pretended not to remember Rachel’s name during our chance meeting at The Grange (had it only been the week before?). At that point, anything that made Rachel miserable was fine with me.
But it wasn’t until she told me that Press had hinted that he was going to eventually kill me that I understood how much J.C. had risked. When she told him he was going too far, that it all needed to stop, he had beaten her up and, with Terrance’s help, taken her to the rooms below the house. I never learned the details of what he’d done to her down there over those two days. The distant, guarded look in her eyes told me enough. When I asked how she’d broken free, she said that she believed Olivia had somehow helped her to escape. Knowing all that Olivia had done for me, how could I doubt her?
“Everything’s packed. The car from The Grange will pick me up at two.” J.C. looked at her watch. “Are you sure you and Michael don’t want to get away for a while? The offer’s still open if you want to stay at my cottage on the hotel grounds. I’ll be back in New York in two days. No one will bother you.”
“Thank you. We’re going to stay here with my father and Nonie. Michael’s been through enough these past few months. And now Press is gone. I can’t take him away. He doesn’t really know anywhere else.”
She slid the glass of sherry in front of me.
“I think you should have several of these.”
I shook my head.
“You didn’t eat any breakfast either, did you? At least it’s something.”
Marlene had come from the dining room into the other end of the kitchen with a tray full of dishes. I lowered my voice so she wouldn’t hear me, but it didn’t really matter. I wouldn’t be able to hide it much longer, anyway. “Just the smell of wine turns my stomach. I think I’m pregnant.”
J.C. covered her mouth. “Oh, God, Charlotte. How is that possible? Not. . . .”
“No. At least two months. That’s when I started getting sick with both Eva and Michael. I wasn’t paying any attention to the dates. I guess I assumed the stress had affected my—you know. My cycle.”