“What will you do?”
“Michael will be happy. He’s missed Eva so much. Maybe it will be a boy. He’d like that.”
When she leaned forward, I saw a glimmer of the old, cynical J.C. in her eyes. “Will you name him after Press?”
I laughed. It seemed like such a peculiar question to ask so early. But people would want to know.
“Randolph.”
“You can’t! That’s . . . I don’t know. It sounds insane, Charlotte. Why would you do that?”
“I’m staying here, aren’t I? It’s only fair that if I’m to stay and try to heal this house, heal my family—or what’s left of it—then another Randolph might help make it right.”
“I don’t think you should do this to yourself.”
“I’m not doing anything to myself. I’m going to live my life and raise my children here, where they belong. It would take a hell of a lot to drive me away now.” And I meant it.
Michael and I watched from the front door as the driver helped J.C. into the long black Lincoln that would take her back to The Grange. She turned to wave from the back window as they headed down the drive. Michael blew her a kiss. The only time I ever saw her again was at The Grange when we both chanced to be there at the same time. She had said she would visit us, but I couldn’t blame her for not wanting to come back to Bliss House.
The day after she left, Nonie and I went down the hidden staircase to the rooms below. I was trembling. Nonie was silent.
The rooms told a vile story. There were magazines and books and photographs and drawings—filthy things. Much of it was even older than Press. But he’d clearly spent a lot of time there. There was evidence of women besides J.C., too. Or at least one. I suspected it was Rachel.
The rooms could be reached from the outside by a tunnel that began behind a door hidden in a wall of the springhouse. I sealed it up myself, not wanting to trust the job to anyone else. Then I closed the panel beside the fireplace and locked the ballroom doors.
No one is allowed in the ballroom at all. The boys, teenagers now, know this. We have rules. Rules to keep them safe.
You will wonder about Rachel, of course.
Old Gate is a small town, so we get in each other’s way sometimes. But we’ve developed the skill of not actually seeing each other even when we’re in the same store or restaurant. I’m not sure what she tells people if they ask about our friendship. I just pretend I haven’t heard and change the subject.
That following spring, I saw Holly at a garden party. She was showing another woman a picture of Seraphina, and exclaiming what a wonderful mother Rachel was becoming.
Something rose inside me, a desperate desire to tell her to remind Rachel to keep her little girl away from the geese that settled so prettily beside her pond. I wanted to imagine the sick fear in Rachel’s eyes. Does she love Seraphina now? Is Seraphina precious to her, now that she will never have another child for Press? Somehow I doubt it. Rachel is Rachel.
We hold each other at bay: a murder for a murder. It would always be so.
But does she ever wonder about Press? Where he is?
I have no need to wonder. I know he is here. With me. With us.
Epilogue
The May sun beats upon the roof and windows and solid outer walls, and I can feel it all. But the sun and the heat can’t harm me. It may weather the brick and fade the gray tiles, but that is nothing. I am here inside the house. I am one with this house.
I feel the car approaching, the flattening of the shells and stones in the drive. My sense of them is faint at first; but as the car comes closer, I can smell the heated exhaust, the odor of disinfectant, of a wet diaper, of Charlotte’s hairspray and her favorite hand lotion. I can smell my child, new and alive. They are driving carefully with their precious cargo, as I would have them. Charlotte comes to me scented and lovely and cruel, as I always knew she might be. Did she imagine that I thought her helpless? I feel her strength as she approaches, the strength that threatened me, that took my life. But I am not interested in you now, my faithless wife.