“Don’t get up.” But I was too late. Press was out of his chair, taking long, quick strides to reach me.
I took a tiny step backwards, unprepared for the sheer gravity of his presence, the air of Floris and the outdoors about him. He wasn’t deterred, and inwardly I cringed in advance of his touch. But instead of folding me in his arms as I feared he might, he merely put one arm around my shoulders and guided me to my chair.
“Have you had your coffee, my love?”
As though to answer for me, Terrance came through the kitchen door carrying a cup and saucer, sugar bowl, and creamer on a tray. Press took his coffee black.
I murmured a thank you to Terrance, who poured my coffee and refilled Press’s. He went back to the kitchen.
“Guess who was awake when I looked in on him at 5:15 this morning?”
“Was he?”
“Hard at work, trying to get himself out of the crib.”
“Where was Nonie? Did you take him out?”
Press looked briefly hurt as though I thought he couldn’t be trusted with Michael on his own. He wasn’t far wrong. But he didn’t bristle.
“Nonie was right behind me.” He smiled. “That woman has ears like a bat.”
I stirred two lumps of sugar into my coffee.
“That’s her job.”
Press seemed eager—too eager—to be helpful or, perhaps, kind. If noticing Eva’s things caused a knot in my chest, Press’s presence was tightening it. I knew my discomfort with him wasn’t necessarily rational, but I still wondered if I would ever feel differently.
My eyes rested on the door whose missing panels of glass Terrance had temporarily replaced with tight-fitting squares of wood. Press followed my eyes, saw where I was looking.
“Terrance is arranging a repair. Marlene tells me we had some nasty wind yesterday. Did you hear it?”
So Marlene hadn’t mentioned that I’d been in the room.
“Oh, my. What a shame.” Not a lie. Not quite.
Marlene and I both knew that there hadn’t been any kind of wind. After the door flew open, the air had remained completely still, and the door rested, motionless, against the chair it had hit. We’d stared at the broken glass glistening on the floor, stunned. As we watched, a dowdy moth the color of parchment careened in from the garden as though blinded by the sunlight, and landed on one of the larger shards of glass. All was silent, so I clearly heard Marlene draw a sharp, startled breath. After a moment, the moth stacked its wings on its back so that it looked like a tiny chunk of wood, and didn’t move again.
Marlene’s face had undergone a swift change, from surprise to purposefulness.
“I’ll clean this up.” Then she disappeared into the kitchen, presumably to get a broom and dustpan.
We would never speak of it to each other.
To Press, I said the first word that came into my mind: “October.” As though that were all the explanation anyone needed for door panes shattering, Press nodded and closed his book. A Handbook of Acting by Madame Eva Alberti was written in faded gold on the red cover. Eva. The writer’s name caught me short. Was Press reading it where I could see it just to be cruel? No, it wasn’t possible. I looked away. Surely I was being too sensitive.
Terrance returned with a soft-boiled egg in a china cup and a piece of buttered toast on a Minton porcelain plate decorated with dragons and birds. Usually the sight of the beautifully painted design pleased me, but I could only think of how fascinated Eva had been with them.
“You’re going to work today?”
Press cleared his throat, giving me the impression he was about to say something he thought was important.
“Yes, but first I’m driving into Lynchburg.”
Lynchburg was the nearest city to Old Gate, though we often found ourselves going up to Charlottesville if we needed to shop for something unusual. Maybe the prejudice was because we frequented The Grange, the resort hotel just outside Charlottesville. Lynchburg seemed a rougher place to me than Charlottesville, even though both were historic university towns. Press often teased me that I was prejudiced because I was from the eastern part of the state.
“The crematory has Zion and Helen’s ashes ready. Someone needs to pick them up.”
“Can’t they just send them?”
He smiled, a look of mock incredulity on his suntanned face. “You’re not suggesting they put Zion and Helen in the mail, are you? I can’t see Helen standing for that.”
“I meant by car. Delivery.” I felt myself redden. “Why do you have to go?”
He put his hand over mine, and I surprised myself by not immediately pulling away.
“I shouldn’t have brought it up. Have I upset you?”
So much death.
“There’s no family? Wasn’t there a nephew? I thought I remembered Helen mentioning one.” Zion and Helen were committed atheists who had directed—in the will that Press had made up for them—that they be immediately cremated after death, without interment. There had been no funeral.