As she left the room, Eva waved a limp good-bye with a hand slung over her grandmother’s shoulder.
I was too tired, too surprised to argue or go after them. Later, I peeked into the nursery to see Olivia sitting in the rocking chair with Eva cuddled against her and sucking her thumb as Olivia read her a story. Leaving quietly before Eva could spot me, I heard Olivia’s pleasant voice behind me, reading the tale of Hansel and Gretel and the evil witch who lived in the gingerbread house.
Michael was born within twenty-four hours, and Nonie arrived at the house the next day.
“I miss her.” Press squeezed my hand. “You know how much I miss her, Charlotte. How can you not know?”
But we let her die. I wanted to scream the words, but I wasn’t going to cause a scene. Still, I wouldn’t comfort him. He would have to find his own comfort if that’s what he was really looking for. I changed the subject.
“You’re going to the office when you get back from Lynchburg?” In truth, I didn’t care what time he came home. I wanted Bliss House to myself—Marlene, Terrance, Nonie, and Michael notwithstanding.
His thick brows came together almost imperceptibly. I wasn’t going to make forgiveness easy, if I forgave him at all.
“Wills,” he said. “Two new ones on my desk.”
It took our child’s death to remind their owners, I thought. How appropriate. If the same thought occurred to him, he didn’t say.
He lifted my hand to his lips and kissed the palm of it tenderly, the way he had often done when we were first married. “I won’t be late tonight. What will you do today?”
I knew I should go and see Rachel. She hadn’t done anything wrong, and had even called the house sometime during the past weeks. But I wasn’t in the mood to talk to her. I loved Rachel, but she required a lot of attention and energy, and I had always been one to give it. Both were in limited supply for me that day.
Without much of a plan, I had dressed in comfortable slacks and a navy blue cardigan. I had even put on a light coat of lipstick and a dash of mascara to give an impression of some kind of normality. It wasn’t that I was lying about the way I was feeling. Not really. I only wanted to be functional. A part of me was still in my bed upstairs, unable to move. To breathe. But there was nothing I could learn by staying there. Nothing would ever change—or at least nothing would change in the way I needed it to.
“I may start going through your mother’s things.” I didn’t mention that I had almost begun the day before, and really hadn’t known that’s what I was going to do until I said it. But as I did, I knew it was right.
Chapter 7
Olivia’s Room
Press had tried to encourage me. “Have some fun. Pretend it’s a treasure hunt.”
Nothing in my life had felt less like a treasure hunt.
Before approaching Olivia’s room (was I procrastinating?), I went to the nursery and found Michael sleeping on Eva’s trundle bed, breathing heavily. Nonie led me out of the room, whispering that she’d found him awake and with Preston in the room just before dawn, but he’d gone back to sleep.
“Press didn’t wake him,” I said automatically. “He found him trying to get out of his crib.”
Nonie didn’t respond, but went on as though I hadn’t spoken.
“We rocked in the chair for a while, and he just climbed right down and went over there.” She gestured to Eva’s bed. “The poor thing closed his eyes and went right back to sleep.”
I had to look away so Nonie wouldn’t see the tears in my eyes.
Grief comes to people in different ways. Even children.
Michael had few real words, yet, but nearly every day since she died he’d searched all around the nursery and wherever else he was in the house for Eva. I wondered how long it would be before he got used to her not being there. The few weeks she’d been gone were like a lifetime for a one-year-old.
“Let him sleep as long as he wants.”
Nonie gave a small sigh that told me she disagreed. She had kept both Eva and Michael on a strict schedule. But if anything justified a break in the schedule, it was Michael’s need for his sister.
I kissed her on the cheek. She was so dear to me, and she’d loved both of my children. “He might be getting sick. I’ll listen for him if you want to go down and get some breakfast.”
She looked skeptical, but it was all I had to offer her. It didn’t occur to me then to speculate about what might have awakened him. It was much later, when he was five years old, that his night terrors began. As we went out, I left the nursery door open halfway so I might hear him when he woke.