When the waitress was gone, J.C. turned her gaze toward Rachel. Rachel, who was always the center of attention in every room she entered, now looked tiny and insignificant. It was as though she were the moon, and J. C. Jacquith were the sun, which had decided to descend from the sky, flaming everything in its path.
“We’ve met before, haven’t we?” J.C. held out her hand to Rachel. “I’m thinking your name is Roberta? Or perhaps Ruth?” She turned to Press and smiled. “You’d think I’d be better with names, wouldn’t you, with my job. I mean, it’s my lifeblood, making sure I remember who people are.” She turned back to Rachel expectantly.
While I was happy to have the attention drawn away from me, it was a horrible moment.
Now we were all watching Rachel. Her hands were squeezed into fists on either side of her plate, but her face was unnaturally calm. I knew she was deeply angry.
“My name is Rachel, you bitch. I’m sure you’ll remember it now.”
She gave J.C. a toothy, insincere smile, then turned her eyes to Press.
J.C. had pretended to be wildly amused at Rachel’s response, but the rest of the lunch was tense. Rachel eventually mellowed somewhat, but I made her let me drive back to Old Gate, telling her my stomach was upset and that being a passenger would make it worse. I blamed her behavior on the hormones, but I really felt there was something else going on. She was quiet the whole way home, resting her head against the top of the seat just as I had done earlier with so much pleasure. But there was no pleasure in her face.
When we reached Bliss House, I asked her to come inside.
She didn’t answer, but got out of the car and came around to the driver’s-side door. I got out with my packages and stood by as she adjusted herself behind the wheel. When she had the door shut again, she looked up at me. I’d thought her more than a little drunk when we left the hotel, but there in front of the house she seemed dead sober.
“Don’t be na?ve, Charlotte. You know he’s fucking that stick, don’t you?”
Rachel was prone to cursing, so it wasn’t her coarse language that disturbed me. It was that she’d given voice to my own thoughts. What had Press been doing at The Grange alone with J.C.? Again I saw him settling her sweater across her shoulders. He hadn’t mentioned that he would be seeing her, and he had invited her to the house without consulting me. It all made a sick, strange sort of sense.
Only once had I ever imagined him unfaithful with another woman. (I found the idea that he might have had some physical knowledge of another man—Jack—so repellent that I had banished it to the darkest recesses of my mind.) And, strangely enough, that woman had been Rachel. But it had been only for that one moment, on the day we’d been introduced, long before I had any claim on him.
“Don’t be silly. She’s just a friend.” I tried to sound more convinced than I felt.
“Were you even watching her today?”
“I don’t know why you’re so worried about her.”
Rachel’s smile was just short of a sneer. It wasn’t a pretty look for her. “Well, he hasn’t been doing it with you, has he? I bet he’s not.” There was something ugly in her tone that I couldn’t quite identify.
“Just go home, Rachel. You wouldn’t be saying this if you weren’t tired.” It all felt too real at that moment. Too close. I wanted her to leave.
“Ah. I didn’t think so.”
Without another word, she put the car into gear. As she drove away, the Thunderbird’s tires crunching on the driveway, I realized that the emotion I’d heard in her voice sounded a lot like jealousy.
Chapter 16
Judgment
Michael crawled around on the library carpet, alternately playing with a stack of blocks and looking at some of his picture books. Press sat in a chair near the fire, nursing his after-dinner port. He stared into the flames, barely glancing at the old script in his lap. Was he thinking about J.C.? I’d begun to wonder why he hadn’t married her, or at least someone like her. Someone wealthy and independent. I hated how dowdy and insignificant I felt beside her.
I sat on a floor cushion near Michael, feeling Eva’s absence. This was the time when Eva would sit on Press’s lap and show him pictures she’d drawn during the day, or the things she’d collected on one of her walks with Nonie or me. She worked hard to keep his attention, serious about whatever she was showing him. Many times I’d seen him look past her, distracted, as she nattered on about the animals she’d drawn, the stories she’d made up or adapted from her favorite books. Had he loved her enough? He had wanted children, but sometimes I wondered if he really saw them. While he was occasionally stern, he was never mean. But neither did he play with them. It was as though they were part of his life, part of the house. They were expected.