I saw the boy lying in the green grass, broken and desperate for breath. Not knowing what the pony looked like, I imagined it cream-colored and squat, with a firm belly and short legs. Not elegant, but sturdy, its black lips pulled back in terror.
“Sometimes I remember those minutes, when I couldn’t get off and Fancy had knocked him to the ground, and it was all I could do to hold on, praying that she wouldn’t trample John.”
“How did you stop?”
“I couldn’t do anything. She just kept dodging, and then her legs gave out and she started to roll onto her side, which shook me loose. I hadn’t done anything. John hadn’t done anything. Fancy just ran off.”
I waited, and J.C. took a couple more drags from her cigarette. She seemed to be thinking.
“It took him a week to die. They wouldn’t let me see him.”
It was hard to imagine the long-limbed, elegant woman sitting in front of me as a child. Even in her sorrow, there was nothing vulnerable about her. She stood up.
“What I wanted to tell you wasn’t the story of John’s dying.”
“No?”
She bent over my chair, and as she spoke I smelled the menthol of her Salem cigarettes mixed with coffee on her breath.
“He’s with me all the time, Charlotte. He talks to me. He tells me things. What it’s like there.”
“I don’t understand.”
Her shoulders sagged. “Oh, honey. Of course you do. You know exactly what I mean. I can see it in your pretty, pretty eyes.” She touched my hair with the same hand in which her cigarette burned. “John can bring your baby to you. Eva is here, Charlotte, and we can bring her to you. Isn’t that what you want? Isn’t that what any mother would want?”
A log in the fireplace snapped, startling me, but J.C. didn’t move.
Chapter 27
The Séance
Watching Press at the head of the dinner table, J.C. beside him, leaning conspiratorially on her elbow, her lips moving in a faint murmur, I saw how well they looked together. No one seeing them would doubt that, as lovers, they were perfectly suited.
A crescent of black hair slipped from the rhinestone (perhaps diamond?) clip at the side of her head and hung across her cheek. They were absorbed in conversation, laughing and teasing. Press’s face was flushed with wine and his forehead wore the faintest sheen of perspiration. Once, if I had been as close to him as J.C. was, I might have touched my napkin to his head lightly, playfully, leading Jack to joke about my effect on my husband. Was it J.C.’s effect on Press, or the warmth of the fireplace behind him where a bank of not-quite-seasoned wood popped and spat, that made his ruddy face glow? He was smiling. So much smiling. I could hardly bear it. Their smiles were as sharp as knives.
Press had insisted that all the downstairs fireplaces be lighted, though it wasn’t even quite cold enough to turn the central heating on. “Atmosphere,” he’d said with a laugh. “If only we could order up a storm to encourage the family ghosts. Wouldn’t Mother be scandalized if she knew we were going to have a séance?”
It had been J.C. who had broached the idea with him, telling him that it would give both him and me a sense of peace about Eva’s passing over. I hated the phrase, but it did speak to me of a sense of Eva being in another, safer place.
I had made sure Shelley knew to keep Michael in the nursery. He was probably already asleep.
“Honey, are you absolutely, completely sure you want to do this?” Rachel covered my hand with hers. She’d insisted on sitting to my right even though a proper arrangement around the table would’ve meant that Hugh, who made up six at the table, should be there. “I know I said a long time ago that we should do a séance here, but I was joking, really. It’s just too creepy, don’t you think? I mean, Eva isn’t going to come back, Charlotte. And Olivia coming back would be an even worse idea.”
I couldn’t tell her that they had both returned. I had been a witness.
Rachel, too, seemed to glow along with the candle-and firelight. Everyone around me was vital and flushed. Even Hugh, who was usually so pale, with his light brown hair and boyish freckles. But I was cold, and felt as though all the life, all the blood had been sucked out of me. I sipped my wine, hoping to take on some of its red warmth.
“It’s all in fun. Press says so.” I glanced at Press, who, as though he’d heard me from far at the other end of the table, turned slightly from J.C. and winked—also conspiratorially. Were we all conspirators? And in what? I looked away from him.
“It just seems mean, somehow.” Rachel also glanced toward the other end of the table, where Press had turned back to J.C.
“My mother consulted mediums all the time. She took me with her.” Rachel and I both turned to Hugh, surprised.