“Charlotte? Are you listening? Do you want to come home with us, honey? You can go up and get Michael if it’s all just too much to stay here. I know you must be devastated. Eva was so close. It was as though she could just come downstairs and climb up onto your lap, wasn’t it? I don’t know when I’ve seen anything so strange.” She tilted her head, like a small bird. “Do you think she’d say anything else? I wonder if she knows what happened to her.”
Now that I was paying attention, I saw that Rachel did look disturbed, even afraid, as though she truly believed we had all seen the real Eva.
I wonder if she knows what happened to her.
I felt my face go hot. Had Eva known she was dying? Dear God, was Rachel being cruel, or just her thoughtless self? I shook my head, not really caring what question she thought I was answering.
“If you change your mind, the car knows the way to the house.” She called across the room to Hugh. “Hugh? It looks like Jack isn’t finished drinking for the night, and it’s not even nine o’clock. Do you want to come by?” Before he could answer, Rachel rose awkwardly from the sofa, one delicate hand on my knee for support.
Her emerald green dress hung artfully from its Empire waist, but she was far too pregnant for it to disguise her baby bump. She wore gold-heeled sandals that complemented the gold satin collar of the dress. I had tried to stay fashionable during both of my pregnancies, but I never came close to Rachel’s precise style. She turned to call for Jack.
“Rachel.” I kept my voice low.
“What is it? Is something wrong?”
“The back of your dress. Don’t you feel it?”
Rachel twisted her head over her shoulder and pulled at the side of her dress to look. She laughed. “Oh, shit. Press! Jack! My water broke.”
Now Rachel would have her own child. I knew then that I was completely alone.
Nonie was gone. Eva was gone. Press had put Shelley between Michael and me. I felt Eva’s absence even more keenly, but I understood that the pathetic, dripping wraith that had come to visit me in Olivia’s morning room was the real Eva. Not the child in the gallery who, I was certain, was flesh and blood. I had no friends around me. How odd that Olivia, whom I hadn’t liked very much in life, was now the only one that I felt I could trust. And she was dead.
It had been some kind of miracle that the earlier screams hadn’t woken Michael. As Press and Jack had led me back downstairs, I’d seen Shelley come to stand at the railing outside the nursery, but she had quickly gone back inside.
Before I went to bed, I needed to see Michael.
Shelley, sleeping on a cot in a corner of the room, didn’t stir as I knelt by the trundle where Michael lay sleeping. In the light from the hall, I could see the flush of heat on his round cheeks. He’d pushed off his covers and lay in his sleep shirt and diaper. Though his diaper was wet, I didn’t wake him to change him, but only pulled the covers up to his chest so he wouldn’t wake, cold, during the night. Kneeling on the carpet beside him, I stroked his forehead.
“It’s all going to be all right,” I whispered. I felt it, even as I was saying it. I just wasn’t exactly sure what was wrong, or how I was supposed to fix it.
While I knelt there, a shadow interrupted the narrow shaft of light coming from the hall, and I knew it was Press, waiting for me. I wasn’t in any hurry.
Shelley stirred as I went out, but she didn’t wake. She was so young. Only nineteen, she was almost a child herself. Although I knew she was the same sweet girl who, as a fifteen-year-old, had come to pet and admire Eva when she was a baby, I found myself not trusting her. Maybe if I had been the one to suggest that she come, I might have felt differently. All I knew at that moment was that she was sleeping in my son’s bedroom and I was not.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to drive you to the hospital? Don’t you think Rachel needs her hand held?”
Across the gallery, the door to J.C.’s room was closed.
“Shhhhhhh.” Moving quickly past Press, I left the nursery doorway. He followed. Reaching his bedroom door, I stopped but didn’t go inside.
“You think I would leave Michael now?”
“You’re upset.”
“Rachel doesn’t need me there. I called her mother. I’m sure she arrived even before Rachel and Jack.”
He touched my hair, and I recoiled. The cold surprise in his eyes only lasted a moment, and the look of tender solicitude returned. I knew he was acting.
“We should go to bed. I wish you had let Jack give you something.”
“We should talk about Eva.”
He took my arm to try to lead me into his bedroom, but where once I would’ve followed, I jerked away.
“Don’t lose your head over this, Charlotte. I don’t want a scene.”
It was my turn to be surprised.
“A scene? After what happened tonight, you’re worried about me making a scene in my own house? Don’t you think you should be more worried about what your good friend J.C. tried to do to us?”
Now he did pull me inside and shut the door. I knew that in a test of strength, I would lose.
“Or were you in charge of that little show? Maybe J.C. was just the hired help. Bravo to you both.”
Press shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”