“And break his Roman Catholic heart? He wouldn’t put up with a divorce, my dear. He’s such a traditionalist. Divorce isn’t the way we do things. You don’t have any grounds.”
While I suspected he badly overestimated my father’s desire for me to remain married to him, I knew he was right about there not being any grounds on which I could divorce him. There was nothing that I could prove. I had no bruises and no real evidence that he’d cheated. In movies and books, people hired private detectives all the time, but right now he was watching me too closely. I was cut off. There was no one to hire. All our friends were Press’s friends. And Rachel? Even then, I think I understood that I couldn’t count on Rachel. I’d heard of two women from our Burton Hall class who had divorced, and neither of them had come out of it well. They’d had to leave behind their friends, and, in one sad case, their children.
While I stared off, thinking, wishing he weren’t so close to me, I could feel him watching me. But his gaze felt unfamiliar. Where had my husband gone?
Finally he lay back heavily on the bed a foot or so away from me. He stroked my arm, and I felt goosebumps rise.
“Even if you did try to divorce me, I’m afraid you wouldn’t get very far. I have two men who will swear you’ve been throwing yourself at them for months, begging for sex. Even after my mother’s funeral. You’ve shown the most appalling taste. So unbecoming for a young mother.”
I was speechless.
“It’s not going to come to that, though. You wouldn’t put Michael or yourself through that kind of humiliation. Everyone knows you’re unstable. Hiding Michael away in my mother’s bedroom. Disappearing into the morning room. Wandering the house at night and running like a criminal from the hospital. You don’t want to push it. You know how people can be.”
No, I hadn’t really known how people could be. But I was learning. God help me, I was learning.
The same voice that had tried to persuade me to kill myself the night of the séance reminded me about the knife hiding in Olivia’s jewelry box. (How odd that it sounded so much like Press’s voice!) If I let him fall asleep beside me, I could reach it easily. But I refused to be a murderer. I couldn’t leave Michael and let him grow up knowing his mother had killed his father and died in the electric chair. Randolph Bliss was believed to be long dead and buried when Olivia killed him. He’d obviously faked his own funeral and hidden himself from the world. His wife was dead. (She’d been found in the woods, and there had been no investigation. Had he arranged her death, as well?) There had been no arrest for the murder of Randolph Bliss. No scandal. Only Terrance knew. And he would again be a kind of witness if I killed Press. Like Olivia, I would be blackmailed and have to live with Terrance, whatever his demands. There was no choice. I was no murderer.
“Why did you marry me? What did I do to make you hate me so much?”
He rolled over onto one elbow. I could smell Scotch on his breath, but I knew he wasn’t drunk. “Hate you? My God, Charlotte. You’re one of only two women in my life I’ve ever come close to loving. Haven’t I given you everything you wanted? Security. Position. Have I ever said no to any little thing—or big thing—you’ve wanted? Now you have my mother’s jewelry, half of this house, plenty of money. No one will ever take your place here unless you make it happen.”
I waited for more.
“I protected you. Do you think that anyone else’s wife would have escaped punishment for getting drunk and letting her daughter drown in the bathtub while she slept it off? You’re a very, very lucky woman. I treasure you, just like my father treasured my mother. Just like his father treasured my grandmother.”
My gut went cold remembering what I’d seen happen in this very bed. There had been worse suffering than mine in this house.
“I know about your father.”
“Everyone knows about my father. It’s hardly news that he died.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about.”
“What?”
I had his attention now, more than ever, and I felt something new grow inside me. It felt horrible. Disgusting. But it felt right. I had almost pitied him because of what I’d learned about Olivia, and the rape. What Michael Searle had been forced to watch. I knew Michael Searle wasn’t his father, but did Press know it?
I didn’t go on. He deserved to keep wondering. I had no pity for this man, and I was done loving him. Still, a part of me was convinced that the man lying beside me wasn’t really Press. The man I had known as my husband had disappeared in the days after Olivia died. Even if this man, this Preston Bliss had shown some glimmer of compassion that night, I didn’t know that I wanted him back. The place in my heart that had been full of him for so long was full of something else now.
It was a dark, fearsome something else, and I didn’t want to look too closely at it, because I was afraid it might kill us both.
Chapter 34
Running