Back upstairs, Carolyn was now weeping openly, her labor pain giving way to grief. I held her from behind and resisted the impulse to repeat the stupid things people had said to me, that she would see her son again in the next life, that she would raise him there, that she was sealed to him in the eternities. Those things might be true, but none of them changed the reality that right now, her baby son was gone.
Naomi worked at cleaning up the bloodied bedding and remaking the bed without asking Carolyn to move more than a few inches this way and that. Then she disappeared, presumably to put the sheets in the washing machine.
“You know what this is like,” Carolyn said softly to me, twisting her head so that she could look into my eyes. “Don’t you?”
I nodded. “My daughter was stillborn more than twenty years ago,” I admitted.
“Did your husband know it would happen?”.
That I hadn’t expected. “What? No. Of course not.” Why would she ask such a thing?
“Do you believe it was a punishment? That your daughter was born dead?” Carolyn pressed. Her face was bruised and there were huge dark circles under her eyes, but her eyes were fever-bright.
“No,” I said. And then added, “Not anymore.”
We could hear the sounds of children laughing downstairs, and of footsteps. They were playing some sort of chasing game. I wished they weren’t, because it felt wrong that anyone anywhere could be laughing at a time like this.
But of course Esther was just trying to take care of the younger children as she had been asked. And there were people all over the world who were laughing, perhaps celebrating the best achievements of their lives. Right now. While we wept.
That was what life was, this grandest of contradictions, joy and sorrow combined in one. There was no separating it, not really. The more we loved life, the more we suffered. The less we loved, the less we laughed.
“Stephen told me this would happen. Months ago,” Carolyn whispered, her voice hoarse with laboring. “He told me that I was to be punished. He said that this child would be a boy and that he would never take a breath.”
I felt my stomach clench. What a thing to say to a vulnerable, pregnant woman! For a moment, I wished Stephen was alive again so I could stab him myself with that kitchen knife.
“What was he punishing you for?” I asked, and then wondered if it was only curiosity that was making me ask.
Carolyn bit her lower lip, hesitating. Did she think I would judge her as harshly as Stephen had? “I told him that I didn’t want any more children after this one. I wanted an operation. Or at least some kind of medicine to prevent it. There are so many children here, and I’m not—I’m not as patient with them as I should be.”
Stephen probably thought he was the only person who should be in charge of the number of children that came out of Carolyn’s body.
“He couldn’t have possibly known what would happen,” I said, pressing a comforting hand into Carolyn’s. “It’s just a coincidence. A terrible coincidence.”
Had Stephen planned to kill the child if it hadn’t been stillborn to prove that he had been right about the future? Or would he have pardoned Carolyn sometime later and removed the curse from the unborn child? The more I learned about the man, the more of a monster he seemed to be. Not complex at all, but just an expert at hiding and manipulating the truth.
Or—it occurred to me to wonder if Joanna had predicted Carolyn’s stillbirth, which Stephen had simply taken credit for. Was this proof her spiritual gift was real? I would have to ask her myself.
“You don’t think he is up in heaven, now, watching to see that his prophecy came true?” Carolyn said.
“No. No.” I had to force my hands to unclench, because I was about to tear the clean bedsheets. “Carolyn, Stephen never had that kind of power and he certainly doesn’t now.”
I stayed with Carolyn, my mind whirling with thoughts of Stephen’s murder, of Joanna’s gift, money and power, and my own sins, until Carolyn blessedly fell asleep.
When Naomi returned, she beckoned to me to head out with her. Moving slowly, I extricated myself from the awkward position I’d been in, trying to circle Carolyn with some sense of love and comfort. I felt completely drained of energy and my head buzzed with hunger as if I’d been fasting for a full day.
“We have to decide what to do with the baby’s body,” Naomi said.
We wouldn’t have to report this child’s death, either, I supposed. But in this case, no one needed a death certificate for a stillborn child. Georgia didn’t have one, either, and she had been born properly in a hospital.
“Bury him in the graveyard with the others?” I said tentatively, wondering about how our relationship would work now that she had seen me at my worst, and I secretly knew too much about her reliance on her father’s wealth.
“I don’t think we should do a funeral. It wasn’t ever really alive,” Naomi said.
“Don’t you say that!” I snapped at her, surprised at the surge of anger I felt. “To Carolyn, he was alive. She felt that little boy move within her for seven months or more. He was her son as much as any child could be!” Of course Naomi couldn’t understand, never having had or lost a child herself, but couldn’t she try a little harder?