Henry says he doesn’t blame me, but how can he not? Although he hasn’t yet let me talk to his mother, I’m certain she blames me. If it wouldn’t harm the family name, I’m sure she’d find a way for Henry to divorce me. I wish she would. I haven’t been able to find a way myself.
You asked about my plan to void our marriage. Right now, that seems very unimportant. But anyway, my plan failed. Henry made love to me that very night. It was just that once and I have the feeling he never will again, especially not now. But he won’t let me go, Gina. He’ll never let me go, despite everything. Despite the fact that I’m responsible for his sister’s death. I think my only choice now is to try to apply for a job somewhere, quietly, on the sly. Then I’ll move to wherever that job is and begin the two years of living apart that will allow us to get a divorce. The job will have to be far enough from Hickory that word of my location can’t get back to him. I don’t think I should return to Baltimore, so please don’t worry about not having space for me in your new apartment. I can’t bear the thought of bumping into Vincent and his girlfriend, and if he and I were both working in the medical community in Baltimore … I would always be looking for him. Hoping to see him. I don’t know where I’ll go but wherever it is, I’ll have to keep it a secret or Henry will come after me and try to drag me back. Once those two years of separation are up, I’ll try to force him to agree to a divorce. But truth be told, I don’t have the gumption to make this happen right now. Even though I wasn’t hurt physically in the accident, my heart and soul feel dead. I keep seeing Lucy’s face as she died. She was right in front of me and I could do nothing to save her. When I walk around this house, I sense her near me and feel as though I’m losing my mind. She haunts me, Gina. And she hates me.
Yes, I’m speaking metaphorically. (At least about the haunting part. She surely did hate me). She was just a very na?ve girl who hadn’t experienced much of life. She’d been raised like a princess, and maybe in time, with more experiences behind her, she would have become a wonderful person. I’m terribly sad that she’ll never have that chance.
Love,
Tess
51
The morning of Lucy’s funeral, Henry told me that Ruth didn’t want me to go. I still hadn’t seen Ruth to tell her how sorry I was. I’d asked Henry several times if I could speak to her—or rather, if she would speak to me—but he seemed determined to keep us apart. Maybe that was for the best. Of course she blamed me for the accident, though probably not as much as I blamed myself.
“You can come downstairs afterward when people are back here at the house,” Henry said as he buttoned his shirt. “I’ll insist she agree to that.”
It would be awkward seeing Ruth for the first time with other people around, but maybe it would be all right. Maybe that would soften her reaction to me.
I was glad that Henry no longer seemed quite so upset with me. When he’d driven me home from the police station, he’d barely been able to contain his anger at me.
“I told you not to use the Buick,” he’d said.
“I know.” I’d run my palms over my damp skirt. “Lucy pleaded with me and I thought it would be all right. She wanted to take the money for the headstone to Adora. She didn’t want to have to take a cab.”
He kept his eyes on the road. “Then why were you near the river?” he asked.
“She had some … I don’t know exactly what it was … a business document she said you wanted her to take to someone on the other side of the river.”
I thought his face paled a bit. I didn’t want him to blame himself.
“It’s my fault.” I reached over to touch the back of his hand on the steering wheel. “I should have just told her no.”
When we got to the house, he told me to go straight upstairs and I did. I sat on the edge of my bed, still in my clammy clothes, and I knew the exact moment Henry told Ruth what happened. I heard her agonized wail and the sobs that followed. Her cries were loud enough to rise up the stairs and through the bedroom door. I held my hands over my ears, choking on my own tears as the reality of the accident washed over me. Lucy was dead, gone forever, her future stolen from her. Nausea came over me and I raced from the bedroom to the bathroom. I was sicker than I’d ever been in my life, and I welcomed the misery. I thought I deserved far worse.
*
Once Henry and Ruth left for the funeral, I lay on my bed in my black skirt and white blouse, staring at the ceiling as I imagined the scene at the church. Lucy’s girlfriends would be there, weeping, feeling vulnerable, unable to believe that one of their own could so easily die at the age of twenty. The Ladies of the Homefront would certainly be there as well, and all of the women from Ruth’s various book clubs and the bridge club. Members of the country club would come, I was sure, and many of the townspeople too, despite their anxiety about gathering together while a polio epidemic raged through the area. They would come anyway, loving the Kraft family. Wanting to show their support.
The house felt spooky to me with everyone gone. It was rare for me to be there entirely alone. Even if the family was out, I was always aware of Hattie’s presence, but Hattie was at the church with everyone else after spending the early hours of the morning in the kitchen preparing food for when people came back to the house.
I got up from the bed and left the room, then stood in the eerie silence of the upstairs hall. The door to Lucy’s room was directly in front of me and I stared at it for a moment before crossing the hall and pushing it open. Instantly, I smelled her. I didn’t think it was the scent of her perfume as much as the hair spray she used to hold her dark blond bob in place. The scent was so distinctively Lucy that I let out a little “Oh.” I stood inside the door, looking around the room. The crisply made bed. The lavender wallpaper. The assortment of cosmetics and perfume bottles on the doily that topped her vanity. There were photographs tucked into corners of her vanity mirror and I walked closer to look at them. Most were high school graduation pictures of her girlfriends and I recognized a couple of them. There were two pictures of young men in uniform. But the photograph that grabbed my attention was of Henry standing on the front porch of the house. He stood in the middle of two girls, an arm around each of them. Lucy and Violet. All three of them smiled at the camera. They looked so comfortable with each other. So happy together, and I wondered, as I often had in the last few months, what alliances I had disturbed when I came on the scene.
Staring at that photograph, I had a sudden feeling that someone was standing behind me, watching me. I turned quickly, but no one was there. Yet the feeling was still strong. I felt dizzy and held on to the corner of the vanity.
“Lucy?” I said out loud, feeling crazy. There was no response, of course, yet I still had a strong, almost suffocating, sense of her presence. I quickly left the room, slamming the door hard behind me, and hurried across the hall to Henry’s bedroom. I was shaking by the time I reached the haven of my bed. So silly, I chided myself. My guilt was wreaking havoc on my imagination.