The Blackstone Chronicles - By John Saul Page 0,18
finally brought her home, the weather was every bit as bleak as her mood. A steel-gray sky hung low overhead, and the first true chill of winter was in the air. Elizabeth, though, hardly noticed the cold as she walked from the garage to the back door of the big house, for her body was almost as numb as her emotions.
The moment she entered the house, she sensed that something had changed, and though Bill suggested she go right up to their room and rest for a while, she refused, instead moving from room to room, unsure what she was looking for, but certain that she would know it when she found it. Each room she entered seemed exactly as it had been before. Every piece of furniture was in place. The pictures still hung in their accustomed spots. Even the mahogany case in the library was back where it belonged—screwed to the wall with much heavier hardware this time, so the accident could never be repeated—and even most of the objects it contained had been repaired and put neatly back in their places. Only the doll was gone. Elizabeth shuddered as she gazed up at the empty shelf where she’d placed it. Apart from the doll, all was as it should have been.
The photographs were back in their silver frames; the shattered glass all replaced.
Fleetingly, Elizabeth wondered if her spirit could be repaired as easily as the damage to the pictures, but even as the question came to mind, so also did the answer.
The pictures might have been made right again; she would never be.
Finally she went upstairs, retreating wordlessly to her room.
Later that night, when Bill had come to bed, she remained silent. Though she could feel the warmth of his body lying next to hers, and his strong arms holding her, she still felt more alone than she ever had before. When finally he drifted into sleep, she lay awake gazing up at the shadows that stretched across the ceiling, and began to imagine them as black fingers reaching out to squeeze her sanity from her mind as her own body had squeezed her son from her womb. Elizabeth realized then that it wasn’t the house that had changed. It was she who was different now. Long minutes ticked away the night while she wondered if she could ever be whole again.
Finally she left the bed, slipping out from beneath the comforter so quietly that Bill didn’t stir at all. Clad only in her thin silk nightgown, but oblivious to the damp chill that had seeped into the room through the open window, she walked on bare feet through the bathroom that connected the master bedroom to the nursery next door. In the dim illumination from the street lamps outside, the bright patterned wallpaper had lost its color, and the animals that appeared to gambol playfully across the walls when she had hung the paper a few short months ago now seemed to Elizabeth to be stalking her in the night. In the crib, lying in wait on a satin comforter, lay a forlorn and lonely-looking teddy bear.
Alone in the darkness, Elizabeth silently began to weep.
“Maybe I should just stay home today,” Bill suggested the next morning as the family was finishing breakfast.
Elizabeth, sitting across from him at one end of the huge dining table that could seat twenty people if the need should ever arise, shook her head. “I’ll be fine,” she insisted, though the pallor in her face and her trembling hands belied the words. “You have a lot to do. If I need anything, Mrs. Goodrich and Megan can take care of me. Can’t you, darling?” she added, reaching out to put her arm around Megan, who was perched on the chair next to her.
The little girl bobbed her head. “I can take care of Mommy. Just like I can take care of Sam.”
“Sam?” Bill asked.
“That’s what I named my doll,” Megan explained.
Bill frowned. “But Sam’s a boy’s name, honey.”
Megan gave her father a look that declared she thought he was being deliberately dense. “It’s short for Samantha,” she informed him. “Everybody knows that.”
“Except me,” Bill said.
“That’s because you’re a boy, Daddy. Boys don’t know anything at all!”
“Boys aren’t so bad,” Bill said quickly, his eyes flicking toward Elizabeth.
“I hate them,” Megan declared. “I wish they were all d—”
“You wish they were all girls like you, right?” Bill interjected quickly, cutting off his daughter before she could quite finish the last word.