The Blackstone Chronicles - By John Saul Page 0,23
easier for me. Can’t you understand that?”
Bill’s arms closed around her and he wished there were something—anything—he could do to ease her pain. “Of course I can understand,” he replied. “If it makes you feel better, there’s no reason you can’t keep the doll in here for a little while. I’m sure Megan will understand.”
In the hall outside the nursery, Megan scowled angrily. Her father hadn’t taken the doll away from her mother after all.
In fact, he’d told her she could keep it.
And Megan didn’t understand.
She didn’t understand at all.
Chapter 9
The moment Bill awakened, he knew Elizabeth was no longer beside him, but as the big clock downstairs began to strike midnight, he still reached out to his wife’s empty place in the hope his instincts might have betrayed him.
They had not. The bed was empty, the sheets almost as cold as the room itself.
He lay in bed for a moment, trying to decide what to do. The evening had not been easy for any of them. First he’d had to try to explain to Megan that right now her mother needed the doll more than she did. “Mommy’s sick,” he’d told her. “And she needs the doll to take care of her.”
“But she’s always sick,” Megan had protested. “And I need Sam to take care of me!”
“In a few days,” he’d promised, but he could see the doubt in Megan’s eyes, and when Elizabeth finally came down for supper, the three of them sat tensely at the table. Megan, usually full of chatter about what she’d been doing all day, barely spoke at all, and Elizabeth was utterly silent.
After dinner he’d tried to interest his wife and daughter in watching a videotape, but Megan quickly retreated to her room, and although Elizabeth sat beside him on the sofa in the library, he knew she wasn’t paying attention to the movie. Finally, a little after nine, they both came up to bed.
While he stopped in to kiss Megan good night, Elizabeth went directly to their room. He told himself she’d sensed Megan’s anger and was simply giving her daughter some time to get over it, but deep inside he suspected that Elizabeth had simply not been able to consider Megan’s feelings, any more than she’d been able to concentrate on the movie.
“Mommy doesn’t love me anymore, does she?” Megan had asked when he’d gone in to say good night. Her voice was quavering, and though he couldn’t see her face in the shadowy room, he’d tasted the saltiness of tears when he kissed her cheek.
“Of course she loves you,” he’d assured her. “She’s just not feeling well, that’s all.”
But Megan had not been consoled. “No, she doesn’t,” she insisted. “She just loves Sam.”
He’d tried to assure her that things would be better tomorrow, when the two of them would go and find a Christmas tree, but even that hadn’t cheered Megan up. When he left her room, she’d already rolled over, turning her back to him.
Things had been no better with Elizabeth. She was already in bed, and though he knew she wasn’t asleep, she hadn’t responded when he tried to cuddle her close to him. At last he’d given up, contenting himself with lying next to her and holding her hand, determined to stay awake until he heard her breath drift into the steady rhythms of sleep.
But he hadn’t been able to stay awake, and now he’d awakened to find himself alone.
The last gong of the hour struck, leaving the house in silence. Then he heard the squeak of the rocking chair. Slipping out of bed and putting on the thick woolen robe Elizabeth had given him two Christmases ago, he went through the bathroom into the nursery.
Elizabeth was sitting in the rocking chair she had rescued from the attic and painted pale blue.
Once more, she was humming a soft lullaby to the doll, as she had when he’d come home in the afternoon.
But tonight she was doing something else as well.
The pale skin of her bare breast gleamed in the moonlight, and he could see the doll’s head pressed firmly against her nipple.
He went to her and knelt beside the rocking chair. “Come back to bed, darling,” he whispered. “You’re so tired, and it’s so late.”
For a moment he wasn’t sure she heard him, but then she turned her head and smiled at him. “In a minute,” she said. “I have to finish feeding the baby, and then put him down for the night.”