The Blackstone Chronicles - By John Saul Page 0,24

softly, in a voice so sweet it broke his heart, they still sliced through him like tiny knives.

“No, darling,” he said. “It’s not a baby. It’s just a doll.” He rose to his feet and reached down as if to take the doll from her, but she shrank away from him, and he saw her arms tighten. “Elizabeth, please,” he said. “Don’t do this. You know it’s not a—”

“Don’t say it!” she commanded, her voice rising. “Just go back to bed!”

“For God’s sake, Elizabeth—” he began again, but once again his wife cut his words off.

“Leave me alone!” she shouted. “I didn’t ask you to come in here! And I know what I’m doing! I can take care of my baby!” She was on her feet now, and there was a look in her eye that frightened Bill.

“It’s all right,” he said, forcing his voice back to a gently soothing tone. “Of course you know what you’re doing, and of course you can take care of the baby. It’s just late, that’s all. I thought maybe I could help you.”

“I can do it,” Elizabeth said, her voice taking on an edge of desperation. “I can take care of my baby. I know I can. Just leave us alone and we’ll be fine.” Her eyes met his now, beseeching him. “Please? Can’t you just leave us alone for a little while?”

Suddenly Bill felt utterly disoriented. Was his wife losing her mind? What should he do?

Take the doll away from her? No! That would only make things worse.

The doctor. He should call Dr. Margolis. Dr. Margolis would know what to do. “All right,” he said, taking care to keep his voice perfectly level. “I’ll go back to bed, and you take care of—” He faltered for a moment, but then managed to finish the sentence. “—the baby. And when he’s gone to sleep, you’ll come back to bed. All right?”

Elizabeth nodded, sinking back into the rocking chair. His throat constricting as a sob formed in his chest, Bill turned and hurried back through the bathroom, carefully closing the door behind him. But instead of going back to bed as he’d told Elizabeth he would, he went downstairs to the desk in the library, and the telephone.

After the twelfth ring he finally heard the sleepy, and faintly annoyed, voice of Dr. Margolis.

An hour later Elizabeth was back in bed, the pills the doctor had given her already taking effect. “I’ll be all right,” she said as she began to drift into sleep. “Really I will. All I need to do is take care of my baby and I’ll be all right.” Then, as Bill kissed her gently, her eyes closed.

Leaving Mrs. Goodrich to watch over Elizabeth, Bill led the doctor down to the library, where he poured each of them a shot of his best single-malt scotch. “I don’t know about you, but I really need this,” he said, handing Margolis one of the glasses, then draining half the other.

“I’m not sure it’s as bad as you think it is,” the doctor observed, taking a sip of the whiskey, rolling it around in his mouth, then swallowing it.

“For God’s sake, Phil! She thought the doll was a baby. Our baby!”

The doctor’s brows arched slightly. “She’s had a terrible shock, Bill. I don’t think any man can truly understand how hard it is for a woman to lose a baby. Especially when she knows there’s no chance of having another one, and she thought she was long past any danger.”

“But to fantasize that a doll is—”

“But isn’t that what little girls do all the time? Don’t they pretend their dolls are real babies?”

“It’s hardly the same thing.”

“Isn’t it?” Margolis countered. “Why not? The way I see it, Elizabeth is in so much pain right now that she simply can’t deal with it. So tonight she projected all her maternal feelings—the ones she’s been storing up, ready to shower on your son—onto the doll. I suspect it was far more an emotional release than a true delusion.”

“And you don’t think I should be worried?” Bill asked, hope mingling with his doubt.

“Of course you should be worried,” the doctor replied. “Hell, if you weren’t worried, I’d be more concerned about you than about Elizabeth. All I’m saying is that I think right now you need to cut Elizabeth a lot of slack. I suspect that by morning she’ll be feeling a lot better. But even if she wants to pretend the doll is her baby for