The Blackstone Chronicles - By John Saul Page 0,28

God is taking care of her.”

Last night, though, Megan had said something else: “Sam’s sorry,” she’d whispered.

“Sorry?” Bill had asked. “About what?”

“She’s sorry Mommy had to go away.”

Bill had assumed that, like so many children who lost a parent when they were very young, Megan was afraid that somehow she might have been the cause of her mother’s death. But the thoughts were far too painful to face directly, so she was projecting them onto the doll. “You tell Sam not to worry,” he told her. “What happened to Mommy wasn’t Sam’s fault, or your fault, or anyone else’s. It was just something that happens sometimes, and all of us must try to help each other get through it.”

But how was Megan going to help him get through it? How was he ever going to be able to forgive himself for leaving Elizabeth alone that morning? How must she have felt when she awakened?

Alone.

Grieving.

Bereft.

And remembering what had happened the night before, when she’d thought the doll was her baby. What must have gone through her mind? Had she thought she was going insane? Was she afraid she was going to end up like her sister, confined for the rest of her life in a sanitarium? And he hadn’t even been there to comfort her.

Surely he could have put Harvey Connally off for a few hours.

But he hadn’t, and for that he would never forgive himself.

Bill heard Lucas Iverson begin the final prayer, and as Elizabeth’s coffin began to descend slowly into the grave, Bill closed his eyes, unable to watch these final moments. When Rev. Iverson fell silent once again, Bill stooped down and picked up a clod of soil. Holding it over the coffin, he squeezed his fingers and the lump broke apart, dropping into the open grave.

The same way his life was breaking apart and falling away.

His eyes glazing with tears, he stepped back from the grave’s edge and stood silently as one by one his friends and neighbors filed past to pay their last respects to Elizabeth, and offer their condolences to him.

Jules and Madeline Hartwick had come, along with their daughter and her fiancé. The banker paused, laying a gentle hand on Bill’s shoulder. “It’s hard, Bill. I know how you feel.”

But how could Jules know how he felt? he wondered. It wasn’t his wife who had died.

Ed Becker was there too, with Bonnie and their daughter, Amy, who was only a year younger than Megan. While Bonnie Becker murmured sympathetic words to him, he heard Amy speaking to Megan.

“What’s your dolly’s name?”

“Sam,” he heard Megan reply. “And she’s not a little boy. She’s a little girl, just like me.”

“Can I hold her?” Amy asked.

Megan shook her head. “She’s mine.”

Bill knelt down. “It’s all right, honey,” he said. “You can let Amy hold Sam.”

Again Megan shook her head, clutching the doll even tighter. Bill looked helplessly up at Bonnie Becker.

“You can hold her another time,” the lawyer’s wife said quickly, taking Amy by the hand. “Just tell Megan how sorry you are about her mother, and then we’ll go home. All right?”

Amy’s large dark eyes fixed on Megan’s. “I’m sorry about your mother,” she said.

This time Megan made no reply at all.

Rebecca Morrison, accompanied by her aunt, Martha Ward, was next. As Martha stood glaring at her niece, Rebecca struggled to speak, her eyes downcast in shy embarrassment.

“Thank you for coming, Rebecca,” Bill said, taking her hands in both his own.

“Tell him what you wanted to say, Rebecca,” Martha Ward urged her niece, causing Rebecca’s face to flush.

“I—I’m just so sorry—” Rebecca began, but her voice quickly trailed off as the words she and her aunt had rehearsed vanished from her memory.

“We’re so terribly sorry about poor Elizabeth,” Martha said, her eyes flicking toward her niece in disapproval. “It’s always such a tragedy when something like this happens. Elizabeth was never a very strong woman, was she? I always think—”

“Elizabeth bore more in her life than most of us have ever been asked to,” Bill cut in, his eyes fixed on Martha Ward. “We’ll all miss her a great deal.” He put just enough emphasis on the word “all” to throw Martha off her stride. Then, seeing how mortified Rebecca was by what her aunt had said, he managed to give her a friendly hug before turning to the next people in line.

The faces began to run together after a while. By the time Germaine Wagner approached, pushing her mother in a wheelchair, he barely recognized