among these numberless and nameless cousins, whom she herself had never seen. The heat of her anger and bitterness surprised her. Ellie and the cousins. And Rowan here in this house alone. Once again, she struggled for composure. She wondered if this was not one of the more difficult moments she had endured since Ellie’s death.
“Yes, I would be grateful, Mr. Lonigan, if your wife would do what she thinks best. I would like to see the cousins … ” She stopped because she could not continue. “And Mr. Lonigan, regarding Ellie Mayfair, my adoptive mother—she is gone too now. She died last year. If you think any of these cousins would want to be told—”
“Oh, I’d be glad to do that, Dr. Mayfair. Save you telling them when you arrive. And I’m so sorry to hear it. We had no idea.”
It sounded so heartfelt. She could actually believe that he was sorry. Such a nice old-fashioned sort of man. There was almost a Damon Runyon quality to him.
“Good-bye Mr. Lonigan. I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon.”
For one moment, as she put down the phone, it seemed that if she let the tears go they’d never stop. The stir of emotions was so thick in her it was dizzying, and the pain demanded some violent action, and the strangest, most bizarre pictures filled her mind.
Choking back her tears, she saw herself rushing into Ellie’s room. She saw herself dragging clothes out of drawers and off hangers and ripping garments to shreds at random, in a near uncontrollable rage. She saw herself smashing Ellie’s mirror and the long row of bottles which still stood on her dresser, all those little bottles of scent in which the perfume had dried to nothing but color over the months. “Dead, dead, dead,” she whispered. “She was alive yesterday and the day before and the day before that, and I was here, and I did nothing! Dead! Dead! Dead!”
And then the bizarre scene shifted, as if the tragedy of her rage were passing into another act. She saw herself beating with her fists on all the walls of wood and glass around her, beating with her fists until the blood ran from her bruised hands. The hands that had operated on so many, healed so many, saved so many lives.
But Rowan did none of these things.
She sat down on the stool at the kitchen corner, her body crumpling, hand up to shield her face, and she began to sob aloud in the empty house, the images still passing through her mind. Finally she laid her head down on her folded arms, and she cried and cried, until she was choked and exhausted with it, and all she could do was whisper over and over: “Deirdre Mayfair, aged forty-eight, dead dead dead.”
At last, she wiped her face with the back of her hand, and she went to the rug before the fire and lay down. Her head hurt and all the world seemed empty to her and hostile and without the slightest promise of warmth or light.
It would pass. It had to. She had felt this misery on the day Ellie was buried. She had felt it before, standing in the hospital corridor as Ellie cried in pain. Yet it seemed impossible now that things could get better. When she thought of the paper in the safe, the paper which had kept her from going to New Orleans after Ellie’s death, she despised herself for honoring it. She despised Ellie for ever having made her sign it.
And her thoughts continued, abysmal and miserable, sapping her spirit and her belief in herself.
It must have been an hour that she lay there, the sun hot on the floorboards around her, and on the side of her face and her arms. She was ashamed of her loneliness. She was ashamed of being the victim of this anguish. Before Ellie’s death, she had been such a happy person, so carefree, utterly dedicated to her work, and coming and going in this house, assured of warmth and love, and giving warmth and love in return. When she thought of how much she had depended upon Michael, how much she wanted him now, she was doubly lost.
Inexcusable really, to have called him so desperately last night about the ghost, and to be wanting him so desperately now. She began to grow calm. Then slowly it came to her—the ghost last night, and last night her mother had died.
She sat up, folding her legs