When she dies, he thought. Yes. That’s exactly what I’ll do.
He had to remember to take the gun away and put it someplace safe. With all the children, you never knew what would happen. They had brought children to see Rowan this morning—and St. Patrick’s Day would draw the children, as well. Big parade on Magazine Street only two blocks away. Floats. People throwing potatoes and cabbages—all the makings of an Irish stew. The family loved it; they’d told him. He would love it too.
But move the gun. Do that. One of the children might see it.
Silence.
The rain falling. The house creaking as if it were populated when it was not. A door slamming somewhere as if in the wind. Maybe a door of a car outside, or the door of another house. Sound could play tricks on you like that.
Rain tapping on the granite windowsills, a sound peculiar to this octagonal and ornate room.
“I wish…I wish there was someone to whom I could…confess,” he said softly. “The main thing for you to know is that you never have to worry anymore. It’s finished, the way I think you wanted it finished. I just wish there was some kind of final absolution. It’s strange. It was so bad when I failed at Christmas. And now somehow it’s harder, that I’ve won. There are some battles you don’t want to fight. And winning costs too much.”
Rowan’s face remained unchanged.
“You want some music, darling?” he asked. “You want to hear that old gramophone? I frankly find it a comforting sound. I don’t think anybody else is listening to it now but you, and me. But I’d like to play it. Let me go get it.”
He stood up and bent down to kiss her. Her soft mouth gave no resistance. Taste of lipstick. High school. He smiled. Maybe the nurse had put on the lipstick. He could barely see it. She looked past him. She looked pale and beautiful and plain.
In the attic room, he found the gramophone. He gathered it up, along with the records of La Traviata. He stood still, holding this light burden, once again entranced by the simple combination of rain and sun.
The window was closed.
The floor was clean.
He thought of Julien again, the instantaneous Julien standing in the front doorway, blocking Lasher’s path. “And I haven’t even thought of you since that moment,” he said. “I guess I hope and pray you’ve gone on.”
The moments ticked by. He wondered if he could ever use this room again. He stared at the window, at the edge of the porch roof. He remembered that flashing glimmer of Antha gesturing for Lasher to come. “Make the dead come back to witness,” he whispered. “That you did.”
He walked down the steps slowly, stopping quite suddenly, in alarm, before he knew exactly why. What was this sound? He was holding the gramophone and the records, and now he set them carefully down and out of the way.
A woman was crying, or was it a child? It was a soft heartbroken crying. And it wasn’t the nurse. She wouldn’t be back for hours. No. And the crying came from Rowan’s room.
He didn’t dare to hope it was Rowan! He didn’t dare, and he knew as well as he knew anything else that it wasn’t Rowan’s voice.
“Oh, darling dear,” said the crying voice. “Darling dear, I love you so much. Yes, drink it, drink the milk, take it, oh, poor Mother, poor darling dear.”
His mind could find no explanation; it was empty and consumed with silent fear. He went down the steps, careful not to make a sound, and, turning, peered through the bedroom door.
A great tall girl sat on the side of the bed, a long willowy white thing, tall and thin as Lasher had been, with reddish-golden locks falling down her long graceful back. It was the girl he had glimpsed below in the street! In her arms the girl held Rowan, Rowan, who was sitting up and clinging to her, actually clinging to her, and nursing from the girl’s bare right breast.
“That’s it, dear Mother, drink it, yes,” said the girl, and the tears splattered right out of her big green eyes and down her cheeks. “Yes, Mother, drink, oh, it hurts but drink it! It’s our milk. Our strong milk.” And then the giant girl drew back and tossed her hair, and gave Rowan the left breast. Frantically, Rowan drank from it, her left hand rising, groping, as