“I will,” he said. “You’re sure you can stay here alone? What if Eugenia isn’t here?”
“That would be too much to hope for,” she said over her shoulder. Two young uniformed guards were at the gate, and one of them had just unlocked it for her. She gave him a nod as she passed.
When she reached the front door, she put her key into the lock, and was inside within seconds. The door closed as always with a deep, muffled, heavy sound, and she collapsed against it with her eyes shut.
Twelve weeks, that was flat-out impossible! This baby had started when she slept with Michael the second time. She knew it! She knew it as surely as she knew anything else. Besides, there just wasn’t anybody between Christmas and Mardi Gras! No, twelve weeks was out of the question! Crisis! Think.
She headed for the library. They had brought her computer over last night and she’d set it up, creating a small station to the right of the big mahogany desk. She flopped in the chair now, and at once booted the system.
Quickly she opened a file: / WS / MONA / SECRET / Pediatric.
“Questions that must be asked,” she wrote. “How fast did Rowan’s pregnancy progress? Were there signs of accelerated development? Was she unusually sick? No one knows these answers because no one knew at that time that Rowan was pregnant. Did Rowan appear pregnant? Rowan must still know the chronology of events. Rowan can clarify everything, and wash away these stupid fears. And of course there was the second pregnancy, the one no one else knows about, except Rowan and Michael and me. Do you dare ask Rowan about this second …”
Stupid fears. She stopped. She sat back and rested her hand on her belly. She didn’t press down to feel the hard little lump that Dr. Salter had let her feel. She simply opened her fingers and clasped her belly loosely, realizing that it was altogether bigger than it had ever been.
“My baby,” she whispered. She closed her eyes. “Julien, help me, please.”
But she felt no answer coming to her. That was all past.
She wanted so to talk to Ancient Evelyn, but Ancient Evelyn was still recovering from the stroke. She was surrounded by nurses and equipment in her bedroom at Amelia Street. She probably didn’t even know that they’d brought her home from the hospital at all. It would be too maddening to sit there babbling out her heart to Ancient Evelyn and then realize that Ancient Evelyn couldn’t understand a word she said.
No one, there is no one. Gifford!
She went to the window, the very one that had been opened that day so mysteriously, perhaps by Lasher, she’d never know. She peered out through the green wooden shutters. Guards on the corner. A guard across the street.
She left the library, walking slowly, falling into a dragging rhythm almost, though she didn’t know why, except that she was looking at everything that she passed, and when she stepped out into the garden, it seemed gloriously green and crowded to her, with the spring azaleas almost ready to bloom, and the ginger lilies laden with buds, and the crape myrtles filled with tiny new leaves, making them enormous and dense.
All the bare spaces of winter had been closed. The warmth had unlocked everything, and even the air breathed a sigh of relief.
She stood at the back garden gate, looking at Deirdre’s oak, and the table where Rowan had sat, and the fresh green grass growing there, brighter and more truly green than the grass around it.
“Gifford?” she whispered. “Aunt Gifford.” But she knew she didn’t want a ghost to answer her.
She was actually afraid of a revelation, a vision, a horrible dilemma. She placed her hand on her belly again and just let it stay there, warm, tight.
“The ghosts are gone,” she said. She realized she was talking to the baby as well as herself. “That’s finished. We aren’t going to need those things, you and I. No, never. They’ve gone to slay the dragon, and once the dragon’s dead, the future’s ours—yours and mine—and you’ll never even have to know all that happened before, not till you’re grown and very bright. I wish I knew what sex you were. I wish I knew the color of your hair—that is, if you have any. I should give you a name. Yes, a name.”