Under the Light - By Laura Whitcomb Page 0,55

to look disappointed. “Maybe I dreamed him.” She lay back down and thought for a moment while I sat on the corner of the mattress. Finally she said, “There’s no one else to talk to. Will you talk to me?”

Yes, I told her.

“If I have a nightmare, will you come to me?”

Yes.

“If I can’t go back to sleep, will you stay with me?”

Yes, yes.

“If I’m lost and I call you, will you come help me?”

Yes. I wrote on her arm, Love.

“Billy doesn’t like me anymore,” she repeated. Tears rose in her eyes.

No, I told her, but gently she shook her head.

“He told me to leave,” said Jenny. “I didn’t even say goodbye.”

I lay my palm on the top of her head and to my surprise, she fell asleep, with the blankets folded across her legs and her pale hand spread out on the bed.

When I had first become Jenny I had been terrified by the sound, but now the rushing water no longer reminded me of death. The shower shut off, Jenny toweled herself dry and rubbed her hair until it stopped dripping. I wondered if she had forgotten about me—she hadn’t addressed me since her nap. All through dinner and the doing of dishes, nothing indicated she was listening for me or wondering where I was. Now she slipped her nightgown over her head, brushed her teeth. I wished I could help her comb out her hair, as I had with my own girl on my knee, but my hand went through the brush.

Jenny chose a comb instead and began to untangle her wet hair. When she paused, I did not know what she was thinking. She didn’t seem alarmed in any way, and neither did she speak to me. She matter-of-factly drew a tampon from a box under the sink. At first this seemed mundane—I had lived with my last host and his wife for long enough to find the concept ordinary. But when Jenny had applied it and dropped the wrappings in the trash basket, she dropped a tissue into the toilet—before it was flushed away I caught sight of blood.

Pain weighty as a brick fell through me. I remembered now that when James and I were in Billy’s and Jenny’s bodies we might have created a child. Of course I would not have wanted Jenny to conceive out of wedlock and at such a young age, but I caught myself on the edge of the tub and wept. Jenny stood again at the bathroom mirror, staring at herself until the comb clattered into the basin. She clutched the counter and began to shake—she lowered herself onto the floor near me as the tears came.

CHAPTER 23

Helen

I WANTED TO REACH FOR HER, but I was too weak.

Almost at once Cathy was in the doorway, gaping at her daughter. Jenny’s cries were hoarse and childlike—her sobs rattled in my own chest.

“What happened?” Cathy demanded.

Jenny couldn’t speak at first. Cathy lowered the lid of the toilet and helped her to sit there. Finally Jenny spoke.

“I’m bleeding.”

“Where?”

“My period,” she told her.

The girl was grieving. But Cathy didn’t embrace her. So I knelt beside Jenny and wrapped my arms around her. We wept together while Cathy hovered, practically twitching with nerves.

“What’s sad about that?” asked Cathy.

“I lost the baby,” Jenny cried.

I know, I whispered.

“What?” Cathy made an exasperated click of her tongue.

“It’s gone and they’ll never be back,” said Jenny.

It’s not your fault, I said. Hush now.

“What baby?” Cathy asked. “Who will never be back?”

“I’m sorry,” Jenny told me. She held her stomach as I stroked her hair.

Cathy’s tone was stern. “Jennifer Ann, you were not pregnant.”

“I don’t know if it was a boy or a girl,” Jenny sobbed.

It was a little girl, I told her.

“That’s absurd.” Cathy stormed out of the room. How shocking to desert her child that way.

I leaned my head against Jenny’s and rocked her. There’s nothing to be done, I told her, and I meant to be comforting, but I couldn’t help imagining what it would have been like if my baby girl had died when she was a newborn. I saw her tiny head in the cradle, her rose-gold fuzzy hair when she was only a few days old—I imagined her skin snow white and my hand lowering to her cheek and finding it ice-cold.

I gasped at the idea. Jenny cried out as if she had been struck, and the tears flowed anew.

Cathy stomped back into the bathroom as if the girl’s grief were a personal