like this in a row if it meant she could live on to see her son grow up.
When it was over, we returned to Wyndemere, where Mrs. Marlene and some rented help prepared food for those who wanted to continue to offer Dr. Davenport comfort. A few who had met me before and remembered the cover story remarked how terrible I must feel having come to Wyndemere on what were now two very sad occasions. Most everyone saw how I was caring for Ryder during the time he was up and about, and the story line was embellished with the revelation that I would be staying to help care for him for a while at least.
I fed him and put him to bed. By the time I returned to the grand room, most of the mourners had left. Dr. Davenport, a man who had attended the funerals of some of his patients, looked like he was there to comfort others. His lips never trembled; his eyes remained clear and his voice steady. Other people cried around him, but Dr. Bliskin moved them off as quickly as he could, as if he were there to protect his friend.
After everyone left, Dr. Davenport went up to his mother for a while and then to bed. Before he did, however, he asked me to do something that at first actually made me shiver.
“I’d feel more at ease if you would move to Samantha’s bedroom, because it’s right beside the nursery. Would you do that? Mrs. Cohen and the other nurse both have their hands full with my mother. Despite how she could be, she liked Samantha. She once told me that she imagined my little sister would be something like her. My little sister…” he said, his voice drifting off.
He had drunk far more than I had ever seen him drink, and he looked exhausted from that and from containing his sorrow. Inside, his body was surely overflowing with the hidden tears. His face was red from the alcohol he had consumed, but his eyes were darkened with the pain. He waited for my response.
“Of course, if that’s what you think best, Dr. Davenport.”
He nodded, his eyes fixed on me. He turned to walk away, paused, and turned back. “I think I’d be more comfortable now with you calling me Harrison. Samantha was practically the only one left in Wyndemere who did. Even my mother calls me Dr. Davenport sometimes. Lately, more than ever,” he added. He closed and opened his eyes.
“If that’s what you wish, of course,” I said.
He took my hand for a second or two and then went to the stairway. Mrs. Marlene stepped up beside me, and both of us watched him going up, looking like a man twice his age climbing a mountain. Surely, in his mind, he was, I thought.
Mrs. Marlene and I hugged each other. I told her what Dr. Davenport had asked me to do.
She didn’t look surprised. “He’s not a man who’s used to asking anyone for a favor. It’s almost always the other way around. It’s kind of you to do what you can to give him some comfort.”
“Honestly,” I said, “I think I’m doing it to comfort myself, keep myself from believing she’s not here.”
She smiled. “I’m having the same trouble. You wear her perfume, and the aroma lingers in the air, causing me to imagine she has just passed through this room or that.”
“Oh.”
“It’s all right. I’m not afraid to remember.”
We said good night, and I made my way up the stairs. I gathered what I needed from my room and stepped into Samantha’s. It had been prepared the way it always was, everything neatly organized, the bedding crisp and clean, and the curtains drawn closed. She once told me that she didn’t want to be woken by sunlight abruptly. She would smoothly step out of sleep, and then, “as if I controlled day and night, I open my curtains and give the sun permission to be there. You may enter now, Mr. Sun.”
She giggled after saying things like that, but I loved hearing them. For a while, we were truly more like little girls growing up together in Wyndemere. And then, after I became pregnant, we were both forced to be mature and responsible. Maybe that was the real reason she wanted a surrogate to carry her child: she never wanted to give up her own childhood. Harrison Davenport certainly did whatever he could to keep her safely ensconced in