his office.”
“I’m sorry. What about your mother?”
“She lives with her sister now. She sold her house and moved to Hudson, New York. My aunt lost her husband years before.” She looked at me like she’d remembered some unspoken instruction. “You haven’t told me much about your own family. How many brothers and sisters do you have?”
“Just an older sister, Julia. She’s a grade-school teacher.”
“Oh. Are you close? I’m an only child.”
“We were, but we drifted apart as we grew older. She saw herself as my second mum or something.”
“How trying,” she said with a sigh. “Is she married?”
“No.”
“Is she as pretty as you?”
“We have different looks,” I said.
She smiled. “That’s one thing I noticed about you from the start.”
“What?”
“Your modesty. Harrison teases me and tells me I need lessons. I know I’m spoiled, but I love it,” she confessed sotto voce. “I think that happens when you’re an only child. I didn’t ask to be spoiled.”
“Interesting how you and Dr. Davenport are both only children,” I said.
She shook her head. “Oh, no. Harrison wasn’t always an only child. He had a sister, Holly. She died very young. She had a heart defect. I think that was what drove him to specialize in cardiac medicine.”
“Oh. I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“How could you? There aren’t any pictures displayed of her in the main part of the house, only in my in-laws’ rooms and Harrison’s bedroom. She died when she was six. He was nine and quite devoted to her. He has a picture of her here on his desk.”
She stepped up to it and held the picture out to me.
“What a beautiful little girl,” I said.
“Yes.” She took it back quickly, giving me the feeling that Dr. Davenport didn’t want anyone seeing it, much less touching it. She set it exactly where it had been.
“We don’t mention her. It resurrects deep sadness. Of course,” she said, gazing back at the doorway, “we’re back in the well of sorrow now, aren’t we? The house will be so dreary, but don’t worry. We’ll brighten things up when we can. Let’s go look at the library and the rest of the house, if you’re not too tired.”
“I’m fine.”
We left the office. I gazed down the dark hallway on my left. There were no lights on, but I could see it continued for some distance.
“What’s down there?”
“Oh, that leads to what was sort of the help’s quarters, but right now no one lives there.”
Dr. Davenport was descending the stairway, talking to a much older man. He looked toward us, but Samantha turned us quickly into the library. It was quite large. She hadn’t been exaggerating about the number of books, either. I perused the bindings of some and rattled off which I had read. She had read none but vowed she would start reading now.
“We’ll have so much time on our hands waiting for your test results and, of course, months and months afterward. Most afternoons, we’ll sit in here, have tea and Mrs. Marlene’s crumpets, if Dr. Bliskin says you can, and read for hours and hours.”
I had the eerie impression that she would hover over me every moment of every day, and not simply to have companionship. I would become a ship carrying her precious cargo. She would watch anything and everything I put in my mouth and keep aware of everything I did that could even slightly jeopardize the pregnancy. I supposed I couldn’t blame her.
“Harrison has come up with a wonderful plan to convince people I was the one who gave birth to our child.”
“Oh?”
“When I start to show, which I hope won’t be until the seventh month, I’m going to leave to visit a college friend of mine in Switzerland.” She leaned toward me. “That’s who you’ll be if anyone sees us these first two weeks. That makes it logical. I’ll leave, but I won’t stay away for two months. I’ll return secretly when you’re close to delivery. Isn’t that all brilliant?”
“What do you mean when you say ‘when I start to show’?”
“Oh. Well, I’ll have to mimic you, won’t I? Whatever you experience, I’ll experience, or pretend to, I mean. I’ve got to think like a pregnant woman, so when Harrison and I go out, people who meet us will be convinced I have a baby on the way.”
“Where did you go to college? In case someone asks me.”
“Bennington in Vermont. I know. We were in plays together,” she added.
“Plays?” I smiled to myself.
“Does that upset you?”
“No. I was just