Free Charlotte’s Story by Laura Benedict Page B

troublemaker, sneaking out for dates, smoking in our dorm room. She hadn’t cared. As long as she was having fun, anything was okay with her. After she and Jack married, she calmed considerably. She still loved to throw parties, though she complained that—outside of the theater group—Old Gate was full of boring people who did boring things. I hoped the baby she was carrying would satisfy her need for activity.
    I’d come, as Press had suggested, to see how she was doing. As selfish as Rachel was (I loved her but had no illusions about her ideas of her own importance), even she could not have expected me to visit any sooner after Eva’s death. I sympathized with her, though. She was probably lonesome, just waiting for the baby to come.
    It had been hard to leave Michael after the incident with the railing. But God knew he was safer alone with Nonie than he was with me. Early in the afternoon, as he was about to go down for his nap, I’d wanted to lie down on Eva’s trundle bed until he fell asleep, but Nonie had taken my arm and led me quietly out of the nursery.
    “You don’t want to suffocate him, Lottie. Go and visit Rachel the way you planned. Stay as long as you like. I’ll watch him.”
    What went unspoken was that I was the one who hadn’t been watching that morning.
    A light rain was falling, dropping through the nearby trees like quiet music. Somewhere beneath the fallen leaves, a lone, late-in-the-season cricket chirruped for a mate. There was nothing odd or frightening about the farmhouse. No local legends of ghosts. No unexplained deaths. Even though I was used to Bliss House, I was comfortable here, which was probably why I felt relaxed enough to tell Rachel about seeing Olivia the day of Eva’s funeral. I had to tell someone, and I couldn’t tell Nonie. She would’ve made me lie down until the notion passed.
    “You poor baby. How frightening.” Rachel touched my hand after I’d told her everything. If she noticed that it was trembling slightly, she didn’t say. Behind us in the kitchen, I could hear her new housekeeper, Sarah, readying the tea tray.
    “You told Press, didn’t you? What did he say?”
    “Of course I didn’t tell him. He’d think I was insane. Rachel, you know I wouldn’t make something like that up, don’t you? You can’t tell him I told you, either.”
    Rachel shook her head.
    “I’ve said a hundred times that house is haunted, silly. And how like Olivia to keep hanging around. The old. . . .” She caught herself and gave me a wicked little smirk. “What are you going to do?” Then her face changed and she put her hand to her belly. “The beast is kicking again. Such a little stinker already. Jack’s sure it’s a girl, but I told him I heard that intelligent men father girls. So, it’s pretty much guaranteed to be a boy, right?” She laughed, amused by her own joke. “Want to feel?”
    That was Rachel. Impulsive. Playfully cruel. Maybe she was being genuine, but I was still sensitive because of Eva. I didn’t know what I would do if she gave birth to a baby girl just weeks after Eva’s death. The thought sickened me.
    “No. I—”
    Before I could finish, she grabbed my hand and laid it on the swell of her stomach. She watched my face expectantly as though waiting for me to comment on a fabulous new hat or pair of shoes she’d just purchased.
    Beneath the fabric of her blouse, I felt the rolling pressure of a shoulder or knee of the baby as it squirmed in her womb. She was due within weeks, and the baby was stunningly active, given how large it was inside her. At the same point in both of my pregnancies, my children had been still for such long periods that I’d lain awake at night, alert for any kind of movement and fearful that they had died. Press had humored me, putting his face against my naked belly, listening. Telling me he felt and heard things that I suspected he really hadn’t.
    I nodded and tried a smile. Rachel was satisfied.
    “Do you want