“I’m pregnant all right,” said Mona. “Everything’s OK. Let’s get out of here.”
“We’re going. Are you unhappy? Perhaps this has all begun to sink in.”
“Of course I’m not unhappy. Why would I be unhappy? I’m thinking about Aaron. Has Michael or Rowan called?”
“No, not yet. They’re probably asleep right now. What’s the matter, Mona?”
“Ryan, chill, OK? People keep asking me what’s the matter. Nothing’s the matter. Things are just happening … awfully fast.”
“You have a very uncharacteristic look on your face,” said Ryan. “You look frightened.”
“Naw, just wondering what it’s going to be like. My own child. You did tell everybody, didn’t you? No sermons or lectures.”
“It wasn’t necessary,” he said. “You’re the designee. No one is going to say anything to you. If anyone were likely, it would be me. But I can’t bring myself to make the requisite speeches, to issue the usual warnings and reservations.”
“Good,” she said.
“We’ve lost so many, and this is a brand-new life, and I see it rather like a flame, and I keep wanting to cup my hands around it and protect it.”
“You’re flipping out, Ryan. You’re really tired. You need to rest for a while.”
“Do you want to tell me now?”
“Tell you what?”
“The identity of the father, Mona. You do plan to tell us, don’t you? Is it your cousin David?”
“No, it’s not David. Forget about David.”
“Yuri?”
“What is this? Twenty questions? I know who the father is, if that’s what you’re wondering, but I don’t want to talk about it now. And the identity of the father can be confirmed as soon as the baby’s born.”
“Before then.”
“I don’t want any needles going into this baby! I don’t want any threat to it. I told you I know who the father is. I’ll tell you when it’s … when I think it’s time.”
“It’s Michael Curry, isn’t it?”
She turned and glared at him. Too late now to field the question. He had seen it in her face. And he looked so exhausted, so without the usual backbone. He was like a man on strong medicine, a little punchy, and more open than usual. Good thing they were in the limo, and he wasn’t driving. He would go straight into a fence.
“Gifford told me,” he said, speaking slowly, in the same druggy fashion. He looked out the window. They were driving slowly down St. Charles Avenue, the prettiest stretch of newer mansions and very old trees.
“Come again?” she asked. “Gifford told you? Ryan, are you OK?” What would happen to this family if Ryan went off his rocker? She had enough to worry about as it was. “Ryan, answer me.”
“It was a dream I had last night,” he said, turning to her finally. “Gifford said the father was Michael Curry.”
“Was Gifford happy or sad?”
“Happy or sad.” He pondered. “Actually, I don’t remember.”
“Oh, so that’s great,” said Mona. “Even now that she’s dead, no one is paying attention to what she says. She comes in a dream, and you don’t even pay attention.”
This startled him, but only a little. He took no offense, as far as she could tell. When he looked at her, his eyes were remote and very peaceful.
“It was a nice dream, a good dream. We were together.”
“What did she look like?” There was really something wrong with him. I’m alone, she thought. Aaron’s been murdered. Bea needs our sympathy; Rowan and Michael haven’t called in yet, we’re all scared, and now Ryan is drifting, and maybe, just maybe, that is all for the best.
“What did Gifford look like?” she asked again.
“Pretty, the way she always looked. She always looked the same to me, you know, whether she was twenty- five or thirty-five, or fifteen even. She was my Gifford.”
“What was she doing?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“I believe in dreams. Ryan, please tell me. Think back-was Gifford doing anything?”
He shrugged, and gave a little smile. “She was digging a hole, actually. I think it was under a tree. I believe it was Deirdre’s oak. Yes, that’s what it was, and the dirt was piled high all around her.”
For a moment Mona didn’t answer. She was so shaken she didn’t trust her voice.
He drifted away again, looking out the window, as if he’d already forgotten they were talking.
She felt a pain in her head, very sharp, through both temples. Maybe the movement of the car was making her sick. That happened when you were pregnant, even if the baby was normal.
“Uncle Ryan, I can’t go to Aaron’s funeral,” she said suddenly. “The car is making me feel sick. I want to go, but I can’t. I have to go home. I know it sounds stupid and self-centered, but …”
“I’ll take you right home,” he said gallantly. He reached up and pressed the intercom. “Clem, take Mona to First Street.” He shut off the intercom. “You did mean First Street, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, I certainly did,” said Mona. She had promised Rowan and Michael she would move in immediately, and she had. Besides, it was more home than Amelia Street, with her mother gone, and her father dead drunk now, only getting up occasionally at night to look for his bottles or his cigarettes, or his dead wife.
“I’m going to call Shelby to stay with you,” said Ryan. “If Beatrice didn’t need me, I’d stay with you myself.”
He was very concerned. This certainly was a whole new ball game. He was positively doting on her, the way he used to do when she was very little, and Gifford would dress her in lace and ribbons. She should have known he would react like this. He loved babies. He loved children. They all did.
And I’m not a child anymore to them, not at all.
“No, I don’t need Shelby,” she said. “I mean, I want to be alone. Just alone up there, with only Eugenia. I’ll be all right. I’ll take a nap. That’s a beautiful room up there, to nap in. I’ve never been there alone before. I have to think and sort of feel things. And besides, the fences are being patrolled by a force equivalent to the French Foreign Legion. Nobody’s going to get in there.”
“You don’t mind being in the house itself alone?”
Obviously he was not thinking of intruders, but old stories, stories that had always excited her in the past. They now seemed remote, romantic.
“No, why should I?” she said impatiently.
“Mona, you are some young woman,” he said, and he smiled in a way that she’d seldom seen him smile. Perhaps it took exhaustion and grief to bring him to the point where something so spontaneous could happen with him. “You’re not afraid of the baby, and not afraid of the house.”
“Ryan, I was never afraid of the house. Never. And as for the baby, the baby’s making me sick right now. I’m going to throw up.”
“But you’re afraid of something, Mona,” he said sincerely.
She had to make this good. She couldn’t go on like this, with these questions. She turned to him and put her right hand on his knee.
“Uncle Ryan, I’m thirteen. I have to think, that’s all. There’s nothing wrong with me, and I don’t know what scared or frightened means, except for what I have read of those words in the dictionary, OK? Worry about Bea. Worry about who killed Aaron. That’s something to worry about.”
“OK, Mona dear,” he said with another smile.
“You miss Gifford.”
“You didn’t think I would?” He looked out the window again, not waiting for an answer. “Now, Aaron is with Gifford, isn’t he?”
Mona shook her head. He was really bad off. Pierce and Shelby must know how their father needed them.
They had just turned the corner of First Street.
“You have to tell me the minute that Rowan or Michael calls,” Mona said. She gathered her handbag and
