“Of course, I wasn’t thinking,” I say hastily. Billie gives me a look like she agrees with me. She doesn’t think much of you, I think, only it’s Laurel’s voice saying it. She thinks you’re a bad mother for letting someone else watch your baby.
But then Billie smiles and says, “You weren’t to know.” She straightens Chloe’s blanket. “You’d better get her inside before she catches a chill from the damp.”
As soon as she says it I feel the chill in the air. I shiver and turn to go inside, but then I look up at the tower again. If Sky couldn’t get to the top, and Billie has been down here working in the garden, who turned on the light?
AFTER CHLOE IS settled in bed with sturdy couch cushions on either side of her, I search downstairs for a switch that would turn on the light in the tower. I can’t find one, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a remote switch in the main house. Sky Bennett has the air of someone who is used to being in control. Maybe it’s being the daughter of a doctor. I imagine Morris Bennett wielding his power over the fiefdom of Crantham. It was like a little kingdom, the way Sky described it, with its dairy farm and workshops, complete with the feudal manor on the hill and a watchtower to guard against invading barbarians.
Except one of those barbarians had made it past the blockade all the way into the keep. The thought of that madwoman creeping up the spiral stairs in search of her lost baby makes my skin prickle. Even though it was forty-five years ago, somehow now it is paired in my mind with the light going on in the tower. I know I won’t sleep tonight unless I go up there myself to make sure there’s no one there.
I climb the stairs barefoot, trying to make as little noise as possible. I think of what Billie said about the wind playing the stairs like a xylophone. It does feel like I am inside an instrument. I’d felt like this during my pregnancy too, as if my body had been taken over in service of something bigger.
Like demonic possession, Laurel had said, or having that thing from Alien inside of you. Only to me it had felt more like being swept up in a riptide, being carried farther and farther from shore.
When I reach the top I find the room as I left it earlier today. The book is still on the desk, still open to the changeling story. The overhead light has a string suspended from the fixture. It’s not impossible that it’s wired to a switch elsewhere, but that seems unlikely. I pull the string, flooding the room with such bright light that I am momentarily blinded. When I turn it off again it takes several minutes for my eyes to adjust to the darkness and even then a ghostly afterimage of the light blinks in the darkness.
Only it’s not an afterimage. I step closer to the window to make sure and see it again. Down below, somewhere on the grounds of the Crantham Psychiatric Center, a light goes on and then off again. Someone is signaling back.
Daphne’s Journal, July 10, 20—
I should be cleaning up from the dinner party but I have to write this down to figure out what happened.
It all started out really well. I made these fancy cheese sticks from a recipe I got off the Internet and put out candles and the new throw pillows I bought last week with Laurel at Home Goods (funny how even though Laurel is rich she still likes shopping for bargains) so it all looked really nice. Vanessa came early so I could take care of all that while Peter got the grill going. He was in a really good mood. He told me how nice everything looked and I realized that all the tension between us is just from the stress of having a new baby and Peter being worried about money, which is only natural for a man who’s just had a baby. I could tell from how relaxed he’s been about spending money lately that the fund must be doing better, and now that I’ve got Vanessa to help and Laurel to talk to I’m more relaxed too. I think we were just going through a rough patch and that things are going to be all right now.
Vanessa watched the babies so we could just sit and have our drinks and enjoy ourselves. I felt like we were two couples in Mad Men. Laurel wore these really cute capris and a Tory Burch top and sandals that made her look like Betty Draper and for once I didn’t look drab next to her because I was wearing the Comme des Garçons shift I got at Barneys last weekend. It was on sale and I never would have gotten into it a month ago before I lost so much weight.
We started out with Expat cocktails, which Laurel said is what she drank at school in Edinburgh, but then the boys wanted beer and I opened a bottle of Prosecco for Laurel and me.
“Better Prosecco than Prozac!” Laurel said as her toast. Which made Peter laugh even though he used to glare at me every time I took a drink because I’m not supposed to mix alcohol with the medication I’m on. But Laurel says it’s okay to have a drink with the pills she takes, so since I’m taking hers now I decided I could have a few drinks. Besides, Peter was having such a good time he never batted an eyelash. He and Stan really got along. They talked about sports (I had no idea that Peter knew so much about football!) and then work stuff. I thought Laurel would tune out and we’d talk about something else, but it turns out Laurel
