Constance pulled back tissue. There was a full pause, and then she said with forced animation, “Aren’t they pretty. And very warm too, I imagine.”
It was a pair of black crocheted wool slippers, frankly giddy, with tiny sequinned tassels. You might, thought Elizabeth remotely, as easily imagine Constance in a G-string. She put her hands to cheeks gone suddenly hot and said, “Oh, God. Then what did I give Noreen?”
They were both staring at her, Constance politely puzzled, Oliver incredulous. Even the children had noticed the sudden flat silence and were sitting back on their heels, faces turned up. Oliver looked down at the presents at his feet, and then at Constance, and lastly, cautiously, at Elizabeth. “Had we better just—change?”
“I suppose so.” Her voice sounded harsh and a little desperate. “Go ahead, why don’t you?”
She reached the sanctuary of the kitchen; aimlessly, because she was there, she began to heat the coffee again. What a fool she had been to think that Christmas would go unmarked. And what a twisted, what an utterly malicious thing for someone to do—to scramble the cards on the presents she had wrapped and put away with such care. No damage, no violence. Just one more thing to bring that baffled look to Oliver’s eyes, one more small irrelevance to make her seem—irresponsible. To let her know that she was hated.
Oliver found her there, staring fiercely and blindly ahead of her. He closed the door behind him, and said quietly, “Take it easy. We’re all straightened out now, and no harm done. Come and open your things.”
“In a minute.” Elizabeth turned her back and focussed on the percolator with difficulty, humiliated beyond measure that she should have this defeating impulse to cry merely because Oliver was there. The impulse passed, and she said almost conversationally, “That mix-up was deliberate, you know. I did every card along with the present it went on, just so nothing like this would happen.”
Behind her, Oliver was silent. When she turned he said quickly, “You know the old thing about the best-laid plans. But come on—”
“Wait,” said Elizabeth; because it was Christmas, she went on hoping in spite of Oliver’s eyes. “The cards were all in order when I put the presents in the corner cabinet, Oliver. I know that as well as I know I’m standing here. Whatever happened to them happened after I put them away.”
“The cards weren’t attached,” Oliver pointed out. “Maybe they slithered around—”
“—and slithered back onto other packages, like the well-trained cards they are?” said Elizabeth with scorn.
There was a flat, uncompromising silence. “Look here,” said Oliver, calmly, reasonably. “Are you suggesting that someone deliberately changed them around? I know it’s early for me to be up, but—what’s the point?”
“This,” said Elizabeth, facing him suddenly, “just—this. So that you won’t believe me and we can stand here like this, not liking each other very much. It’s foolproof, isn’t it, Oliver? It happens every time.”
“Elizabeth—”
“Jeep’s crying,” she said unsteadily. “Go and see what’s the matter, can’t you?”
Ten minutes later she was back in the living-room with Oliver and Constance, opening her presents, thanking them both. Oliver had a new watchfulness, and she had to endure her cousin’s gray unwinking gaze. She tried on the wide tailored white-gold bracelet from Oliver and rubbed Constance’s frozen cologne on her wrists and pretended pleasure. Underneath, her anger and shock pounded as steadily as her pulse.
How could they both believe—as they obviously did—that she had mixed up their presents through carelessness? You could only do a thing like that if you were hopelessly drunk, or under the influence of—
Oh, thought Elizabeth, cold and aware.
The six missing sleeping pills. Suppose, for instance, that she had come back, tired and nervous, from a shopping trip; suppose she had taken one or even two of the soothing little things and lain down to sleep. Suppose she had not been able to sleep, in spite of the comfortable haze, and had gotten up to wrap presents instead. . . .
Was that it, was that to be the explanation? Elizabeth was suddenly and furiously angry. To be at the mercy of hidden manipulation, to have her husband and her cousin go along with it so blindly—it was the only excuse she could find, later, for what she did next.
Maire was piling her tiny dishes absorbedly on the floor, chanting the ingredients of a pie. “Some mustard and some sugar and some salt and some applesauce and some Dutch Cleanser, that will be a lovely pie.”
“Lovely indeed,” said Elizabeth. “Shall we ask the oun to dinner, maybe?”
It was as though she had released a spring. Maire dropped the dishes with a clatter and went plummeting into her lap; after one wild glance around her and a gasped “Oun in the house?” she buried her face in Elizabeth’s throat.
What should have been triumph turned instead to shame and a deep worry over the child’s violently pounding heart. Elizabeth stroked the pink-gold curls, hating herself, and said, “It’s all right, darling, there’s no oun. There’s nothing here to hurt you, Maire, you know we’d never let anything hurt you. . . .”
Maire had seen something outside the house, then. And was terrified of its getting in.
She lifted her head above Maire’s, and saw Constance’s concerned face and Oliver’s frown. Oliver said slowly, “I see what you mean. Noreen will be back tonight, let’s not forget to ask her.”
But Noreen wasn’t back that night, or the next day. And Elizabeth, who had thought she was taxed to capacity, began to know a new and sharper fear.
Eleven
THE SNOW BEGAN at a little before three o’clock on the day after Christmas. It was gentle and tentative at first, a faint starring against the down-drawn light. By three-thirty the afternoon was white and whirling with it, and Elizabeth, watching at the living-room windows, found that it gave an edge to her growing uneasiness.
She had wondered
