Taltos (Lives of the Mayfair Witches #3)(55)
Author: Anne Rice

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 prepared to jump out. “And … and kiss Bea for me … and … Aaron.”

“I will,” he said. “You’re sure you can stay here alone? What if Eugenia isn’t here?”

“That would be too much to hope for,” she said over her shoulder. Two young uniformed guards were at the gate, and one of them had just unlocked it for her. She gave him a nod as she passed.

When she reached the front door, she put her key into the lock, and was inside within seconds. The door closed as always with a deep, muffled, heavy sound, and she collapsed against it with her eyes shut.

Twelve weeks, that was flat-out impossible! This baby had started when she slept with Michael the second time. She knew it! She knew it as surely as she knew anything else. Besides, there just wasn’t anybody between Christmas and Mardi Gras! No, twelve weeks was out of the question! Crisis! Think.

She headed for the library. They had brought her computer over last night and she’d set it up, creating a small station to the right of the big mahogany desk. She flopped in the chair now, and at once booted the system.

Quickly she opened a file: / WS / MONA / SECRET / Pediatric.

“Questions that must be asked,” she wrote. “How fast did Rowan’s pregnancy progress? Were there signs of accelerated development? Was she unusually sick? No one knows these answers because no one knew at that time that Rowan was pregnant. Did Rowan appear pregnant? Rowan must still know the chronology of events. Rowan can clarify everything, and wash away these stupid fears. And of course there was the second pregnancy, the one no one else knows about, except Rowan and Michael and me. Do you dare ask Rowan about this second …”