I knew I should obey immediately, but I was paralyzed by the unnaturalness of the scene. I had to see. Had to know.
The carriage belonged to close friends of Press’s, Zion and Helen Heaster, an older couple who had retired to Old Gate after living in New York City for most of their lives. Zion was a playwright, Helen an actress who had started out as a Ziegfeld girl and later became famous—or so Press had told me—for playing Lady Macbeth. I rarely saw the two of them; but Press saw them often, as Zion was the unofficial head of the local theatre group he and Rachel and Jack belonged to. If they were badly hurt, Press would be devastated.
Perhaps it was the heady, oppressive heat of midday, or the terror of the horse that filled me with sudden dread, but I had a terrible feeling that Zion and Helen were already dead. That the accident had happened on the day of Eva’s funeral somehow made it seem even more likely to me. First Olivia, and now three more deaths so close together. How much were we supposed to bear?
Had Michael and Nonie made it safely to the house? What if the horse had bolted in front of my father’s car?
In the distance, I heard more car doors slamming. Voices.
What is it? What can it be? Why are we stopped?
Farther up the lane, the guests who had arrived but hadn’t yet gone inside the house were wandering back toward the accident. They were going the wrong way, and I knew Press was expecting me to head them off. Tearing myself away, I walked toward one of the groups of women gathered in the lane, well away from the men and the damp grass.
Rachel, immediately recognizable in a feather-trimmed black hat, black silk swing top, and narrow skirt, saw me and broke off from the group. No matter that she was halfway through her ninth month of pregnancy—she always looked as though she’d stepped out of the pages of Vogue or Harper’s Bazaar.
“Oh, Charlotte. They’re saying something spooked the horse. It nearly strangled itself.”
I touched her hand. “Rachel, you know it’s Zion and Helen in the carriage?”
Rachel’s brown eyes widened. She started past me toward the carriage, but I wrapped my hand around her arm before she could get away.
“Oh, God. It can’t be them! Helen said they were taking the car.” As she strained toward them, she almost pulled me off my feet. I was stronger and wouldn’t let her go.
“There’s nothing we can do. Let Press and the men handle it.”
“But Helen!” Her voice broke in a sob. Rachel was as close to the Heasters as Press was, almost as close to Helen as she was to her own mother. “Do you think they’re dead? Oh, God, what if they’re dead?”
Now the people near us were staring at Rachel instead of the carriage.
It was a strange role reversal. Rachel was usually the brave, confident one of the two of us, always ready with advice on how to handle Olivia or keep Press happy. It was the second time in a week I’d seen her cry—the first was as she’d knelt beside me the day Eva died. As I drew her closer to me, I felt the violent shaking of her childlike shoulders. Jack had even told her that she should stay home from the funeral, that the upset wasn’t good for the baby she was carrying. I looked around but didn’t see him. Rachel rarely listened to him, anyway.
I knew Press wanted me to get everyone up to the house, but I had to know if Zion and Helen were still alive.
Press was lifting aside the carriage’s broken door. His face, which he had so carefully shaved that morning, dripped with perspiration. When the door was open all the way, one of the other men held it back, and Press thrust one arm and much of his upper body into the carriage’s interior. The crowd was silent.
Press was an actor, and a pretty good one—oh, yes, a very good one. I’d seen him onstage in community theatricals: Our Town, Pygmalion, The Merry Wives of Windsor. At first it had been hard to reconcile the man I saw every morning with the man in false beards and heavy makeup who showed up as Falstaff or the obstreperous Henry Higgins. It wasn’t just his face that changed, but the way he walked, and his gestures. When we traveled to see plays in D.C. or New York, I watched a change come over him as his eyes followed the actors. He had a hunger for the stage, a hunger to be someone else. I couldn’t help but think he imagined himself to be onstage that day.
When he looked up from the interior of the carriage, darkness like a shadow crossed his face. But there was no movement in the russet oak leaves hanging overhead or in the near-cloudless sky. I held my breath, just like everyone else who was waiting. We were rapt, and during those few seconds he was the center of our world. He lowered his eyes and slowly shook his head. As though on cue, a man shouted “No!” and a murmur of dismay rippled through the crowd.