When I opened my eyes, I was lying on a couch that the moving men had hastily placed in the living room. The first thing I saw was the terrified look in Jack’s eyes. He was bending over me.
My mother’s eyes, so frightened in that last moment of her life—Jack’s eyes were so like Mother’s. Instinctively, I reached up my arm and pulled him down beside me. “I’m okay, pal,” I whispered.
“You scared me,” he whispered back. “You really scared me. I don’t want you to die.”
Don’t be dead, Mom. Don’t be dead. Hadn’t I moaned that as I rocked my mother’s body in my arms?
Alex was on the cell phone, demanding to know why the ambulance was taking so long to arrive.
An ambulance. Ted being carried out on a stretcher to an ambulance . . .
Still holding Jack, I pushed myself up on one elbow. “I don’t need an ambulance,” I said. “I’m all right, really I am.”
Georgette Grove was standing at the foot of the couch. “Mrs. Nolan, Celia, I really think it would be better if . . . ”
“You really must be checked thoroughly,” Marcella Williams said, interrupting Georgette.
“Jack, Mommy’s fine. We’re getting up.” I swung my legs around and, ignoring the wave of dizziness, leaned one hand on the arm of the couch for balance and pulled myself to my feet. I could see the look of protest on Alex’s face, the concern in his eyes. “Alex, you know how busy this week has been,” I said. “I simply need to get the movers to put your big chair and a hassock in one of the bedrooms and let me take it easy for a couple of hours.”
“The ambulance is dispatched, Ceil,” Alex told me. “You’ll let them check you over?”
“Yes.”
I had to get rid of Georgette Grove and Marcella Williams. I looked directly at them. “I know you’ll understand if I just want to rest quietly,” I said.
“Of course,” Grove agreed. “And, I’ll take care of everything outside.”
“Maybe you’d like a cup of tea,” Marcella Williams offered, clearly unwilling to leave.
Alex put his hand under my arm. “We don’t want to keep you, Mrs. Williams. If you’ll excuse us, please.”
The wail of a siren told us that the ambulance had arrived.
The EMT examined me in the second-floor room that had once been my playroom. “You got kind of a nasty shock, I would say,” he observed. “And with what happened outside, I can understand why. Take it easy for the rest of the day, if that’s possible. A cup of tea with a shot of whiskey wouldn’t hurt, either.”
The sounds of furniture being hauled around seemed to be coming from every direction. I remembered how after my trial, the Kelloggs, my father’s distant cousins from California, came to take me back with them. I asked them to drive past the house. An auction was going on at which they were selling all the furniture and rugs and fixtures and china and paintings.
I remember watching them carry out the desk that used to be in that corner, the one that I’d used when I drew pictures of pretty rooms. Remembering how awful that moment had been for that little girl in the car who was driving away with virtual strangers, I felt tears streaming from my eyes.
“Mrs. Nolan, maybe you should come to the hospital.” The EMT was in his fifties, fatherly looking, with a full head of gray hair and bushy eyebrows.
“No, absolutely not.”
Alex was leaning over me, brushing the tears from my cheeks. “Celia, I have to go outside and say something to those reporters. I’ll be right back.”
“Where did Jack go?” I whispered.
“The moving guy in the kitchen asked Jack to help him unpack the groceries. He’s fine.”
Not trusting myself to speak, I nodded and felt Alex slip a handkerchief into my hand. Alone, desperately as I tried, I could not stem the river of tears that poured from my eyes.
I can’t hide anymore, I thought. I can’t live in horror that someone will find out about me. I have to tell Alex. I have to be honest. Better Jack learns about me when he’s young than have the story hit him in twenty years.
When Alex came back, he slid down beside me on the chair and lifted me onto his lap. “Ceil, what is it? It can’t be just the condition of the house. What else is upsetting you?”
I felt the tears finally stop, and an icy calm come over me. Maybe this was the moment to tell him. “That story Georgette Grove told about the child who accidentally killed her mother . . . ” I began.
“Georgette’s spin isn’t the one I heard from Marcella Williams,” Alex interrupted. “According to her, that kid should have been convicted. She must have been a little monster. After she shot and killed her mother she kept on shooting the stepfather until the pistol was empty. Marcella says that it came out in court that it took a lot of strength to pull the trigger of that gun. It’s not the kind with a hair trigger that just keeps going off.”
I struggled free from his embrace. With his preconceived notion, how could I possibly tell Alex the truth now? “Are all those people gone?” I asked, glad to realize that my voice sounded somewhat normal.
“The media, the ambulance, the cop, the neighbor, the real estate agent.” I realized that I was gaining strength from my anger. Alex had been willing to accept Marcella Williams’s version of what had happened.
“Everyone’s gone except the movers.”
“Then I’d better pull myself together somehow and tell them where I want the furniture placed.”
“Ceil, tell me what’s wrong.”
I will tell you, I thought, but only after I can somehow prove to you, and to the world, that Ted Cartwright lied about what happened that night, and that when I held that gun I was trying to defend my mother, not kill her.
I am going to tell Alex—and the whole world—who I am, but I’m going to do it when I am able to learn everything I can about the full story of that night, and why Mother was so afraid of Ted. She did not let him in that night willingly. I know that. So much of the period after Mother died is a blur. I couldn’t defend myself. There must be a trial transcript, an autopsy report. Things I have to find and read.
“Ceil, what is wrong?”
I put my arms around him. “Nothing and everything, Alex,” I said. “But that doesn’t mean that things can’t change.”
He stepped back and put his hands on my shoulders. “Ceil, there’s something not working between us. I know that. Frankly, living in the apartment that was yours and Larry’s made me feel like a visitor. That’s why when I saw this house, and thought it was the perfect place for us, I couldn’t resist. I know I shouldn’t have bought it without you. I should have let Georgette Grove tell me the background of the place instead of cutting her off, although, in my own defense, from what I know now, she would have glossed over the facts even if I had listened to her.”
There were tears in Alex’s eyes. This time it was I who brushed them dry. “It’s going to be all right,” I said. “I promise I’m going to make it be all right.”