Darkness (17 page)

Barbara stared at her husband, her mind racing. Did Amelie know? Was that what had brought on her labor? But then for some reason she found herself focusing in on a single word that Craig had uttered. “Thinks?” she repeated. “You mean he doesn’t know who the body is?”

Craig shrugged helplessly. “Apparently it didn’t look like Coulton, and there wasn’t any ID. But Coulton’s gone, and Tim says that even Amelie admitted the corpse might have been him.”

“Dear God,” Barbara breathed. “If it’s true, then that
baby was all she had.” She forced a smile. “And no matter what I can tell her, she’s going to be devastated.”

She left the house and drove to the clinic, where the evening nurse told her to go directly to Amelie’s room. “How’s she doing?” Barbara asked.

The nurse spread her hands helplessly. “No better or worse than you could expect.”

Barbara took a deep breath, gripped her purse and proceeded to the patient’s wing. From a room at the end of the hall, she heard the sound of a woman sobbing. She hurried toward the room, knowing how Amelie must be feeling.

Exactly as she had once felt herself.

“Amelie?” She spoke the name softly, but there was no response from the distraught woman who lay on her side, her face to the wall, her body shaking with her grief. Barbara crossed the room, dropped into the chair next to the bed, and laid a gentle hand on Amelie Coulton’s shoulder. “Amelie, it’s me. Barbara Sheffield.”

“G-Go away,” Amelie moaned.

“Amelie, I’m here to help you.”

Amelie shrank away from Barbara’s touch. “Cain’t nobody help me,” she sobbed. “My baby … I want my baby.”

“I know,” Barbara crooned. “I know. But sometimes these things happen.”

Suddenly Amelie rolled over, her eyes feverish and angry, fixing on Barbara. “Why won’t they let me have him?” she asked, her voice pleading.

Barbara’s heart wrenched as she drew the young woman into her arms. “Oh, Amelie, I’m so sorry.”

“They won’t bring him,” Amelie sobbed. “How kin I take care of him when they won’t even bring him? He wants his ma!”

Barbara stroked Amelie’s damp and tangled hair. “It’s all right, sweetheart. The Lord’s taking care of your little baby.”

Amelie stiffened in her arms. “No,” she wailed. “It
ain’t so! It’s ’cause of me! They won’t let me have him ‘cause they don’t think I’m a fittin’ mama!”

Barbara felt tears well up in her eyes. It was the same thing that had happened to her, when they’d first told her about her own baby so long ago. She hadn’t believed them—hadn’t wanted to believe them.

Not her little girl—not the little girl she’d planned for since the day she’d found out she was pregnant. It couldn’t have been born dead.

She’d refused to believe it, even when Craig had explained to her what had happened, that the umbilical cord had gotten twisted around the baby’s neck and strangled it even before it could take its first breath.

“No, Amelie,” she said, wondering how she could comfort the girl. “It’s nothing to do with you, darling. It’s just something that happened. And I know how you feel. Really I do.”

Now Amelie drew away slightly, and her eyes gazed into Barbara’s. “No you don’t,” she gasped. “You cain’t. Cain’t nobody understand, less’n it’s happened to ’em.”

Barbara took a deep breath, her own memories, even after sixteen years, bringing tears to her eyes. “It has happened to me,” she said softly. “And I won’t tell you you’ll ever get over it. When my baby died before I even got to hold her in my arms, I wanted to die, myself. And I still think about her every day. I think about what she would have been like if she’d lived, and all the things we would have done together.”

Amelie’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “You’re lyin’ to me, Miz Sheffield,” she said. “Your baby didn’t die. You got a boy sixteen years old, an’ a little girl be seven. You told me last week.”

Barbara nodded. “That’s true, Amelie,” she said. “But Michael isn’t the baby that was born that night. After my little girl died—when I thought I might die, too—Dr. Phillips brought Michael to me. He was two weeks old. Just a week older than my little girl. His mother had decided to give him up, and Dr. Phillips brought him to me. At first, when I saw Michael, I was
sure I couldn’t take him. But then, when I held him, I knew. I needed him as much as he needed me. And I started getting over my hurt. But that first week, before Dr. Phillips brought Michael to me, I just wanted to die. I felt just like you feel now.”

Amelie’s whole body trembled, and Barbara felt her struggling to control her churning emotions. But then she went limp, dropping back against the pillows, covering her face with her hands. “It ain’t gonna happen that way for me,” she said hollowly.

Barbara took her hand. “You don’t know that, Amelie.”

Amelie dropped her other hand to her lap and turned, her eyes—deep pools of grief and hopelessness—fixed on Barbara. “It ain’t going to,” she repeated. “You’re a nice woman, Miz Sheffield. But don’t lie to me. I ain’t educated, but I ain’t stupid, neither. Ain’t no one gonna give a baby to someone like me. I ain’t got no job, an’ my man’s gone, an’ I live in a shack in the swamp. There ain’t no babies for the like of me. And the Lord knew it. That’s why he took away my little boy. Even God don’t got no use for someone like me.”

Barbara sat with Amelie for an hour, doing her best to comfort her, but she knew that the other woman was right. There was going to be no miracle for her, no tiny golden-haired baby placed in her arms to take the place of the child she had lost. Still, she was certain, in time Amelie’s wounds would heal.

At last, exhausted not only by her labor, but by her grief as well, Amelie seemed to drift into sleep, and Barbara turned down the light and made her way out of the room. But as soon as Barbara was gone, Amelie’s eyes opened.

“He ain’t dead,” she whispered into the silence of the empty room. “If he was dead, I’d know it.”

Instead, deep within the innermost reaches of her soul, she knew her baby was still alive.

Alive, and yet somehow already dying, his own soul slowly being stolen away from him.

9

K
elly sat in the den with her parents and grandfather. The television was on, but she wasn’t watching it. She stared out the window, her attention drawn to the gathering dusk outside. The sun had set half an hour ago, and the twilight was just beginning to fade. The noises from the swamp across the canal began to change, growing louder, and the heavy fragrance of jasmine drifted through the open door to the patio. There was a stillness to the warm evening air, and Kelly began to feel as though she would suffocate if she stayed in the den any longer.

And there was Michael.

She was absolutely certain he was coming tonight.

She didn’t know why—he hadn’t even looked at her when she’d suggested it that afternoon. All he’d done was mumble something noncommittal and then ride away.

Yet she
knew
he was coming.

But she didn’t want her father cross-examining him,
acting like he was some kind of jerk who was going to try to rape her or something.

Nor did she want her father demanding to know where they were going, or what they were going to do.

She got up from the sofa, stretching. “I think I’ll go up to my room,” she said to no one in particular.

Her father spoke, his eyes never leaving the television screen. “So early? The movie’s barely started.”

“It doesn’t look very good,” Kelly replied. “I’m gonna listen to some tapes and read.” She kissed her parents good night and hurried upstairs. If either of them came to check on her, it wouldn’t be for at least a couple of hours. By then they’d think she’d gone to sleep.

In her room, she pulled the coverlet off the bed, shoved some pillows under the sheets, then checked how it looked from the door. If no one turned on the light, it would look as if she were in bed, sleeping. Satisfied, she switched all the lights off, leaving through the outside door to the deck at the top of the stairs. She descended the steps carefully, but they were new and solidly built—there wasn’t so much as a squeak to betray her. Coming to the lawn, she darted across to the canal, then turned right, moving a few yards away from her grandfather’s house.

She came to a bench and sat down to wait.

A cloud of gnats hovered just above the surface of the canal, and a school of small fish gathered, leaping up from the water to feed on the tiny insects, their movements leaving the surface covered with an intricate pattern of tiny ripples. A bird dropped down out of the sky, plunging into the water, emerging a moment later with one of the fish in its mouth. Another bird swooped, and then another, until soon there was a small flock of them, feeding on the fish that fed on the gnats. Kelly watched in fascination, until the birds rose as one into the air, as if heeding an unseen signal, wheeled, and soared away, their wingtips barely clearing the tops of the cypress trees. Kelly searched the wilderness across the canal, but could see nothing that might have disturbed
them. Then she heard a noise, a soft puttering that floated above the drone of the frogs and insects.

A boat came around a curve, and Kelly instinctively knew who it was. She stood up from the bench, moving to the water’s edge. A moment later the boat glided to a stop beside her and she recognized Michael in the stern, gazing at her curiously.

“How did you know I was coming?” he asked as she climbed into the dory and settled herself on the center bench.

Kelly shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess I just had a feeling. Doesn’t that ever happen to you? You know what’s going to happen before it does?”

Michael’s brow furrowed slightly. “But I didn’t even know myself, till I left my house.” He hesitated, then went on. “My folks were having a fight.”

Kelly knew without being told that the fight had been about her; she could sense it in the way Michael’s gaze suddenly shifted away. She waited for him to go on, but he didn’t elaborate, merely turning the boat around to go back the way he’d come.

They cruised slowly along the canal, the darkness gathering steadily about them. And yet, despite the coming of the night, Kelly felt no fear. Ahead, a narrow channel veered off to the left, and even before they came to it, Kelly knew Michael would steer the boat into it. A few seconds later, as they passed through the narrows and the overhanging trees closed around them, Kelly felt a subtle change come over her.

She felt safe, as if the swamp itself were somehow nestling her in its arms. The feeling she’d always had in Atlanta—the strange sensation of never quite belonging—was gone. Here, in the swamp, she felt as if she’d come home.

The channel, only a few feet wider than the boat itself, snaked between two islands, then branched.

Again Kelly knew before they arrived at the fork which way Michael would go.

It was, she realized, as if some unseen force, some sentinel neither of them could see, was guiding them.

The boat moved slowly and steadily. As they coursed deeper into the tangled bayous of the marshland, Kelly became aware once more of the nearly inaudible siren song she’d heard last night. She turned, looking at Michael, and found that despite the gloom within the swamp, she could see him clearly.

His eyes, expressionless, were fixed on her, but then she realized that he wasn’t looking at her at all. Rather, he seemed to be gazing beyond her, as if seeing right through her. Saying nothing, he cut the engine and lifted oars from the bottom of the boat. Except for the music of the swamp, they moved forward in silence now.

The eerie strains of the subliminal aria reached deep into her mind, and she responded to its call, letting herself drift with the unearthly music, letting it imbue her with the sense of peace its notes brought.