The Death of Jane Lawrence(100)

But she was sure she would have known. If they were dead, she would have been sent a letter, by … by … someone. By nobody, her thoughts whispered. Nobody else connects you to them. You left, and now they are gone. They had been her world, but she had been only a small part of theirs. Fifteen years of guardianship where she had never demanded their attention, compared to four decades of the Cunninghams raising their own children and building Mr. Cunningham’s career—it wasn’t enough. She had squandered so many chances.

Why did that hurt so much? Why had standing in their empty house hurt so much? She had chosen to relate as she had to them. She had decided to spare them her expense in Camhurst. She had been a good child, an easy child. She could understand pain from grief, but not from the distance between them.

“Jane,” Mr. Cunningham said, pulling her back to the present so firmly she swayed where she sat. “Come sit with us.”

Jane turned. They were real in every detail, down to every age spot, every wrinkle. Jane knew the bobbin lace on the collar of Mrs. Cunningham’s gown. She knew the smell of the cedar blocks Mr. Cunningham’s jacket had been packed with during the summer months.

Mrs. Cunningham came to the very edge of Jane’s circle, frowning down at her. “Why are you on the floor, dear? Come, get up, let me have a look at you. Tell me what has happened.”

“He’s dead,” Jane whispered, and then began to laugh, helplessly, hysterically. “You’re dead.”

But that, too, seemed wrong. This all seemed wrong. What could have killed the Cunninghams, so soon after they had left for Camhurst? Even illness rarely moved so quickly. A carriage accident? A robbery gone wrong?

“Jane!” Mrs. Cunningham chided. “You’re being foolish. Are you ill? Are you feverish? You should be in bed.”

“You cannot be here.” She recited the facts she knew. “You went away, to Camhurst—”

“Can we not visit you? Come, at least sit with me a moment.” She reached out a hand. Jane stared at it.

Yesterday, in the study, she had dreamed of this. Oh, not the Cunninghams; she’d thought to summon her mother, indistinct and lovely. But the Cunninghams would do just as well, now that they were just as deceased. Jane could reject their comfort and feel her shame, or lie down in the warm sunlight of their regard until she, too, starved.

It was an easy choice.

Jane reached across the chalk line and took Mrs. Cunningham’s hand. The walls she had built up came crashing down in a shiver inside her skull.

Mrs. Cunningham smiled and drew her to the couch. Her skin was cool, as if she’d been walking in the autumn air, and her cheeks were pink to match. She felt solid.

“You look well,” Mrs. Cunningham said once they were seated, heedless of Jane’s turmoil. She settled a hand onto Jane’s belly, where the seams of her dress strained, unable now to contain the knotted swelling. “To be with child so soon after your marriage is a lucky thing.”

“No,” Jane said, heart aching. “No, you misunderstand.”

Augustine hadn’t said a word about it, she realized. She should have known then that something was wrong. He would have seen it, would have tended to her, fussed over her, whether he had been a ghost or living. So what, then, had he been? She felt sick.

“Really, Jane? You’d reject this blessing?” Mr. Cunningham said from where he stood beside the fireplace.

She shook her head, confused. “That’s not—”

“You marry a man, and expect him to never ask children of you? Do you think yourself so far above all of us, that you can reject our kindness in favor of marriage, and reject your marital duties in favor of self-satisfaction?”

“What do you mean?” Her brow tightened, confusion deepening. He had never been cruel to her, not even when, as a child, she’d lashed out, still heartsore and shell-shocked. The Cunninghams had been firm, kind, and distantly warm. Even in her childish imaginings, inventing reasons to hate them before she learned to cherish them, she had never imagined Mr. Cunningham being cruel. These words, they didn’t sound like his at all.

But these were their souls. Orren and Abigail had accused her only of what she knew herself to be guilty of, what they themselves had seen, somewhere across the boundary of death.

And yet something was wrong. She was sure of it. Why were they here?

“Why did you stay in Larrenton, if this is not what you wanted?” Mrs. Cunningham asked, voice softer, gentler. “We know it would have been hard for you, to go back to Camhurst, but if you had been with us, you could have gone to university. Created something new for yourself. Used your brilliance, instead of bartering it for a quiet life you didn’t fully understand.”

Her head ached. They spoke of things Jane had kept from them, and things she had thought after they had gone, wishes inspired by the derision of Augustine’s colleagues. It made no sense, that they had suspected it all.

“I thought you’d at least pretend to be sociable.” Mr. Cunningham sighed. “I thought we taught you better than this.”

And Jane went very still, a field mouse who had seen the shadow of a hawk.

The Cunninghams had never known the deepest interior of her mind, where she had taught herself to make eye contact and to handle small talk, and to smooth over how indelibly odd she was. Everything they said was an accusation she had leveled at herself at her most unkind. They could not know that. They were pulling it from her thoughts, buried thoughts, digging deep into her skull.