“But I’m in charge until your mother gets home.”
Which, of course, she won’t.
Jayne and Emily stare at the fire in a silence that’s not quite companionable.
“Is Ruth okay?” Emily asks, eventually. “Should we check on her?”
Jayne considers how much to say. It feels horribly exposing to have this relative stranger come into their group, uncomfortable to watch her learn things about them that show them far from theirbest. She’ll spare Ruth. “She’s fine. I think working full-time with a six-month-old baby at home is tiring. She needs this break.”
“She drinks a lot.”
“She’s unwinding.”
Their eyes meet. Jayne looks away first.
“Does she have a problem?” Emily asks.
It irritates Jayne that Emily would ask so boldly. And perhaps it’s the alcohol, this lovely champagne, but she’s also aware of the weariness creeping into her bones and her mind. She’s tired of firefighting, of protecting Ruth and Emily from their fears about the letter, and now of protecting Ruth from Emily. Her patience with the others is running out. She bites the inside of her cheek, half enjoying the heavy pinch of her molars on the fragile membrane.
Emily persists, “I smelled alcohol on Ruth’s breath earlier, when we were upstairs. And it was worse after she shut herself in her room for a while.”
It was a faint ethanol fug that Emily smelled, unmistakable and not to be ignored, in spite of Ruth presenting as both mother-and-homemaker-of-the-year and brilliant doctor. You don’t work in the hospitality industry for as long as Emily has without meeting some very high-functioning alcoholics. Emily knows one when she smells one.
“Ruth’s fine,” Jayne says.
They’re startled by the sound of glass splintering, of Ruth crying out.
A glass of wine has smashed to shards on the kitchen floor. Ruth is on her hands and knees, trying to pick up the pieces, apologizing too much. Spatters of wine drip down a cabinet door.
“Here, let me help.” Emily kneels beside Ruth, afraid that Ruth will cut herself.
Jayne steps away. This job doesn’t need three of them. She finds she feels a little disgusted with Ruth, for having this accident just as Jayne was defending her.
Upstairs, her bag is the only one left on the landing. The others have claimed bedrooms and left her and Mark the smallest one to the side. It’s narrow and dark but will do fine. They don’t need luxuries.
She opens her bag. Most of the clothes it contains are practical items, her only concession to prettiness a rumpled blouse that she thought she might put on for dinner; otherwise, there are technical fabrics, non-iron, thermal layers, in blues, grays, black.
The blouse is a pretty aqua. Mark says it makes her eyes look more blue than gray.
She lays it over the edge of the bed and tries to smooth out the creases with her palms. She’ll wear it tonight. It’s important to make an effort even under the circumstances. To keep the others calm.
I envy Emily, she thinks, the same way I envy Edie. They are both beautiful and I am not. It’s not that she wants to admire herself in the mirror every day. Jayne’s aesthetic sense is not developed enough for that. She wants the power that beauty brings. The way it seems to make a woman sufficient, even without other attributes.
Mark has never admitted that he was in love with Edie at school, but Jayne knows he probably was because of what he omits to say. He talks a lot about how both Toby and Paul fell hard for Edie, even though it would have been a taboo relationship for Paul, as a teacher. He describes how upset both of them were when Rob won Edie, but never mentions his own feelings and shuts down the conversation if Jayne asks about it, with a derisive laugh or a swift change of subject, which doesn’t fool her even a little.
In fact, it makes her wonder if Mark has ever slept with Edie. Though she doesn’t dwell on it. It would have been before they met, after all.
A fierce longing to see him wells up in Jayne. She’s proud that she sees beyond his public persona, to the man beneath, the man she believes needs her as much as she needs him.
She unpacks more clothes, doing it hastily, messily, letting her emotions show because there’s no one to witness them, throwing each item across the bed as if it were garbage, and exhales sharply with relief when her hand reaches the bowels of the bag.
A hard, cold item. A pistol. The feel of it sickens and reassures her. It makes her feel strong, sure of herself. Powerful. She doesn’t pull it out because she doesn’t need to, doesn’t want to. It must stay here until the right time. A smatter of hail strikes the window, and she shivers. It’s drafty up here.
She checks her watch. It’s 18:45. Dusk isn’t supposed to be for another hour but the sky’s so dark, you’d think it had already arrived.
The truth is, that if Ruth or Emily get down to the farmhouse tonight, and try to phone their husbands, the whole shape of the weekend will be changed because Paul’s booked a town car to bring all three of the men up here tomorrow morning. They plan to leave early and to arrive before midday. But if Ruth or Emily get through to them, and if they’re hysterical enough, the men could decide not to bother making the trip and encourage them all to come home, instead. Which would tear Jayne apart. She can’t let it happen. She’s too close now to executing her plan at the burial chamber and the thought of giving it up is painfully disappointing.
She turns on the bedroom light and changes, adding a vest top beneath her blouse because she’s chilly. Her reflection in the window stares back at her. Resolute.
