“Is he hurt?” Sylvia asked.
“Go look after Adelle,” I said. I could hear the baby crying. It was the loudest she had cried yet. Maybe she sensed that her real father was gone. “Go on, Sylvia.”
“Yes,” she said, and walked back up and to her room. “Adelle . . .”
I stood and looked down at Arden. Perhaps I was in shock, because I didn’t cry. I should have cried. I should have been screaming his name and begging him to be alive. Memories of how kind and loving he had been to me when I was young and just emerging from Whitefern were pushing away the anger and disappointment I had just felt. There had been wonderful smiles and laughter between us, too. They didn’t want to be buried.
I sat on a higher step and continued to gaze at him. Sylvia came to the top of the stairs again, this time with Adelle in her arms. The baby was no longer crying.
“Did I hurt him?” she asked.
“No, Sylvia. He hurt himself.”
I looked around at the dark house. Whitefern had done it again, I thought. Whitefern had exacted its revenge. The ghosts were gathered, whispering to one another and looking at Arden.
Papa, I thought. Where are you?
He was here; he was with us. I stood up again and stepped around Arden’s body.
“Where are you going, Audrina?” Sylvia asked.
“To warm Adelle’s bottle. Then I have to call an ambulance for Arden. You can wait in your room.”
“I can warm the bottle,” she said.
“No, I don’t want you or the baby down here until this is over,” I said. “Just wait in your room. Please, Sylvia.”
“I’ll sit in the rocking chair,” she said. She said it as if that would make everything better again.
“Yes, go sit in the rocking chair,” I told her, and went to put on lights in the house.
I called for the ambulance. Then I went up and handed Sylvia the bottle and let her feed Adelle while she held her in the rocking chair. It had never seemed more appropriate.
“Sylvia, the ambulance is coming, and with it will be policemen who will want to know what happened to Arden,” I began.
“I pushed him,” she said.
“No. You reached out to help him because you saw he was going to fall backward. Just like you helped Papa, remember?”
“Yes,” she said, smiling.
“Arden drank too much alcohol, Sylvia. It made him dizzy. That’s what happened, okay?”
She nodded and went about feeding Adelle. I could only hope that she would remember what I had told her to say. It would obviously be so much easier than having to explain why we had argued, how Arden had come up after me, and how Sylvia had instinc
tively come to my defense.
Less than half an hour later, the ambulance arrived, with a police patrol car behind it. The paramedics rushed in when I opened the door and pointed to Arden.
The two policemen looked terribly suspicious. How could I blame them? Another death at Whitefern was surely at the forefront of their thoughts.
One of the paramedics confirmed that Arden was dead. “Looks like a broken neck,” he said.
“Don’t move the body yet,” the taller of the two policemen ordered. “We have a detective on the way.” He turned to me. I was standing with my hands clasped and resting on my breasts. I was sure I appeared to be in shock. I felt I still really was.
“Can you tell us what happened here?” the shorter policeman asked.
“We were going to bed,” I said. “My husband had been out to dinner with some clients. I think he had too much to drink at dinner, but he drank some more brandy when he got home. I pleaded with him to stop drinking and just go to bed, and finally we set out to do so. He was walking behind me. I thought he was okay. My sister came out. She’s watching the baby in her room for me right now. She was the one who screamed that Arden was losing his balance. I turned. She reached past me to grab him, but he fell back and flipped over and over, until he landed like this.”