Emily reached for Caroline’s hand, gripping tight as more perspiration sprang up on her face, her chest heaving as she groaned.
“Shush now. Calm yourself. You must be—” She was going to say strong but stopped herself. That was something her mother would have said.
Since her mother’s passing, Caroline had come to reevaluate so many things, including Emily’s marriage. Anyone could see that she and James were in love, raising a fine family. If Caroline had been wrong about James Van Alen, maybe she’d been wrong about other things, too. Was it the end of the world if Emily had a Vanderbilt at her dinner table, if Charlotte marched in the streets and if Carrie wanted to paint bowls of fruit and anything else that would sit still long enough? What harm would it do to loosen up her hold on them, make room for—
Emily let out a scream, the veins in her neck pulsing.
“Use these,” instructed the midwife, placing the sheets she’d strung through the bedposts into Emily’s hands. “That’s what they’re there for.”
It took another three and a half hours before Emily delivered a healthy baby girl. Helen went downstairs to tell the others the good news while the midwife tended to the baby. Caroline wasn’t sure if Emily was sleeping or just resting, too tired to speak or open her eyes. Her skin was so pale, almost translucent blue.
“Nothing more you can do for her now,” said the midwife, removing the blood-soaked bedsheets, balling them up in her hands. “She needs to get her strength back is all. And you—if you don’t mind my saying—you could use some rest yourself, Mrs. Astor.”
She hated to leave Emily, but the midwife was right. Caroline was exhausted and excused herself. As she stepped out in the hallway, she took a moment to savor the quiet and realized with an overflow of gratitude that she was now the grandmother of six. And Charlotte was due again in the spring. Caroline closed her eyes for a moment; they were dry and burning. She had a stiff neck and a dull headache, too. It had been daylight when she arrived and now the lamps were turned up, flickering shadows across the floorboards. From the hallway window she could see that it was dark outside. She had no idea what the hour was until the grandfather clock at the foot of the stairs chimed ten times. As she made her way closer to the staircase, she heard the others talking down in the sitting room, their voices jovial, light, filled with celebration.
“Mrs. Astor?” The maid stood just outside Emily’s room.
Caroline turned around and froze. Something in the maid’s eyes, in her pallor, sent a jolt through Caroline. She suddenly realized something was missing. The crying—it was quiet. The baby wasn’t crying. The baby. There’s something wrong with the baby. Her heart was pounding. She didn’t remember how she got from the end of the hallway to the bedroom, but as Caroline reached the door, she heard the infant let out a wailing shriek. Oh, thank God. The baby was fine. Everything was fine.
But when Caroline opened Emily’s door and stepped inside, a fresh panic arose. The baby was still crying and yet the room seemed quiet. Too quiet. There was a thickness in the air, a heaviness she couldn’t explain, but it was like moving through quicksand. The midwife was holding the baby. The maid twisted her fingers and lowered her head but not before Caroline saw that her face was damp with tears. That was when the darkness rolled in and the two women faded to the background. Before the midwife said the words, even before Caroline had rushed to her daughter’s side, she knew. Her baby, her Emily, was gone.
* * *
—
No matter how her husband or daughters tried to coax her, Caroline refused to leave Emily’s body. For three days she sat in the parlor with the drapes drawn shut. She had no idea whether it was day or night because every clock throughout the house had been stopped at nine fifty-nine, the exact moment of Emily’s death—just as her mother had done after each one of her children’s deaths. Before Emily was laid to rest, Caroline had taken a snippet of Emily’s hair and tucked it inside a locket that she would wear for the next two years of mourning.
Caroline had insisted on a private funeral. A guest list, more exclusive than the one for her annual ball, was drawn up and notices were hand delivered. “I won’t have my daughter’s funeral turned into a spectacle. This is not going to be a social event where strangers can come and gawk.”
During the service William had sat beside Caroline, a somber expression on his face, eyes straight ahead. She was sure that to some he appeared cold and unfeeling. Caroline might have thought that, too, had he not reached over and skimmed the top of her hand, letting his fingers rest atop hers for just a second or two before that same hand, suddenly clenched, was pressed to his mouth. It was as if he’d tried to gather all his grief inside his fist, too afraid to let it out. He was an Astor man. Astor men didn’t cry, didn’t show emotion, so he dealt with his grief the only way he knew how, and after the burial, he boarded his yacht hoping the sea and enough whiskey would drown his sorrows.
Back at her own home, the dark door badges, indicating to all that the family was in mourning, had already been hanging for Caroline’s mother. Now it was impossible to believe they were hanging for her daughter as well. In the days that followed, Caroline saw what Emily’s death did to her sisters. Emily had died in childbirth, and Charlotte was six months pregnant and terrified. Helen, having lost her sister and best friend, told Caroline she didn’t want to have more children.
“I’ve already discussed it with Rosy,” she said.
“Oh, darling, but just because . . .” Caroline’s words trailed off. She knew what Helen was thinking. There had always been an invisible tether between the two sisters; what happened to one seemed to affect the other. When Emily got a cold, Helen always came down with it, too. When one had a bad dream, the other woke down the hall with a start.
“If this happened to Emily, it will happen to me, too. Rosy and I have been blessed with Tadd and little Helen. We can’t risk having any more children.”
Even Carrie had come to Caroline, tiptoeing into her room barefoot one night, unable to sleep, asking how it had happened, why it had happened—all the questions Caroline had no answers for. So she took Carrie in her arms and held her close, already bargaining with God to spare this one, to spare Helen, Charlotte and Jack, too.
Having covered every mirror in her house, out of respect for the dead, Caroline dressed blindly each day in her heavy black gowns. She spent her time mostly by herself in the library with the curtains closed, the lights dimmed, the logs ablaze in the fireplace. It may have seemed to others that she just sat and stared for hours on end, but what they didn’t realize was that Caroline was hard at work. She was looking and waiting for a sign; the flickering of a lamp, an unexplained draft, the sensation of touch that would send a shiver down her spine. She was waiting to hear from Emily, needing some indication that her daughter was still connected to her, that they could still communicate, that her beautiful girl was at peace.