Page 96 of Inferno

Chapter 25

After church the next afternoon, Stan took his sons to the barber shop, which had opened on Sunday to accommodate clients who would be traveling out of town for Thanksgiving. Michael and Marcus, who’d gotten fresh haircuts before leaving Atlanta, had opted to stay at the house with Prissy until the others returned.

While the boys entertained themselves in the basement, Prissy started dinner and washed linens and towels in preparation for the arrival of more houseguests on Tuesday. She had just carried a fresh load of laundry into her bedroom when the telephone rang.

Setting the basket down on her bed, she grabbed the phone from her nightstand and answered, “Hello?”

“Pris?”cameCeleste’s subdued voice.

“Oh, hey, girl.”Prissy smiled ruefully. “I’m glad you called, because I’ve been meaning to get in touch with you—”

“The baby’s gone, Pris.”

Prissy froze with shock, thinking she’d heard wrong. “What did you say?”

“My baby…It’s gone.”

“Oh, my God,” Prissy breathed. Struck by a sudden horrible suspicion, she demanded accusingly, “What did you do?”

When she heard muffled little sobs on the other end, she realized that Celeste was crying. “I had…a miscarriage,” she choked out.

“Oh, God.”Stunned, Prissy sank weakly onto the bed. “I’m so sorry, Cel. Are you okay?”

“No!I’mnotokay! I…I lost my baby. A baby I didn’t evenwant. Oh, God, Pris. I didn’t want her, so God took her from me!”

As Celeste began sobbing harder, tears welled in Prissy’s eyes, blurring her vision. “I’m so sorry, honey,” was all she could say.

“She was a girl, Pris,” Celeste whimpered.

“How do you know?” Prissy whispered hoarsely. “It was too early to tell, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, but Iknowin my heart she was a girl. Shefeltlike a girl to me. And now…now she’s gone. And it’sall myfault!”

“Shhh,” Prissy soothed. “Don’t say that. It’s not your fault.”

“Yes, it is! I didn’t want her, Pris!Youknow that. I was devastated when I found out that I was pregnant, and I thought about getting rid of the baby just about every day. So God decided I didn’t deserve her, and He took her away from me!”

Celeste’s anguished wails tore at Prissy’s aching heart. “Where are you, honey?”

It took several moments before Celeste could compose herself enough to choke out a fragmented response. “I’m at…the condo. Grant went…to the store…to pick up some things…for me.”

“You shouldn’t be alone, sweetie. Not at a time like this.” Prissy stared up at the ceiling througha sheenof tears. “When…when did this happen?”

“Yesterday morning. I came back from the hospital last night. I’ve been in bed ever since.” Celeste inhaled a deep, shuddering breath and released it slowly. “I…I wanted to surprise Grant. I’d bought a beautiful painting of an old farmhouse in Vermont…I knew it would remind him of his childhood. I was trying to hang it on the wall when I felt a sharp pain in my back and stomach. I dropped the painting and fell to my knees. I-I knew something was terribly wrong. By the time I crawled to the bathroom, there was so much blood…So much blood, Pris.”

Prissy was silent as tears rolled down her face, one after another.

“Grant came home and found me lying on the bathroom floor, bawling my eyes out. He was so scared he turned white as a ghost. He took me to the hospital—” Celeste broke off with another choked sob.

Prissy waited for her to continue. Somehow she knew the worst was yet to come.

“The baby wasn’t Grant’s,” Celeste confessed.

Prissy’s grip tightened on the phone. “How do you know?”

“He had a vasectomy four years ago. He doesn’t want any children, but he told me that his thinking at the time was that if he ever met someone he loved enough to marry, he’d be willing to get the vasectomy reversed.”

“Dear God.” Prissy brought trembling fingers to her mouth, stunned by the import of Celeste’s revelation. “So the baby was Sterling’s.”