The Deep End of Fear

12 Years Earlier

I huddled under the blankets in the backseat of the car. Wind rocked the body of our old Ford. Sharp needles of sleet beat against the windows.

"Mommy?"

"Hush, Katie."

I raised my head, peeking out of the blankets, wondering where we were going in the middle of the night. I could see nothing, not even the headlights of our car.

"Did you fasten Katie's seat belt?" my mother asked.

"She was asleep," my father replied, "so I laid her down on the seat."

"Luciano!" My mother always used his full name when he had done something wrong. "Stop the car."

"Not yet. We haven't cleared the estate. Do you see the main road?"

"I can't see a thing," my mother replied tensely. "Put on the headlights."

"And let everyone know we're leaving?"

My mother sighed. "Quickly, Katie, sit down on the floor. All the way down."

I wedged myself into the seat well, the space between the rear seat and front, where people place their feet. "Why are we leaving?"

There was no answer from the front of the car.

"When are we coming back?"

"We're not," my father said.

"Not ever?" I had liked it at Mason's Choice. "But, I-" "There's Scarborough Road," my mother interrupted.

The car turned and headlights flicked on.

"I didn't say good-bye to Ashley."

For a moment all I heard was sleet and wind.

"Ashley isn't here anymore, remember?" my mother prompted quietly. "Ashley has gone to heaven."

That was what everyone said, but I had trouble understanding how it could be so. I still heard her and played with her. Sometimes I saw her by the pond, though Mommy said they had pulled her out of it. Ashley always scared me a little, but on the big estate there were no other children to play with, and that had made her my best friend. "I want to say good-bye to Ashley," I insisted.

"Luke! In the mirror, behind us!" My mother sounded panicky, and I stood up in the seat well to see.

"Get down, Katie!" my father shouted. "Now!"

I quickly dropped between the seats. Daddy sometimes shouted at the people who hired him to paint portraits of their pets. He'd scream at his paintings, too, when he got frustrated, but never at me. Our car suddenly picked up speed. I pulled the blanket over my head.

"There's ice on the road," my mother warned.

"You don't have to tell me, Victoria."

"We shouldn't have tried this."

"We had no choice," he said. "Do you remember the cutoff?"

"The one that runs by the Chasney farm-yes. About a hundred meters before it, there's a sharp curve."

My father nodded. "We'll get around it, I'll cut the lights, and he won't see us take the cutoff."

Our car picked up speed.

"But the ice-" "Katie, I want you to stay on the floor," my father said, sounding more stern than I had ever heard him. I hugged my knees and my heart pounded. The car motor grew louder. The wind shrieked, as if we were tearing a hole in it by going so fast.

"Almost there."

I wished I could climb up front and hold on to Mommy.

Then the car turned. Suddenly, I couldn't feel the road beneath us. The car began to spin. Mommy screamed. I felt her hands groping behind the seat for me. I couldn't move, pinned against the backseat by the force of the rotating car.

We came to a stop.

"Katie-?"

"Mommy-" The stillness lasted no more than a few seconds. The next sound came like thunder-l could feel as well as hear it.

"Behind us, Luke," my mother gasped.

Yes.

"Oh, God!" Her voice shook.

I jumped up to see what was behind us, but my father drove on. All I could see were darkness and a coat of ice halfway up the rear window of the car.

We turned onto another road.

"I've got to keep going, Vic. For Katie's sake."

My mother's head was in her hands.

"If we go back and he isn't injured, we'll walk into a trap. If he's badly hurt, there is not much we can do. The gas station farther up has an outside pay phone. It's closed now-no one will see us. I'll call in the accident."

My mother nodded silently. For a moment I thought she was crying. But she never cried-my father was the emotional one.

"What happened, Daddy? Did somebody get hurt?"

My mother raised her head and brushed back her long yellow hair. "Everything's all right," she said, her voice steady again. "There-there was a herd of deer by the side of the road, and your father was trying to avoid them. You know how they do, Katie, bolting across before you can see them. Some of them crashed into the wood. One went into the little dip next to the road."

"Did the deer get hurt?" I asked.

"I'm not sure," my father answered.

"Of course not," my mother said quickly, giving me the answer I wanted to hear but didn't believe. She unfastened her seat belt and knelt on the seat, facing me, to buckle me into my restraint.

My father drove more slowly now. There was a long silence.

"Victoria," he said at last, "I'm sorry."

She didn't reply.

Sorry for what? I wondered, but I knew they wouldn't tell me.

A chilly loneliness had settled around me, the way a winter fog settles in the ditches along the roads on the Eastern Shore. The silence deepened as we drove north to Canada and, a few days later, flew to England, my mother's birthplace. My mother and father shared a secret-I had known that from the day Ashley died. It was a secret that I was left to discover twelve years later, after both parents had disappeared from my life.

My dearest Kate.

You are the most wonderful daughter a man could have. You can't possibly know how much I love you. I fear that the last few months of my illness have been very hard on you. and I hesitate to ask any more of your generous heart. Still, I must leave you with two requests.

First, do not forget that your mother loves you as much as I. I know you don't believe me-I see it in your eyes each time I say this-but I was the reason your mother left. It broke her heart to be separated from you. Below is the name and number through which you can contact her. Please do so, Kate.

Right, Dad, I replied silently to his letter, as soon as the, sky falls.

Victoria, as I now refer to my mother, had left Dad and me the day after we arrived in England-left without explanation, simply walked out the door while I was sleeping. I was five years old then and needed her desperately. At seventeen, I did not. I glanced back down at the letter.

Second, in the chimney cupboard. I have left a ring that belongs to Adrian Westbrook of Wisteria, Maryland. I took it the night we left the estate.

Please return it.

I frowned and refolded the letter, as I had done many times in the three months since Dad had died. His second request, and the brilliant sapphire and diamond ring I had found in the cupboard, baffled me. In his career as a painter of animal portraits-horses, dogs, cats, birds, lizards, snakes, leopards-my father had worked for fabulously wealthy people, with access to the homes and estates where these pampered pets lived; as far as I knew, he had never stolen anything. I did not look forward to presenting this piece of missing property to Adrian Westbrook or to seeing a place that I connected so strongly with my mother. But I had to honor at least one of my father's final requests.

I carefully returned the letter to my travel bag and paced the room I had taken at a bed-and-breakfast in Wisteria, Maryland. After airport security, a sixhour transatlantic flight, customs, and a two-hour ride in an airport shuttle to the Eastern Shore town, I longed for a decent cup of tea, but the sooner I got this over with, the better. I headed downstairs to a small room equipped with a guest phone and punched in the number I had found in an Internet directory.

My call was answered on the third ring. "Mason's Choice."

For a moment I was confused, then I remembered that that was the name of the estate where Ashley had lived.

"May I speak with Mr. Westbrook, please, Adrian Westbrook."

"Who is calling?" asked a woman with a deep voice.

"Kate Venerelli."

"Excuse me?"

Aware that years of schooling in England had given me an accent more clipped than Americans were accustomed to, I repeated my name slowly.

"I'm sorry. Mr. Westbrook is not available."

"When may I call back?" I asked.

"You may leave a message with me now."

I hesitated. An image of a person I had long forgotten formed in my head: a cap of straight gray hair, a pale stone face, a mouth and forehead carved with disapproval. Mrs. Hopewell. It seemed as if the housekeeper should be 103 by now, but of course, when you are five, anyone older than your parents seems ancient to you. She was probably in her sixties.

"Thank you," I said politely, "but I would like to speak to Mr. Westbrook myself."

Click.

I stared at the phone-she had hung up. Quickly I dialed the number again. "May I speak with Mrs. Westbrook, please?" I knew from Dad's clients that rich old men always had wives, usually young, pretty ones.

"Who is calling?"

"Kate Venerelli." There was no reason to lie-I was certain the housekeeper took note of the number displayed on her phone and realized the same person was calling.

"Mrs. Westbrook is not available," Mrs. Hopewell replied.

"Who is it?" I heard a younger woman ask in the background.

"Someone selling something, a marketing call," the housekeeper said, just before the click sounded again in my ear.I put down the phone. My reluctance to carry out my father's request had melted in the low heat of Mrs. Hopewell's voice. I strode down the hall, hoping to learn something current about the Westbrook from the owner of the Strawberry B&B.

I found Amelia Sutter in the kitchen, finger-deep in bread dough. She was very glad to talk, but I discovered that conversation with her was harder to steer than a flock of birds. It took twenty minutes of kneading to learn that Adrian had married a young woman named Emily and now had a little boy. Both of Adrian's grown children, Trent Westbrook and Robyn Caulfield, had divorced and never remarried. Of course, there was much more to those stories, details worthy of a racy novel, but those were the only statements made by Mrs. Sutter that I believed to be facts.

As her stories wandered on to other subjects, so did my attention. I tried to think of a reason to show up at the gates of Mason's Choice, some excuse that would get me past Mrs. Hopewell. Until I understood why my father had taken the ring, I wasn't going to reveal it to anyone but Adrian Westbrook. I stared down at a college newspaper lying open on the kitchen table. cars towed, a headline read. That was an idea-l could pretend I had a disabled car and needed help. I continued scanning the page, my eyes stopping at an ad with a familiar phone number-the one I had just called.

Wanted: tutor for 7-year-old child. Duties incl. transportation to school, homework, & some rec time. Excellent job for college student. Room, board; salary dpdt. on experience.

My ticket in! I thought, jumping up so fast, I startled Mrs. Sutter. I didn't actually want the job-l had plans to tour cross county before attending universitybut an interview would get me onto the estate, inside the house.

"Oh, there I've gone and offended you." Mrs. Sutter sighed. "I forgot how proper you English folks are."

"I'm American," I said, bluntly enough to prove it, then remembered my manners. "Would you excuse me? There is something I need to do-to do as soon as possible."

I hurried upstairs and grabbed my coat. Certain that the vigilant Mrs. Hopewell wouldn't answer a third call from the same number; I headed out in search of a pay phone.

At 4:20 that afternoon, about ten kilometers outside of town, Mrs. Sutter-Amelia, as she had asked me to call her-pulled up to the iron gates of Mason's Choice.

They swung inward, triggered by an electric eye, an orb less discriminating than Mrs. Hopewell's. My plan had worked. Having used a phone at the local college, a bad French accent (I was afraid my American Southern wouldn't convince a native), and a polite request to speak to Emily Westbrook, I had gotten past the housekeeper.

My job interview was at 4:30, but the gloomy weather of early March made it appear later than that. A chilly fog had settled over the Eastern Shore, turning even the small wood that shielded the estate from Scarborough Road into the forbidding forest of a fairy tale. Massive vines and dripping black branches crowded close to both sides of the private road that led to the house. Amelia sped up, as if eager to get through the wood. A broken branch whisked across the windshield. Past the wood was an open area of lawn, bounded by a long hedge, perhaps three times the height of an adult, with a keyhole cut through where the entrance road passed. As a child I had found this living wall rather menacing; it didn't seem much friendlier now.

Then I remembered and turned my head quickly to the right. "Amelia, could you stop for a moment?"

"Yes, of course, dear. What is it?" she asked.

"A cemetery."

She strained to see. Had I not already known it was there, I wouldn't have noticed it-the wrought-iron fence and weeping angels. It had been foggy like this the week Ashley had fallen through the ice. After her funeral, I had visited her grave with my mother.

I remembered gripping my mother's hand as I watched the wisps of mist slip between the leaning stones. Ashley had claimed that the ghosts in the graveyard whispered to her; even when we weren't together, she said, the spirits watched me and told her what I did.

I shook off the eerie memory. Every day had been exciting with Ashley, but she had also frightened me. That summer, autumn, and winter, she and I had had the entire estate for our playground-gardens, pool, docks, play equipment, an old barn, and deserted outbuildings. She had loved daring me to try the forbidden. Spoiled and hot-tempered, and two years older than I, she had known how to scare me into doing what she wanted.

"Thanks, Amelia," I said, turning back. "We can keep going."

Passing through the hedge, we drove through the formal gardens bordering the long drive. The flowering plants were clipped clean to the ground, and the boxwood was perfectly manicured in patterns that looked as if they had been formed by big biscuit cutters. The house lay straight ahead.

Like many homes built in the American Colonial period, it was brick and impressive in its simplicity. The house rose three stories, the third being a steep roof with five dormer windows across. A wing extended from each side of the main house. Structurally, the wings were smaller versions of the house, turned sideways and attached to it by small brick sections that had roofs with dormers as their second story. There were no outside shutters, which made the house's paned windows seem to stare like unblinking eyes. Its red brick was stained dark with moisture.

Amelia stopped the car and craned her head to see the house. "I've changed my mind. I don't want to live here after all," she said, as if she had been seriously considering it. "If I owned this place, I'd sell it and buy myself three cozier homes."

"I think it has a view of the bay from the other side."

"I'd never see it," she replied. "I'd always be glancing over my shoulder. I didn't realize there was a graveyard here."

"Most old estates have them."

"I'd dig it up."

I laughed. "Then you certainly would have something ghastly standing at your shoulder, looking for a new place to rest," I said as we climbed out of the car.

Fortunately, an older gentleman, an employee I didn't know, answered the door. Mrs. Hopewell might have recognized me, at least, recognized a young "Victoria." During the last year I had cut my hair several times, starting with it well below my shoulder, shortening it to shoulder-length, chin-length, and finally having it snipped to wisps of gold that barely made it to the tips of my ears. I told Dad it was "sympathetic hair," for he was bald from the cancer treatments. But actually, it was my resemblance to the woman I remembered from twelve years back, her green eyes and cascade of blond hair, that had motivated me.

Amelia was asked to wait in the library on the left side of the spacious entrance hall, and I was escorted to an office on the right. A few moments later, Emily Westbrook entered. She was a slender woman with strawberry blond hair-probably tinted, for her eyebrows were much redder. She moved quickly, elegantly, as if she had been raised on ballet lessons.

We sat in chairs placed by a large, mahogany desk. While she studied my hastily created resume, I studied the family pictures displayed on the fireplace mantel, curious to see the people whom I knew only through a child's eyes. I spotted Adrian's children, who were close to my parents' age, now early to mid-forties: Robyn in her horse-show gear, and Trent on a sailboat. Emily Westbrook and a baby-perhaps the little boy in need of a tutor-were in a large photo at the center of the mantel. Brook Caulfield, Robyn's son, who I thought was the same age as his cousin Ashley-two years older than l-sulked in a photo taken during those "wonderful" years of early adolescence. We all have those photos-l burned mine. Adrian, handsome, physically fit, looked nearly the same in all of his pictures, except his hair had turned from black to silver-streaked to pure white.

I checked the pictures on the desk and those placed on shelves, disappointed that there were none of Ashley. Perhaps the family had found it too painful to display her photos. It occurred to me that the woman interviewing me might not know who I was or that I had lived here once. If her son was seven, she would have been part of the household for at least eight years, but it was possible that what had occurred four years before that was never talked about.

"So, you were educated in England," she said, looking up.

"Yes, ma'am, and sometimes, because of my father's work, we lived on the Continent, but I was born here and am an American citizen. As you can see from my resume, I completed my A levels and will be applying for university next year. Because I learned through correspondence when we traveled, I was able to finish up a year early," I added as an explanation for my age.

"We have a number of paintings in this house done by a Luciano Venerelli," she said.

"He was my father. He died three months ago."

"Really! Are you an artist? Can you teach art?"

"I–I could teach some of the basic things my father taught me when I was a child."

"Do you play a musical instrument?"

"A little bit of piano."

"So you could teach it?"

"The basics," I replied, with the uncomfortable feeling that she was getting too interested in hiring me. "Of course, I have no experience in tutoring children."

"You say here that you have baby-sat quite a bit."

Yes, I thought, but that was to get me inside your front door, not fetch myself a job.

She picked up a desk phone. "Mrs. Hopewell, please send in Patrick."

I had to act fast. "Mrs. Westbrook, I need to explain why-" "Let me tell you what we are looking for," she interrupted, with the air of someone who expected others to listen to her. "We call it a tutoring job because we want a nanny who is educated and can teach Patrick in a manner that is appropriate to his position in life. We want an employee who speaks English well and can correct Patrick's mistakes, someone who can assist in his studies, and introduce him to other things a well-bred person should know."

There was a light knock, and the door opened. The little boy who entered was definitely a Westbrook-dark hair, blue eyes, fair skin, with a child's smattering of freckles. For a moment I felt like little Katie gazing at Brook. Clearly, Patrick had already been bred in a manner "appropriate to his position in life": His walk and raised chin indicated that he believed he owned the place. I almost laughed.

"Patrick, darling, this is Kate Venerelli."

Patrick surveyed me, not like a curious seven-year-old, but like an adult who was deciding whether I would do. I surveyed him with the same measuring eyes, as if deciding whether he would do. He suddenly turned into a little boy, backing up and moving closer to his mother.

"Kate is going to be your tutor."

I swallowed my gasp. "I'm sorry?"

"I've made up my mind," Mrs. Westbrook told me. "You are educated, you are familiar with the arts, and you speak very well."

"But-but don't you think you should have references?" I asked.

"Do you have any?" No.

"It doesn't matter," Mrs. Westbrook said. "No one supplies bad references. Recommendations don't prove anything about a person."

"But I'm sure Mr. Westbrook would like to interview me too," I suggested. I considered explaining my ruse, but if she grew angry and sent me off, I'd have no excuse to return.

"Patrick's father has been ill. He will be returning Friday from Hopkins, where he has been receiving cancer treatments."

"Oh." I still winced when someone mentioned cancer. I glanced at Patrick, but his expression didn't change. Either he didn't understand, or he was already proficient at wearing a public face.

"When he arrives, Mr. Westbrook will have many other things to tend to," she went on.

I need some time to think about this," I said, hoping to keep the masquerade going for one more day and hand deliver the ring.

"Perhaps you would like to get to know Patrick a little better," she suggested. "Darling, be a good boy and show Kate your room and the rooms on the third floor. Would you do that for Mommy?"

Darling didn't answer right away. Perhaps he was thinking about refusing or, better still, driving a bargain with Mommy.

I wanted this chance to see the places in which I had once played. "I'm sure you have some smashing toys in your room," I said encouragingly.

Patrick looked at me with new interest. "I'm not supposed to smash them."

His mother laughed. "That's an expression, Patrick. She means wonderful toys, exciting toys."

I think he would have preferred that I meant smash able toys, but he nodded and started toward the door, calling to me over his shoulder, "Come on, Kate."

I followed him out of the office. The entrance hall, which was furnished to serve as a formal reception room, ended at a wide passageway that ran from one side of the house to the other-that is, to the left and right, continuing on to the wings of the house. The living room and dining room, the two large rooms at the "back" of the house, were behind the passageway-facing the water, I remembered. The main stairway rose to our right, running parallel to the passageway.

The house had other stairways, in both the main section and wings, back steps that wrapped around the corners of its many fireplaces. It was a perfect place to play hide-and-seek, with three floors and so many escape routes connecting them. But it had also made me uncomfortable. I never knew for sure where Brook was, because he could sneak up and down stairways without us seeing him. Ashley had loved to leap out from behind a door and make me scream, immediately after my mother, who earned extra money by babysitting her, would tell us we must play quietly.

Patrick and I climbed the wide stairway. Halfway down the second-floor hall I paused at a secretary filled with photos. I scanned them quickly, disappointed again to find none of Ashley. Amelia had said that Trent was divorced; perhaps Ashley's mother had taken all the pictures with her.

Patrick reached back for my hand, impatient with me. "It's this way." He led me to the room at the front comer of the main house, the last doorway on the left before the center hall narrowed to connect the southern wing.

I stepped inside the door of his room and moved no farther. The drapes and comforter were green check rather than Ashley's pink, but the furniture was the same-dark, heavy, too large for a child-each piece in the same place it had occupied twelve years ago. I looked at the bed and thought of Ashley swinging like a monkey on its tall posters. I gazed at the bureau and saw her standing on top of it, performing for me. The two big chairs, if covered with a quilt, were the covered wagon in which she and I had "traveled west." To me, her presence in the room was so strong, I could nearly hear her speak.

Why, given the absence of pictures, would the family have kept her furniture? Perhaps the deep connections with objects that a child experiences are lost on an adult. Certainly, the West brooks would have sold it, if they had found the furniture as haunting as I.

"You don't like it?" Patrick asked. He had been watching my face closely.

"Oh, no. It's a very nice room. In fact, it's positively smashing," I added, since he seemed to enjoy that word.

He grinned. "Want to see some of my stuff?"

"Of course."

Patrick opened the walk-in closet, which was filled to the brim with toys. My breath caught when I saw the shelf of plastic horses. They had given him her toys! Then I remembered that these had been Robyn's horses, toys that had belonged to Ashley's aunt. Perhaps the toys and furniture were kept because they were regarded as an inheritance.

I lifted up a prancing dapple gray. Hello, Silver Knight, I said silently. That had been the toy's secret name, and I still found myself reluctant to say it aloud.

"Want to play?" Patrick asked.

I set down the horse. "Not now. We had better follow your mother's instructions and see the third floor."

"This stairway goes up to your room," he said, opening the door next to the fireplace.

"You mean if I take the job," I reminded him, afraid that he was starting to think I would.

"You don't like me?"

"Taking the job has nothing to do with whether I like you."

Patrick gazed at me silently, doubtfully.

"I mean it," I insisted.

His mouth tightened into a little seam. He led the way up to the room that had belonged to Ashley's tutor, Mr. Joseph. Directly above Patrick and Ashley's bedroom, it was on the corner of the house, with a dormer window facing the front and a smaller window facing the side. Icy air slipped in through their cracks. The two spindle-back chairs and iron bedstead were painted white. Without blankets, pillows, or any kind of fabric to soften the room, not even curtains, they made me think of bones picked clean.

"Do you like it?" Patrick asked, looking up at me with a hopefulness I wished I hadn't seen. "It's quite nice."

We exited into the third-floor hall. At the opposite end of the rectangular hall were the main stairs with rooms on either side of them. He showed me the schoolroom first.

"This is where I do my homework."

The piano had been rolled to a different corner in the room, and the computer and printer were new, but otherwise, the tables, chairs, and shelf-lined walls looked just as I remembered them. Perhaps it was simply the dreary lighting and the familiar smells of the house, smells I connected with Ashley, but I couldn't shake the feeling that she was at Mason's Choice, in the rooms Patrick was showing me.

He led me to the playroom. "Want to meet Patricia?"

"Who?"

"My hamster.'' I smiled. "It's a lovely name."

"I like Patrick better," he replied, "but she's a girl."

The large room was a kingdom of little-boy toys. Patricia's cage, an aquarium filled with wood shavings and covered by a weighted screen, sat in the comer.

"Hi, Pat," I greeted the silky brown hamster. Ashley had had hamsters and a zoo of other creatures. "Do you have a dog or cat?" I asked Patrick.

"No. I'm allergic to their fur. I'm not supposed to pick up Patricia, but I do. She gets lonely."

It's he who gets lonely, I thought, though surrounded by every toy a kid could want.

The walls were covered with sports posters, most of them showing ice hockey players. Patrick watched my eyes, reading every reaction. "You like hockey? We could go see the games. Wouldn't that be fun?"

"You have a team in Wisteria?"

"Of course." He pulled a high school sports program from beneath a pile of crayons. "This is Sam Koscinski," he said, pointing to a guy with a helmet, shoulder pads, and a manic look in his dark eyes. "He's the best. He… smashes people."

"Sounds like a nice chap. Patrick, do you have some friends? Do you invite them over from school?"

He shook his head. "Tim moved away."

"There's no one else?"

"Just Ashley."

"Ashley?" My voice sounded hollow. "Ashley who?"

"Just Ashley."

I regained my senses. "Is she a hamster too?"

Patrick shouted with laughter. "No. She's a person who plays with me. Would you play with me?" His voice pleaded. "You could visit and play. You don't have to be my tutor. Just come and play."

I sat down by a table overrun by plastic action figures. Patrick walked. toward me, then lightly, tentatively, rested a hand on my knee. "We could have lots of fun together. I wouldn't be real bad."

I could see the desperation in his eyes and knew the feeling, the loneliness of being the only child among preoccupied adults. Before my father was successful enough to have his own studio, we had traveled from household to household. I had spent a lot of time in the kitchen with the help, who were busy with their jobs, waiting for my father to finish his job-waiting for someone to notice me. For a moment I considered taking the Westbrook position.

Only a moment. After years of parenting my loving but inept father, I wasn't about to take on "another" little boy.

"It would be lots of fun, Patrick, But I've been thinking about doing some traveling."

"You can't. I want you here," he insisted. "Ashley likes you," he added, as if that would persuade me.

"How can she if she hasn't met me?"

"She has. She's watching you."

A tingle went up my spine. I glanced around. "I don't see anyone named Ashley."

"She sees you," he said with confidence.

I took a deep breath. "Why don't we go downstairs."

Had family members told him about her? I wondered as we descended the main stairs. The name was common enough; perhaps he simply liked it and chose it on his own for an imaginary playmate. Given his isolation on the estate, it would make sense for him to create a fantasy friend.

When we reached the landing between the first and second floors, Patrick pulled on my arm to keep me from going farther. Below us, women were arguing.

"It's Mrs. Hopewell," he said. "She's mean. She hates me.

"Oh, I'm sure she doesn't hate you, Patrick," I replied, then cringed at how I had sounded like a typical, patronizing adult.

"Robyn hates me too," he added. "Well go a different way."

But I had just heard what Mrs. Hopewell was saying, and I wasn't going anywhere. I pulled him back and put my finger to my lips.

"You can't trust her," the housekeeper said. "You would be very foolish to hire that young woman."

"Hoppy is right," said another woman. "I'm sorry, Emily, but I simply won't allow it."

"Really. What makes you think you have a say in this, Robyn?"

"Adrian won't allow it," Mrs. Hopewell asserted. "He sent her family packing twelve years ago."

Sent my family packing? If Adrian had dismissed us, why did we sneak away in the middle of the night? Something wasn't right.

"Her mother was a strange woman, a very angry woman," Mrs. Hopewell went on. "She was supposed to be watching Ashley the day she fell through the ice."

Robyn quickly cut her off. "We don't need to go into that, Hoppy. The point is, Emily, this girl will bring back bad memories and upset Daddy and Trent. I can't allow it."

"Well, you talk to Daddy when he gets home," Emily replied, "and I will talk to my husband, and we will see if he chooses to listen to his daughter, his housekeeper, or his wife concerning the welfare of his son." The strength of Emily's words were betrayed by the high pitch of her voice. I guessed that she was intimidated by Mrs. Hopewell and Robyn.

But I wasn't.

"Who are they talking about?" Patrick whispered to me as I took his hand and started down the main stairs.

"Your new tutor."

I can't remember the last time I did something so impulsively. Curiosity about why my family had left and sheer defiance made up my mind. I had no idea how long I would stay, or rather, how long they would keep me. It worried me that I would be one more person in Patrick's life who didn't stay around, but I didn't know what I could do about that.

The scene at the bottom of the stairway had been brief and tense, Mrs. Hopewell responding to my introduction with one sentence: I know who you are."

Mrs. Caulfield-Robyn-had informed me that the final decision on my hiring would be made by Mr. Westbrook.

Amelia had been bursting with curiosity when the door of the library reopened. The ladies had closed it in order to have their argument, but she had heard bits and pieces. I told her several times that the two older women had confused me with someone else, which, not surprisingly, she didn't believe.

That evening I stole away from Amelia's questions, taking a walk through town.

The fog, which had rendered the afternoon so dismal, now made the night seem brighter, the mist holding the apricot light of streetlamps and shimmering on the brick sidewalks. Though it was only seven o'clock, most of the shops were closed. Lights shone in the rooms above them and through the fanlights and windows of the old homes that fronted the eighteenth-century street. Somewhere ahead of me, at the end of High Street, was the river, but fog blotted out everything more than a block away. Peering in a shop window, pressing my face close to the glass, was like looking in a crystal ball, the objects inside magically clear.

I stared at a painting of a cat. I knew the artist at once, recognizing his attentiveness to the cat's ears, the expression in the animal's tail, and the tone of the background, carefully chosen to bring out the colors in the cat's coat. It was an early work by my father. I took a step back to read the shop's sign: OUVIA'S ANTIQUES.That's what you get for dying, Dad, I thought; your paintings are antiques now.

A man was working inside the shop, staring down at his clipboard, a pen hanging out of one side of his mouth like a cigarette-ex-smoker, I thought, recognizing my father's habit. I pushed open the front door, unloosing a flurry of bells.

"Shop's closed," the man said, pointing to a sign.

"I was hoping I might look at the painting of the cat.

"It's not for sale. Nothing here is for sale. I'm just taking inventory."

"It's a Venerelli, isn't it?"

He removed the pen from his mouth, perhaps surprised that a teenager would know something like that. "Unsigned," he replied.

"Even so, it is," I told the man, walking over to the painting to study it more closely.

He put down his clipboard and joined me in front of the painting. "How do you know that? It would be worth a lot more if I could be certain."

"He was my father. I'd recognize his work anywhere."

Now the man tipped forward on his toes to look at my face. "Katie!" he exclaimed softly.

I took a step back.

I never expected to see you in Wisteria, but still, I should have recognized you. You look exactly like your mother."

"Not exactly."

"You don't remember me, do you?" the man continued. "You were only a little girl the last time I saw you."

I waited to see if his face surfaced in my memory as Mrs. Hopewell's had. "No, I'm sorry, I don't."

"Joseph Oakley." He held out his hand. "I was Ashley's tutor."

"Mr. Joseph! I do remember you." Though I didn't recall him looking anything like he did now. Ashley's tutor, a college student, had been skinny, with a little knob of a chin. The person in front of me had the shape of a plump, middle-aged man, and sported a full beard flecked with gray. But he was younger than he appeared; the skin on his face was smooth, almost lineless.

"My condolences about your father," he said.

I nodded.

"I know how it is," he went on. "Mother died several months ago."

"I'm sorry.

"That's why I'm back in town, settling her affairs. This was her shop."

I glanced around at the odd collection of things-a beautiful oil lamp, a tacky ceramic of a fisherman, an elegant silver brush set, a purple teapot shaped like an elephant's head-his trunk was the spout. Next to my father's simple painting was a very large canvas: Several robust women with 1920 hairstyles bathed at a pink spring while odd-looking winged creatures darted about.

"Her taste was certainly… wide-ranging," I said.

"Her records are even more erratic than her taste," he replied with a grimace. "Of course, Mother was no spring chicken when she had me, and I think she was losing it mentally these last few years. I'm going to be forced to declare bankruptcy."

"Oh, no."

"But I want to hear about you and your mother, Katie. Is she here with you? How long will you be in Wisteria?"

"Well, actually-" A loud jingle of the bells on the door interrupted us. "Shop's closed," Joseph called out, then turned back to me. "You were saying-" "It can't be closed." A guy about my age had rushed into the store. "I got here as soon as I could." He looked at me as if I might plead his case for him.

"I've got to get a birthday present."

"Shop's closed," Joseph repeated.

"But I know what I want. It's right over there." He strode toward a glass case. "The bracelet with the blue stones."

"The lapis lazuli?" Joseph asked quietly. "It's three hundred dollars."

I think Joseph assumed the high price would immediately get rid of the shopper, but he miscalculated.

The guy cocked his head, as if he hadn't heard right, then bent over the case to get a closer look. "You've got to be kidding. It's not even sapphires."

"And this isn't Wal-Mart."

The guy straightened up. "Okay, okay," he said, rubbing his hands, then glancing at his watch.

I got the feeling he had a very short deadline.

"Let's see." He ran one hand through curly black hair. He was athletically built, a few inches taller than I, and very good-looking-if he would just stand still for a second. The room didn't seem big enough to contain his energy. I wanted to send him outside for a run.

"There must be something else here." He moved down the long jewelry case, playing it like a piano.

Joseph sighed. "Please don't put your fingerprints all over the glass."

"There, that plain silver one. You put tags on your cheaper stuff. Fifty dollars, I can swing it. Wait a minute, I like that one too. Forty-five."

He spun around, turning to Joseph, then me. I was glad there wasn't a shelf of glassware anywhere near him. "You're a woman-sort of," he said.

I frowned at him.

"I mean, a girl. A female. Could you help me out? I hate choosing this kind of stuff."

He had great eyes, eyes like the shiny black stones I collected from my favorite beach on the Channel. That's the only explanation I can offer for helping this last-minute lover in his gift selection.

"Which bracelet do you like best?" he asked. "That silver one, or the gold one with the green paint."

"Green enamel," Joseph corrected him.

I leaned over the case, studying them. "The green and gold."

"But all of her earrings are silver," the guy protested.

"Then why did you ask me?" I replied, exasperated.

He lifted his hands, then dropped them heavily on the glass. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Joseph wince. The guy had strong hands, square hands, totally un artistic hands. Was it crazy to be attracted to a guy's hands?

I like the enamel one too," he admitted. "But since she likes silver, I was hoping you'd choose that and make it an easy choice."

"Both bracelets are pretty. It's just that I like to wear green."

His fingers stopped drumming the case, his hands finally becoming still. I looked up and found him gazing at my hair. He met my eyes, then perused my face-just stared at me, making no effort to pretend he wasn't.

"I see," he said. "Because of your eyes. Your eyes are grass green."

Grass green?

"What I mean is pale, bright green-" Joseph shook his head.

"See-through green, like-like the plastic of a Sprite bottle."

He seemed pleased with the accuracy of that last description. I hoped he wasn't going to compose his own gift card.

"I'll take the silver bracelet," the guy said, turning to Joseph, pulling out his money. "I'm kind of in a hurry."

Joseph must have realized that a sale was the quickest way to get rid of this guy. Moving behind the counter, he took the customer's money. The guy pocketed the bracelet, leaving without a box or bag.

"You were saying," Joseph prompted me, as the bells on the door jingled and fell silent.

"I'll be here for a while. I took a temporary job."

"Wonderful. Where?"

"Mason's Choice."

He looked at me surprised.

"Do you remember Mrs. Hopewell?" I asked.

"Despite my best efforts to forget her."

"She's still there."

Joseph sat down heavily on a shop stool. "Why did you go back, Katie?"

The tone of his voice made me uneasy. "Why not?"

He thought before he spoke. "Your family didn't leave under the best of circumstances. What does your mother think of this?"

"I don't know. I haven't seen her for twelve years."

His brown eyes grew wider for a moment.

"Victoria left us when we got to England."

He stroked his beard with long fingers-the only part of him that had remained thin. He had been a musician, I remembered. Poor man, studying music, having to listen to Ashley and me banging on the schoolroom piano.

"I had no idea, no idea at all. Do you know why your mother left?" he asked.

I shook my head.

"What did your father tell you about the Westbrooks?"

"He wouldn't talk about them. All I know is what I remember from when I was five. For instance, Mrs. Caulfield, Ashley's aunt, couldn't stand Ashley and got along better with horses than people."

"Still does. I heard Robyn just came back from the Florida horse-show circuit."

"Mr. Trent," I said, using the name for him that I had used as a child, "was very serious."

"Yes. He runs the business for Adrian."

"What is their business?"

"Furniture and art. They began with a handful of local auction houses, like Crossroads, the one here on the Eastern Shore. In the last two decades they've been doing a lot of importing. Have you seen Adrian? I heard he's getting cancer treatments and they haven't been successful."

"They haven't?" I wondered what the Westbrooks had told Patrick. "He's coming home Friday."

Joseph pressed his hands together and rested his mouth against his fingertips, thinking. "Which means the vultures will be gathering. You'll have to deal with all of them, Katie." He reached for a store receipt and scribbled down a number. "This is the phone at my mother's house. The number printed on the top is the store's. I'll be in Wisteria for the next few weeks. Call me if you need anything."

"I'll be all right," I said, smiling. "You know, I've spent a lot of time in other people's households. I've seen it all."

"I'm sure, but why don't you check in with me now and then."

"I don't check in with anyone," I said, then added quickly, "What I mean is that I'm used to being on my own. When Dad was alive, he checked in with me."

Joseph shook his head. "The Westbrooks are not nice people, Katie. You can't trust them."

"Don't worry," I replied. I haven't trusted anyone in a very long time."

The next afternoon the Westbrooks' groundskeeper, who introduced himself as Roger Hale, picked me up from the Strawberry, then drove to Patrick's private school, which was at the far end of High Street, backing up to Wist Creek.

No street in Wisteria was far from a piece of shoreline. The town, a parcel of land jutting into the mouth of the Sycamore River, was surrounded on three sides by water, the river and two wide creeks named Oyster and Wist. The next point of land outside of town and moving in the direction of the Chesapeake Bay was the Scarborough Estate, and the point after that was Mason's Choice, where the river flowed into the bay.

"Do you think you can find your way?" Roger asked me, when he had driven from the school to the estate. He parked in a multi-car garage that was to one side of the house. From now on it would be my job to transport Patrick to and from in a staff car.

"Yes, thanks." It wasn't the route I was concerned about, but trying to drive on the right side of the road, which was opposite from the way I had learned in England. It's just a matter of concentration, I told myself, and decided not to bring up the matter.

"I'll leave a map in the car," Roger said, as he pulled my bags from the back of it, "and one on your bureau when I take your luggage to your room. You get on to the house now-Mrs. Westbrook is always anxious to see Patrick."

Patrick had chattered cheerfully in the car, but as he and I approached the house, he grew quiet. He turned his head suddenly, looking at the tall windows to the left of the main entrance. Someone gazed out from the library, but the weather had cleared and the bright reflections on the glass made it difficult to see who.

"I always go in through the kitchen," Patrick said.

"Sorry, but your mother told me to bring you in the front."

He hung back.

"Come on, Patrick. She wants to see you straightaway."

He stood rooted in the grass. If we hadn't just met, I would have worried that he had learned that ugly, defiant look from me.

"All right," I said. "I'll go in. When you're ready to join me, knock on the door. But I'll answer only the front entrance."

"Our. doors aren't locked in the daytime," he informed me.

I continued walking. You re mean.

"But I was being so much nicer than usual," I replied.

He stared at me and I winked. "Come on, the sooner you see your mother, the sooner we can go outside and play."

When he and I entered the main hall, his mother emerged from the library.

"Darling, how was school?"

"Okay." He edged away from the library door.

She held out her arms. "Are you forgetting something? Patrick!" She sounded hurt.

He dutifully went back and kissed her.

"Trent has just arrived from Philadelphia. Come say hello to him and Robyn. You as well, Kate."

Through the door I could see Robyn pacing back and forth, pressing a cell phone to her ear. Years in the sun had aged her skin. The vertical creases between her eyebrows had deepened noticeably, and her black hair had streaks of silver. She still had the bone structure of a beautiful woman, but Ashley's suggestion that she was the bad queen in Snow White didn't seem that farfetched. As Patrick and I entered, she glanced at me, then turned her back.

Trent was sitting at a desk, dressed in a business suit, reading some kind of document. He was still slender, with thin, almost colorless hair. He had adored Ashley but had been hopeless at playing. She and I had had a much better time with my father, who, though I hadn't realized it then, had the imagination and heart of a child.

"Trent," Emily said, "here's Patrick, and his new tutor, Kate Venerelli."

Trent's blue eyes looked up over his reading glasses. He rose from his seat. "Good God!"

I had thought Mrs. Hopewell and Robyn would have warned Trent about me, but the small, satisfied curve of Robyn's lips suggested they hadn't. The little color Trent had in his cheeks disappeared completely.

"You're a double for your mother."

Patrick gazed up at me. "You have a mother?"

"Everyone has one at birth," I replied.

"How old are you now?" Trent asked me.

"Seventeen."

I could see him doing the mental calculation. Ashley would be nineteen. As children, both of us had strongly resembled our mothers. What would Ashley have looked like now-another Corinne, his wife when he first met her?

"I was sorry to learn about your father's death," he said.

I nodded, but Trent didn't see it, sitting down again, his eyes returning to the paper he'd been reading before he had even finished his sentence.

"Here's Patrick," Emily said, sounding a little peeved that her son had not been acknowledged by Trent.

"Hello, Patrick," Trent responded, without looking up. When Patrick didn't reply, Trent added crisply, "Children speak when spoken to."

And when looked at, I thought.

"Hi," Patrick said, his lips barely parting. He had learned from his half brother how to greet a person coldly.

"So when will your charming son arrive, Robyn?" Trent asked.

"By now, I thought." She returned the cell phone to her pocket. "I'm worried."

"You don't think he stopped by a few parties on the way up from Beach Ball University, do you?"

"No, Uncle Trent, I did not," replied a deep voice, "because I knew how delighted you would be to see me."

"Brook,'' his mother greeted him with relief. He kissed her, his lips barely brushing her cheek.

Ashley's cousin and "best enemy" had inherited the Westbrook look, a handsome, large-featured face, dark hair, and blue eyes.

I can't tell you how happy I was to leave sunny Florida and come back to this cold, damp place," Brook said sarcastically. "Exactly when is dear Grandfather coming home?"

"Tomorrow, Brook, and I'm counting on you," his mother responded with a meaning-filled look.

"As always," he replied casually, and sprawled in a chair, one foot up on the low table in front of him. His skin was deeply tanned. "And who are you?"

he asked, eyeing me.

"Kate."

"Kate Venerelli," his mother said.

Brook blinked. I could see the change in his eyes. "Katie!" he exclaimed softly, sitting up straight. His eyes traveled down and up me in a way that made me squirm inside, which wasn't much different from the way I reacted to him when I was five. I had steered clear of a boy who played hard enough to hurt, kicked nests of wild kittens, and threw rocks at a pet when he thought no one was looking.

"Kate is Patrick's tutor," Emily said.

Brook glanced at Patrick. "Hey, little jerk." There was no fondness in his greeting.

Patrick simply stared at him, which made Brook laugh.

"You know, Patrick, I always thought you were stupid. But maybe you're not as dumb as I figured-maybe you've been faking it so you could get a pretty tutor."

Emily took a step toward Brook.

"Just teasing," he added quickly, unconvincingly. His gaze skipped around the room. "Something's missing," he said. "Ah! The old dragon."

Trent immediately turned toward the fireplace mantel behind him.

"I guess she's in the kitchen chewing out Cook," Brook added, pleased with his little joke, which apparently referred to Mrs. Hopewell.

"Where is the Chinese dragon?" Trent asked, still surveying the mantel.

"Robyn took it," Emily replied, like a child happy to tattle. "She claims your father promised it to her."

"You are truly amazing, Robyn," Trent said to his sister. "One day I'm going to come home and find the main house stripped. But I'll know where to find everything-in your wing."

"Not if I sell it first," Robyn retorted. "Besides, Daddy did say he would give it to me."

Trent rose, lifted a small bronze from the mantel and carefully turned it in his hands, as if appraising it, then placed the figure in his open briefcase.

"Guess what? Dad promised this sculpture to me."

Brook threw back his head and laughed. Emily got the same tight-lipped look as I had seen on Patrick's face. I had been right about her: She was intimidated enough by her husband's children not to insist that these things still belonged to Adrian.

"So Grandfather is on his last legs," Brook said. "That's hard to imagine."

"I find your lack of respect appalling," Emily said to Brook, apparently not cowed by a college student.

"Oh come now, Emily, why else would you have married an old man?" Robyn challenged her.

"It's called love, Robyn, but I doubt that word is in your vocabulary."

"You are wrong! I have loved him all my life," Robyn replied, with such intensity that her voice sounded strange. I have loved him, lived with him, and taken care of him longer than you have."

"The prognosis is less than a year," Trent told Brook.

Joseph was right, I thought. Adrian was dying and the vultures were gathering, each one afraid that the next person would get a larger slice of the inheritance. What a lovely group for a child to grow up around!

"I'm taking Patrick outside," I said.

He bolted for the door, and I followed.

"Play clothes," his mother called after us. "Put on his play clothes, Kate."

I didn't know a little boy could peel and dress so quickly. He ended up with his mittens on the wrong hands, which we fixed when we got outside. We walked silently for a few moments. I let him lead the way and guessed that we were going to the pond.

"What does it mean, 'on his last legs'?" Patrick asked me when we were a distance from the house.

I hesitated, then lied. "I'm not sure. It must be an American expression. Sometime when you and your mother are alone, ask her."

We walked beyond the formal gardens and through a bare orchard that ended at paddocks and a horse barn. As a child I had thought I was luckier than Ashley because my parents and I lived in one of the employee cottages, which was near the horse bam and, better yet, an empty cow barn with lofts and ladders, where Ashley and I had liked to play. Between the horse and cow barns was Ashley's favorite place, the pond.

Surrounded by a thick ring of trees, mostly cedar and pine, it was reached by a narrow path. Round, about half the size of a soccer field, the pond looked as it had twelve years before, but the collar of vegetation had tightened around it, the circle of evergreens growing inward, encroaching on its edge, casting long shadows on its half-frozen surface. Dying things and living things mixed together here. A rush of feelings came back to me with the distinctive smell-a smell that was both fresh green and thick with decay. Alone with Ashley, knowing no one could see us, I had found the pond a frightening place. Ashley could think of a hundred forbidden things to do.

"Want to play hockey?" Patrick asked.

"Here?" After what had happened to Ashley, surely someone had taught him "We can pretend we're on skates and use branches for hockey sticks."

"Patrick, the ice is too soft! When it's dark and slushy, you can't skate. It will never hold your weight."

"Yes, it will."

"Sorry, but-" "Ashley said so."

The breath caught in my throat. "What did you say?"

"Ashley told me it's okay."

I felt a finger of ice along my spine. "Well, she's wrong." I crouched next to Patrick. "Are you listening? She's dead wrong."

I looked out at the thin ice, at the hole in it, a circle of black water lying off-center in the pond. There is a scientific reason that area doesn't freeze well, I told myself. Perhaps the pond's spring was located beneath it, or the temperature was warmer because of the amount of sun it received. Though even now, it wasn't hard to believe Ashley's explanation. I had seen the brown and black water snakes basking On the shore and could easily imagine other creatures with serpentine limbs, which Ashley had said hid beneath the pond's dark surface, waiting to pull us under.

I turned to Patrick, who was gazing toward the watery circle. I guess Ashley is your imaginary friend," I said.

He nodded. "Only she's not imaginary."

"Oh? What does she look like?"

"She has brown hair. It's very pretty, brown and curly. She wears a pink coat. She always wants to wear her purple shoes."

Another chill went through me. Ashley had loved her purple sneakers and would wear a pink snowsuit. But most little girls love pink and purple, I reminded myself, and a lot of people have brown curly hair. And though I had seen no pictures of her displayed in the house, it was very possible someone had shown him one.

I debated whether to tell him that I had played with a little girl named Ashley, then decided against it. It was a big leap to think he was talking about the child I had known. My job would be simpler if I didn't admit to him that I had once lived here.

"Where is Ashley's home?" I asked.

"I don't know. She's here a lot."

"Here-where?"

"The pond," he said, his voice betraying exasperation.

"I don't see her."

He thought a moment. "Maybe she is hiding from you.

I scanned the trees uneasily, then once again turned my eyes to the dark water where Ashley had drowned. I remembered the day she had died, how she, my mother, Joseph, and I had been looking everywhere for her favorite rabbit. Thanks to Ashley's carelessness and Brook's deliberate efforts, many of her pets escaped, not only their cages but the house. Searching outside, Ashley and I kept calling to one another, then after a while, no one heard her voice. The adults found the ice broken through and dragged the pond to recover Ashley's body. When they drained the water, they found her rabbit and reasoned that she had chased her pet onto the ice and had fallen through.

"You see her!" Patrick exclaimed. He had been watching my face.

"No. No, I don't."

He looked disappointed. "Maybe next time."

"Patrick, I don't understand," I said. "Is Ashley a ghost?"

He was silent for a moment. His frown told me he was seriously thinking about the question. "Can ghosts be alive?" he asked at last.

"They were alive once."

He shook his head. "Ashley's alive now."

This was getting too creepy for me. "Why don't you show me some other places?" I suggested. "Do you have swings?"

"And monkey bars," he said. "The best ones are by the cottages."

"Let's go see them." — As Patrick and I left, he glanced over his shoulder. "We'll be back later," he assured whatever he saw in the wintry air.

Friday morning I drove to Wisteria Country Day School, muttering to myself all the way.

"Why do you keep saying, 'To the right'?" Patrick asked as we motored along.

"So I remember to drive on that side of the road."

"Why would you drive on the other side? There are cars coming."

"Good point."

After dropping him off, I arrived back at the house in the middle of a family quarrel, the subject of which was money-who was spending how much on what. I paused in the hall, picking out the voices of Trent, Robyn, and Emily. Two women carrying cleaning equipment, part of the estate's day help, nodded to me as they passed. They either pretended not to notice the raised voices or were so used to it, they weren't interested. I headed upstairs, glad that I had eaten breakfast earlier and that my room was two floors above those where the family gathered.

The bright day made the white room cheerier than it had seemed two days ago, and the slanting roof made it snug, though no warmer. Outside the wind was gusting up and the temperature dropping. The plaster walls of the room were cold to the touch, the old glass panes in the windows frigid. Mrs.

Hopewell had provided me with a wool blanket, quilt, rug, and what appeared to be old kitchen curtains-thin panels of yellow fabric with red teapots all over. I stuffed towels at the base of both windows, pulled a chair closer to the radiator, and settled down to read. My only company was the photo of my father that I had set on my bureau.

About eleven o'clock I heard a car drive up to the house and a flurry of activity downstairs, indicating that Adrian Westbrook had arrived home. An hour later, though I had not asked for lunch, I was informed by intercom that it would be delivered. My offer to fetch it myself was rejected. Henry, the older gentleman who had first answered the door for Amelia and me, served me in my room and instructed me to leave the dirty dishes outside my door. I wondered if the situation downstairs was tense.

Over lunch, I studied my U.S. atlas, focusing on the Maryland area, calculating the distance from the Eastern Shore to Washington, D.C. It appeared short enough for a day trip. I finished my soup and sandwich, put on headphones and a CD, then flipped through another book, looking for sites both Patrick and I would enjoy; after all, I was supposed to be introducing him to things that "a well-bred person should know."

I didn't know how long Mrs. Hopewell was standing inside my room, observing me read. With my music on, I hadn't heard her open the door.

"Mr. Westbrook will see you now."

I pulled off the headphones. "I'm sorry, did you knock?"

She ignored the question. "He hasn't a lot of time to waste."

"Please tell him I'll be down in five minutes," I said, wanting to wash my face and retrieve the ring from my drawer unobserved.

"He will see you now."

Interpreting this to mean I was to follow her, I stood up, making a motion to do so. She preceded me out the door, and I closed it behind her. "I won't be long," I called.

A few minutes later, I found Mrs. Hopewell waiting for me on the second-floor landing.

"I hope that Mr. Westbrook has been told about me," I said, as we descended the stairs. "Mr. Trent seemed rather startled yesterday."

"He has been informed," the housekeeper replied coolly. "He knows who you are."

"Good."

It was curious, I thought, that Mrs. Hopewell had made the long trek up to the third floor to fetch me rather than employing the intercom, or Henry, or the young man I had noticed at her beck and call in the kitchen earlier. Of course, that is the problem with wanting to be in control-it requires a great deal of personal effort.

"Mrs. Hopewell, do you still live in the house?"

"Yes."

"If I remember correctly, you are in the section that connects to Mrs. Caulfield's wing, the second floor of it."

She glanced sideways at me. "You must remember a great deal from your time here."

"Just bits and pieces," I replied. "I don't think I could draw a map of the house or the estate, but I do seem to know how to get from one place to the next."

She waited till we reached the bottom of the steps, then turned toward me, blocking my path with her foot. Her muddy brown eyes had a peculiar shine to them. "I am sure your mother filled you in on many things."

"No, after we left Mason's Choice, she and I never talked about the place." I saw no reason to inform Mrs. Hopewell that we never talked at all.

The woman's nostrils quivered, as if she could sniff the truth, then she ushered me to the office and gave a quick double rap on the door.

"Thank you, Louise," a voice called from within.

She opened the door.

"Katie Vefterelli," Adrian Westbrook greeted me, rising from behind the desk as I stepped inside the room. "All grown-up! What an enchanting sight you are! Welcome back, Katie," he said, taking my hands warmly, then cocking his head slightly to the right, as if looking over my shoulder. "That will be all, Louise."

Mrs. Hopewell turned abruptly and exited.

"The door, Louise," he called after her.

It was closed. I imagined her listening through the keyhole.

"Hello, Mr. Westbrook."

"Mr. Westbrook? Have we suddenly become formal? Must I now call you Miss Venerelli? Don't you remember, child, you insisted on calling me Adrian, no matter how many times your parents corrected you. You said you liked the name much better. You're not going to change that, are you?"

"Well-" "I'd be insulted-l'd feel like a doddering old man if you called me Mr. Westbrook. I'm already old and will be doddering soon enough, as I'm sure they've told you. They're all abuzz about my impending demise. It's a wonder they haven't put tags on the furniture, claiming their loot. But don't you make me a relic before I have to be."

His blue eyes had lost none of their spark, and his white hair, though shorter than in his pictures, was still thick. He hasn't had radiation recently, I thought. His color was poor, as was my father's, but despite illness and age, he was a handsome man, having the large, even features Robyn had inherited, plus a sense of humor, which she hadn't. The lines engraved in his face traced amusement rather than frustration and anger.

"You look wonderful," I said honestly.

"You've worked one day and you want a raise?"

"You know that isn't true. And you know that what I said, is."

He smiled. It was nice to feel at ease with someone in the house. I had liked Adrian as a child and found that I still liked him now.

He gestured for me to sit down, then took a seat himself. "My condolences on the loss of your father."

"Thank you."

"And your mother, how is she?"

"I haven't seen her since I was five."

For the second time in two days, I had someone gazing at me incredulously.

I knew she and Luke had separated, but I assumed…" He didn't complete his sentence. "So you are on your own," he said. "That can't be easy."

"I can handle it."

One corner of his mouth turned up slightly. "I have no doubt."

"I do have one matter relating to my father, which I need to take care of," I went on. From my pocket I pulled out the ring. "He asked me to return this to you."

Adrian stared at it. "Good Lord."

"You recognize it?"

"Yes, of course. It was my grandmother's."

I don't know why my father took it," I said, shifting in my seat uncomfortably. "All I know is that I am supposed to return it."

I laid it on the table next to Adrian, since he didn't seem inclined to take it There was a faraway look in his eyes.

"It would really help me," I continued, "if you could tell me why Dad had it. I never knew him to be a thief."

"Oh, Katie, of course he wasn't a thief," Adrian said, picking up the ring, then placing it in his desk drawer. "Luke was an artist, with an artist's temperament, as I am sure you know."

"Yes…."

"I'm equally sure I wasn't the only client your father accused of failing to appreciate his genius."

I smiled a little. "You weren't."

"He left here in an artistic huff. I suppose he took the ring, fearing that I wouldn't make good on the work he had completed for me. I did, eighteen months later, when he surfaced in England, painting for an old college chum of mine."

I frowned. "He should have returned the ring then."

"Oh, don't be hard on him. He was young with a little girl to support and no money saved. It is a testament to your father's honesty that he kept it all these years with the plan of returning it."

I wanted to believe him-to believe the best about my father-but stories weren't matching up. "Mrs. Hopewell said that you sent us packing."

Adrian looked surprised. "That's odd. Her memory has always been good," he replied. "Of course, that is how she would have perceived the situation.

As you may have noticed, she is loyal to a fault, especially to Robyn and me. She would assume I fired your father rather than think I was jilted by an un established artist" That made some sense. But then why did we leave so secretly in the middle of the night? Perhaps because my father had stolen the ring.

"You look unconvinced," Adrian observed. "What did your father tell you?"

"Nothing. He never wanted to talk about our time here."

Adrian shook his head. "I hope your time with us left you with a few good memories. Ashley loved having you for her little friend. You were a very happy part of her life. I'm glad that Patrick will have that opportunity now. How do you find him?"

"Lonely."

Adrian sat back in his chair. "You are blunt, just like your mother."

"I hardly know Patrick, but it is obvious that he needs other children around him."

Adrian sighed. "You are probably right. Give me a few days to set my affairs in order, then we shall put our heads together to see what can be done for him."

I nodded.

I am delighted you are here, Katie-Kate, I suppose I should call you, now that you are a young woman. We'll be getting you a cell phone, which I'd like you to keep with you at all times. I don't know why the microwave and small refrigerator were removed from your room, but Mrs. Hopewell assures me they will be put back. You are welcome to eat in the kitchen anytime, of course, but most people want some privacy."

He rose, signaling the end of our meeting.

"Thank you. . thanks-" I hesitated, not ready to address my employer by his first name.

The lines of amusement deepened in his face. "And what did we agree you would call me?" he asked.

"Adrian."

"Your father has come home," I told Patrick when I picked him up from school that day.

His face lit up. "Is he all better?"

"He still has cancer, but he is better right now," I replied, glad that I had asked Emily what they had told Patrick about Adrian's health.

"And he is very happy to be home," I added, as Patrick struggled to get his stuffed backpack in the rear seat of the car. "He can't wait to see you."

"I wish they could make Daddy's cancer go away." Patrick's voice sounded small, wistful.

I rested my hand on his shoulder. "Me too."

He climbed into the car.

"Fasten your seat belt," I reminded him, then got into the driver's seat and started the car. "So how was school today?"

"Okay… sort of… I got a fifty on my spelling test," he blurted suddenly, as I pulled out of the school lot. "It has to be signed."

"A fifty." I glanced in the mirror and saw his tense little face. "How many words were on the test?"

Ten.

"So you can spell five. That's a start. We'll work on the other five tonight."

He looked relieved that I hadn't come down hard on him. "Will you sign the test?"

"No, your mother or father has to, but I will tell them we're working on those five words and learning new ones too."

"Okay," he said, sounding cheerful. "To the right, to the right," he chanted, recalling my mantra earlier in the day.

"I'm driving fairly well now, Patrick. I don't think I need prompting."

"Yeah," he agreed, "only you came out of the parking lot where you are supposed to go in."

"I did?"

"That's why our crossing guard was blowing her whistle at you."

"She was?"

I glanced back in the rearview mirror. "Oh, well. You help me drive and I'll help you spell."

"Home is the other way," he informed me.

"Oh. Right." I needed to turn the car around. "Don't worry. All we have to do is-whoops! 'Do Not Enter.' So. . so, we'll take a left, then another left." I made the first turn. "Well get there eventually."

"When we do, can we play with my plastic horses? Ashley said you can ride Silver Knight."

"Ashley said-what?"

A horn blared at me as I turned the corner.

"To the right!" Patrick cried.

There was no time to veer away from the oncoming car. I slammed on the brakes. Our car screeched to a stop, nose to nose with the other vehicle. I wrenched around to look at Patrick. "Are you okay?"

He bobbed his head. "That was close."

There had been no thump, no crushing metal sounds, no shattering of glass. I sank back against my seat. "I'm sorry, Patrick. I hope I didn't scare you."

"Nope," he said. I saw him looking past me, and I turned to see the guy who had been driving the other car leap out of it. He shouted at me, waving his arms like a lunatic.

"What are you doing, lady? Are you trying to kill me?"

We could hear him though our windows were rolled "You ever driven a car before? Are you driving with your eyes closed? Do you know left from right? Do you want both sides of the street to be your side?"

I think he's mad," Patrick observed.

"Perhaps a bit," I said calmly. "You stay here." I got out of the car to speak to the guy and make sure no damage had been done. Cars moved slowly around our two vehicles, people craning their heads to see what had happened.

"Didn't you see me coming?" the guy asked as we strode toward each other. "What does it matter if you saw me?" he answered himself. "You're on the wrong side of the street!"

"I'm sorry. I made a mistake. But there's no reason to get dramatic about it."

"No reason! My entire life flashed before my eyes."

"Really. I hope it was interesting," I said, then checked over both cars, though clearly they had not touched. "I didn't even jostle your bonnet."

He looked at me funny, and I remembered that American cars had another name for the front of the vehicle. "I mean your cap."

He squinted at me and ran his hands through his hair, big hands through dark and wavy hair. I suddenly recognized him-the guy in the antique shop, the one who had been buying a last-minute gift.

"What I mean is that whatever that big metal thing is"-l pointed to the front of his car-"l didn't touch it."

"I remember you from the store," he said. "You're English."

"Not exactly."

"That's why you're driving on the wrong side of the road."

"It's only the wrong side in America," I pointed out.

He took a step closer, perhaps wanting another look at eyes that were like green plastic pop bottles, but I couldn't step back. The obedient little boy I had told to stay in the car was standing on my heels, peeking around me.

The guy rested his hand on the front of his car. "This is called a hood."

"I'll try to remember that," I replied crisply. "And I'll try to stay on the right side of the road." Oh, those dark, brilliant eyes! I thought. "Let's go, Patrick."

"Wait, Kate." Patrick yanked on me, wanting me to bend down so he could whisper. He spoke loud enough to be heard in the next shire. "It's Sam Koscinski, the hockey player. Don't you remember? I showed you his picture."

Hearing the awe in Patrick's voice, the guy smiled. No guy, I thought, should have both eyes and a smile that could melt steel. His ego was probably insufferable.

"I do remember. The manic-looking one."

The guy laughed. He didn't care-he knew girls found him attractive.

"Can I have your autograph?" Patrick asked.

"Sure," Sam replied in his soft American drawl. "Do you have something I could sign?"

Patrick glanced up at me.

"Get a piece of paper from your book bag. Not your spelling test," I added, watching him to make sure he stayed on the left side of the car, walking safely between it and the sidewalk.

"Are you his baby-sitter?" Sam asked me.

I turned back to him. "His tutor," I said, "his nanny, au pair, whatever. I live with the family."

"Oh, yeah? Where?"

"Outside of town, an estate called Mason's Choice."

"The Westbrooks' place?" Sam's smile disappeared.

"Yes."

"That kid is a Westbrook?" Sam's eyes narrowed. "How is he related?"

"He is Adrian Westbrook's son."

"Nice father," Sam remarked, his voice thick with sarcasm.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean a lot of things. For one, his father yanks people around."

"Well, his father isn't the one who wants your autograph," I reminded him.

"I tore off two pieces of paper," Patrick announced as he rejoined us. "Can you sign both? I'm going to mail one to Tim," he explained happily. "Tim's dad took us to your games."

Sam signed both of the ragged pieces quickly-carelessly, I thought. I hoped that Patrick was too enamored to notice the sudden chill in the air.

"Are you playing here this Saturday?" Patrick asked him.

"Yup. Got to go," Sam said brusquely.

"Can we go to the game, Kate? Can we, please? Please?"

"If we can't find anything better to do," I said.

Sam, who had started off, glanced back a moment.

I couldn't tell him off, not in front of Patrick. I wasn't going to tear down a child's hero, even if he was a royal jerk.

Sam waited for me to back up and drive past his car, perhaps thinking it was safest if he didn't move while I was on the road. It wasn't until we turned into the gates of Mason's Choice that I remembered what had distracted me from my driving.

At the thought of it, the skin on my arms rose in little bumps. According to Patrick, Ashley had said I could "ride" Silver Knight. The toy's name had been a secret shared by us-how did Patrick know it? Since the horse was my favorite among Ashley's toys, it was also the bribe she would use when she wanted me to play with her. I found it spooky that twelve years later, Patrick, wanting me to play, was making the same offer.

"An excellent idea, Patrick," Adrian said that evening, touching his son's cheek, smiling at him. "Mrs. Hopewell, set a place at the dinner table for Kate."

Eating dinner with the family was the last thing I wanted to do. "Thank you very much, but-" "You may place her between Trent and me," Emily interrupted.

"I've told you before, Emily," Robyn said, "you don't need to give Hoppy instructions. She is quite capable at her job. Besides, the order for seating people at the table was set long before you arrived here."

"By you, I suppose," Emily replied, "before I was born."

Robyn sent her a withering look.

In the last fifteen minutes, with the family gathered in the beautiful, high-ceilinged room that overlooked an expanse of darkening water and sky, the petty comments had run nonstop. Robyn, who had chosen the armchair closest to her father's, showed considerable skill in undermining Emily's authority in the household.

Emily, responding by positioning herself even closer to Adrian, perching on the ottoman that matched his chair, displayed her own talent for small putdowns, such as reminding Robyn of her age. Both women continually glanced at Adrian, like schoolgirls waiting for an adult to notice and take sides.

Across the room, next to the fireplace, Trent and Brook had their own game going.

"I don't care where anyone sits," Brook said, lounging on a striped silk sofa, his muddy feet on the upholstery, "as long as I get fed."

"Spoken like the well-bred gentleman that you are," Trent remarked. He sat on a matching sofa, but his feet were flat on the floor and his back straighter, stiffer than the furniture.

Adrian, apparently unfazed by these small exchanges, watched Patrick with obvious pleasure. Tearing through the pile of gifts his father had purchased for him in Baltimore, Patrick was acting like a spoiled brat, tossing down each box after seeing what it contained, wanting the next one.

He paused, holding a sleek red car. "I want Kate next to me."

"No," Robyn said. "The matter is settled." "But I want to sit next to Kate! I want to! I have to!" He yanked tissue from the box and threw it at Robyn.

"Patrick," I said softly, unsure whether I should correct him when his parents were present.

Robyn's tan face darkened with anger. "Children who have been raised properly do not insist on getting their way."

"He's only seven," Emily protested.

"And he has such a fine role model in your own son," Trent added from across the room. "With Brook around, whatever would give Patrick the idea that he can have everything he wants?"

Robyn glared at Trent, but Brook smiled, as if he thought his uncle's jab was a compliment.

"Daddy, really," Robyn said, "Patrick must learn his place."

"Louise," Adrian said calmly, "seat Patrick on my right and Kate next to Patrick."

Mrs. Hopewell nodded, her face expressionless as a wig stand.

Robyn blinked her eyes rapidly, as if fighting back tears, which I found a bit weird. She was too old to become unhinged at losing a battle over seats.

Emily pouted beautifully, like a model in a lipstick ad. "Darling, Patrick was with Kate all afternoon and will be with her again this evening. I want him next to me at dinner."

Adrian ignored his wife and turned his gaze on Robyn and Trent. "Inviting guests for dinner is part of Patrick's training if he is to be the next head of this household. He may invite and seat his guests as he wishes."

A sullen silence followed. Trent toyed with a paperweight on the table next to him. Robyn flipped furiously through a horse magazine, not pausing long enough to read a headline. Brook scowled at the ceiling, and Emily developed a sudden fascination with Patrick's model car. I excused myself to get ready for dinner, eager to get away from them all.

Was Adrian really planning to make Patrick the head of the household, his principal heir, I wondered; or was it simply his way of silencing the nasty group? It was certainly a good way to create antagonism toward Patrick. To Robyn and Trent, Patrick was a newcomer surpassing them in the amount of attention they received from their father, and perhaps in the amount of money.

Surely Patrick sensed the jealousy among the members of his family and felt their intense dislike for him. Most children, I thought, aware of others' hostility, either acted out or retreated. Perhaps Ashley, created out of snippets Patrick had heard from members of the household, was his retreat. In effect, he had made himself a new relative, one he could play with.

When I returned to the first floor, dinner was ready to be served. Adrian took his seat at the head of the long table, and Henry, the elderly employee, seated Emily on the left side of Adrian, across from Patrick. 1, of course, was to sit next to Patrick. Brook stood behind me as if courteously waiting to push in my chair. I felt his finger, the tip of it, making small circles on the bare skin at the back of my neck. I would have preferred being touched by a lizard. I glanced across the table at Robyn, who pulled in her own chair with a grim look.

"Now, Mother," Brook told her, "guests must be seated first. According to Patrick, Kate is a guest. And, as we all know, Patrick is the one who calls the shots around here."

Sit down, Brook," Adrian said, his voice quiet but carrying like thunder.

Brook sat next to me, with Trent across from him. A girl not much older than I assisted Henry in serving the soup. Mrs. Hopewell stood in the doorway and watched. For a few minutes all you could hear were spoons scraping against china and the wind coming off the bay. A fire had been made in the dining room hearth; it hissed and sputtered.

"You know my dump truck?" Patrick asked, breaking the silence.

"The one you unwrapped this afternoon?'' Adrian replied.

Patrick nodded. "I gave Patricia a ride in it."

"Oh, Patrick," Emily said, "your hamster should stay in her cage."

"But she liked it, she really liked it-didn't she, Kate?" he said, appealing to me.

"She didn't actually say so, but yes, I believe she did."

Patricia, being old as well as plump, had showed no inclination to scurry around. I didn't see any harm in letting her out of her cage. Children need to touch animals.

"The hamster must remain in her cage, Kate," Emily said.

Yes, ma am.

"You were informed that Patrick is allergic to cats and dogs."

"Yes, ma'am. Is he also allergic to hamsters?"

Brook laughed, which made my question seem flip.

"No," Robyn answered, before Emily could. "His mother is. She has a severe reaction to anything that walks on four legs."

"So, Trent," Adrian said, I had counted on meeting with you this afternoon. I've been going over last year's earnings, and I can't say I am pleased."

Trent nodded. "I assumed you would need a day to settle in, Father, so I dropped by Crossroads. We've received another complaint from the Gleasons, the family who lives next to it."

"The shack people?" Brook interjected. "The family who doesn't know when to stop having kids? Though that's okay with me. The oldest girl is pretty hot."

"Stay away from her, Brook," his mother said. "She's not our kind of people."

"It's good of you to remind me, Brook," Adrian added dryly. "Mrs. Hopewell, with Brook home, you must remember not to set the house security system at night. We don't need the alarm going off at four in the morning."

"This time," Trent went on in his businesslike, colorless voice, "the Gleasons have contacted the county animal control people and have asked them to examine the fencing on the kennels. They believe the dogs are a danger to their children, who play next to them."

Adrian shrugged. "I believe their children are a danger to my dogs."

Robyn laughed, a bit too loudly. "The Gleasons have contacted the right person in our family," she observed. "Did you pet the dogs, Trent, to convince the family that they are friendly?"

"No, he stuck his head in one of their mouths," Brook said, making his mother laugh again and even winning a smile from Adrian.

I remembered how timid Trent had been around Ashley's collection of animals, especially the wild creatures she was always feeding-featherless birds, baby raccoons, and her favorite, a battle-scarred orange tabby.

"The point is," Trent said, "we will need to comply with suggestions by the county. If the dogs got out and something happened, we could be sued."

"The dogs know their job," Adrian replied. "They will maul anyone who enters the building after hours, just as I trained them to do. Case closed."

The soup was removed and the next course brought in, steak with vegetables. Patrick was silent, his eyes flicking from one member of the family to the next, like those of a wary animal.

"Did Louise give you a phone message, Trent?" Emily asked. "Someone from the Queen Victoria called today."

"The hotel?" Robyn cut in. "You're not still seeing that woman, Margery whatever."

"Gilbert," Trent said, pronouncing the last name distinctly.

"I would think, Trent," Robyn went on, "that somewhere in New York or Philadelphia, you could find a woman more suitable than a hotel manager who went through the Wisteria public school system."

"And I would think," Trent responded, "that if you had a worthwhile way to spend your life, you wouldn't be so concerned about mine."

"Perhaps if she had her own romance," Emily suggested slyly. "How many years has it been since you've had a man in your life, Robyn? I mean, besides your father."

Robyn's eyes bored through Emily.

A sudden gust of wind rattled the dining room's old windowpanes. The flame in the fireplace sputtered and blew out.

"Where-where did that come from?" Trent asked softly.

Everyone turned, following his eyes to a window. The sky was completely black now, but the outside floodlights had come on, lighting the window casements like small stages against the darkness. There wasn't a sound at the dinner table-not a sip from a glass or a clink of silver. In the window farthest to the right sat a battle-scarred orange tabby.

Without a word, Patrick pushed back his chair and walked toward the window. He laid his palm flat against the glass. The tabby arched its back, rubbing against the pane, as a cat rubs against the leg of someone it knows.

"Can I let him in, Daddy? Can I keep him?"

"Darling, you have an allergy," Emily said.

"But-" "He's a feral cat," Adrian replied. "You can't own a wild animal like that. They are never happy staying inside."

"But he likes me," Patrick pleaded.

Brook glanced from the cat to his mother. She shifted uncomfortably in her chair. Trent gazed at the shabby cat, as if entranced. Orange stripes, a bitten-off tail, half of its left ear missing-it was identical to the one Ashley had loved.

Ashley's cat could still be alive, I reasoned, for cats could live twenty years or more. It seemed too much a coincidence that another animal would have the exact same coloring and scars as Ashley's and would choose the same window he had liked to occupy twelve years before. But if this was Ashley's feral cat, how much more a coincidence was it that he would show up now, now that I had returned to Mason's Choice, now that Patrick saw something in the air he called Ashley?

I was dreaming, unhappy, five-year-old dreams, having cried myself to sleep in the cottage bedroom. Ashley had taken Lilly, my golden-haired baby doll.

She had shelves full of her own dolls, but she wanted mine. When Ashley snatched Lilly, I screamed for help, but since I did a lot of shrieking while playing with her, the adults ignored me until it was too late. Now Ashley had hidden my doll where no one could find her.

I sat up suddenly, awakened from my afternoon nap by the sound of something crashing through the cottage window. Broken glass flew inward. I jumped out of bed, then saw my doll lying on the floor among the sharp pieces.

"Lilly!"

"You can have her back."

Surprised by the sound of Ashley's voice, I looked up. She was supposed to be punished, not allowed out of the house till she gave back my doll, but she sat on the limb of an old maple outside my bedroom window.

"You climbed the tree," I said in awe.

She shrugged. "We can climb anywhere." The orange cat she loved, the wild one with the torn ear, was perched two branches higher, staring in at me.

"You can have Lilly. I don't want her," Ashley said. "She's ugly now."

I looked down at my baby. Her teeth had been colored black with a marker. Jagged black scribbles had been made all over her beautiful face.

"Mommy!" I howled. "Mom-my! Mommy, I need you."

Hands tugged at me. Small hands held my face. "Kate? Kate!"

1 sat up, no longer in a cottage bedroom, but in the main house at Mason's Choice. The clock read 2:05 A.M. Patrick stood next to my bed, his eyes big and frightened.

"Patrick, what is it?" I asked, struggling to free myself from the threads of my dream. "Is something wrong?"

"It's Ashley," he said. "She keeps talking."

"What?"

Patrick chewed on the sleeve of his pajamas. "I told her to be quiet, but she won't. She won't let me sleep."

I climbed out of a bed and knelt in front of him. Resting my hands on his thin shoulders, I could feel him shivering beneath his flannel top. "You were dreaming."

"No, Kate, she's there. She's in my toy closet, playing with my horses."

I glanced toward the stairway between his room and mine. What did it mean-both of us dreaming of Ashley at the same time? Nothing, I told myself.

Returning to her home, it was only natural I would dream of her. But perhaps not so naturally, Patrick did.

I slipped my arms in my dressing gown, then took a jacket from my closet and put it on Patrick. He looked small and vulnerable in it, its cuffs dangling well below the ends of his arms.

"Let's go have a look," I told him, then headed down the steps. He trailed behind, reluctant to go back to his room, but equally reluctant to be left alone in mine. At the bottom of the turning stairs I stopped. The door of his toy closet was ajar; light emanated from within.

"Who turned on the light?" I asked quietly.

Patrick looked unsure. "Ashley," he answered at last.

Though my mind kept saying these were nothing but dreams, my hands were shaking. I stuffed them in the pockets of my gown, then crept toward the door of the walk-in closet. Without touching the door, I slowly moved my head forward, till I could peer through.

In the slice of lit closet I could see two horses on the floor, Silver Knight and Whirlwind, facing each other as if someone had been playing with them. A light prickle ran along the back of my neck. Ashley had loved to put together these two horses, to make them "talk." I wriggled my shoulders, wishing I could slip out of the eerie grip of another coincidence.

"I don't see her," I said, opening the door wider.

Patrick, who had stayed on the bottom step, crept over and peeked in. "She left. But she'll come back. She'll come back as soon as you leave. I want to sleep in your room, Kate."

If I let him do it once, he'd want to do it again and again.

"Where do you think Ashley went?" I asked, hoping to prove she wasn't in the room. I needed some convincing myself.

He glanced around. His eyes paused at the tall mirror above the bureau, full of gray night shadows that came alive each time he or I moved. He glanced up at the wardrobe with the massive top that seemed to make it tip forward, then studied the drapes that hung to the floor. Ashley used to hide behind drapes, waiting for her chance to jump out at me.

"Would you look under my bed?" Patrick asked.

"All right," I said, opening the closet door all the way, allowing more light in the room. I didn't turn on the large bureau lamps, for their brightness would make it difficult for him to fall asleep again. Getting down on my knees, I lifted layers of bed clothing. "Nothing there. Want to see?"

He dropped down next to me, his side pressed against mine. We checked the inside of his wardrobe, behind the curtains, and every other place into which Ashley might fit. At last I closed the closet door, leaving a narrow strip of light shining, in case he wanted to check it again, then I turned on a soft night-light by his bed.

"Come on, Patrick, let's get you under the covers where it's warmer." I fluffed the quilt, then placed a chair next to his mattress. "I'll stay with you for a while and make sure Ashley doesn't come back. Into bed now. You must be freezing-I am," I said, lifting one bare foot, then the other off the cold floorboards.

He took one last look around and joined me. "Can I wear your coat, Kate?"

I don't think you'll need it with all these blankets."

"I need it," he said, his voice quivering.

"All right then." If he thought the coat would protect him from Ashley, I wasn't taking it away from him. "In you go, under the covers, head on your pillow."

He climbed in and stared up at me, his nose just above the edge of a quilt. Impulsively, I leaned down to kiss his forehead. Two arms in very long sleeves reached around my neck and hugged me hard.

"Close your eyes," I said, "left then right. Good night, starlight." I pressed my lips together, surprised at how easily it had come back to me, the saying my mother had used when putting me to bed.

Patrick rolled onto his tummy. While I rubbed his back, I thought about the things he had said and their connections to the past. Something strange was going on in this house. I wasn't a person who believed in ghosts or devils; traveling with my father, I had seen enough to convince me that human beings alone were sufficient to account for the frightening and evil things that happened in the world. Still, the coincidences of the last few days were spooking me.

There was a meanness at Mason's Choice, a quiet kind of menace that lived below the level of petty quarrels. Whether it originated from household members, one of whom might be preying on Patrick, planting ideas that would frighten him, or from something far less tangible, I didn't know. I was sure of only one thing: The source of Patrick's fear was dangerous-dangerous and sly.

Saturday morning Patrick rose rested and eager to go to the hockey game. I wondered if he remembered the events of last night, but I was reluctant to mention Ashley by name, not wanting to reintroduce fears that sleep may have erased. While we painted a sign saying GO, SAM! I told Patrick that I had had a strange dream last night, giving him a chance to talk about whatever he might remember.

"Do you think Sam will see my sign?" was his response. "Maybe we should make it bigger."

Apparently, ice hockey was the only thing on his mind today.

We arrived late at the game, which began at noon. The high school team played at Chase College's athletic center, with the college's JV and varsity teams scheduled later in the day. Either ice hockey was big in this small town or there was nothing else to do in Wisteria in early March; the place was packed with teens, adults, and bands of little boys and girls in hockey garb. Patrick wanted to sit close to the rink and team bench. I had forgotten about the American love for cheerleaders and watched with fascination as the girls bounced around in the aisles. One of them thought Patrick was cute and told him that Sam was her favorite player too.

Even without Patrick screeching in my ear, I could have picked out Number 23 of the white jerseys. Most of the guys looked the same with their huge pads and helmets, but 23 was clearly manic. When his team scored, he punched the air and any teammate available with such ferocity that he'd knock down his own players. When a sub was put in and he was supposed to be resting on the bench, he was up and dancing, screaming at the players and the officials. I saw the referee giving him the eye when he hollered at a call he didn't like.

"Icing? Icing!" Sam cried out. "Did you forget your glasses, ref? If thirty-three had moved his big butt, he'd have had that!"

Whenever Sam took a penalty shot, a one-on-one situation with the goalie, the crowd would chant, "Sam, Sam, Sam's the man!" He was good, much better than the other players-even I could tell that. And though I didn't know the sport, I was very familiar with his style. I knew that sooner or later emotion would get the better of Sam, and then he'd look at the offending party with disbelief, even hurt. If he didn't quickly get a grip on his emotions, the passion that made him so good would work against him. I'd seen that happen repeatedly with my father.

"Tripping?" Sam screamed at the referee, as his opponent went flying headfirst across the ice.

The official struck his leg with his hand, which must have been a signal for the penalty call.

"But I touched the puck! I touched it first."

The referee jerked his head toward the penalty box. From the look of utter disbelief on Sam's face, you would have thought he'd been accused of playing with four arms. He skated over to the box, then stewed in there for two minutes.

"Stupid ref," Patrick said.

"A penalty is a penalty," I replied.

After three long periods of athletics and theatrics, Sam and his teammates won. They spent a lot of time hugging one another.

I want to get Sam's autograph," Patrick said.

"You have two already."

I want him to autograph my sign," he explained. "Let's go. I know where the players come out. Please, Kate. It's the last game."

For a moment I didn't reply. "It is?"

"The announcer just said so."

I quickly turned my back to the rink and snatched up our coats. "All right."

"Can we get tickets to the play-offs?" Patrick asked.

"I thought you said it was the last game."

"Before the play-offs. Didn't you hear the announcement?"

A moment ago? No, I hadn't heard a word, for Sam had taken off his helmet and gloves, and I had stood like a moron staring at him, attracted again by his strong hands. I had gotten a strange feeling inside, one that I quelled fast. A tough jock with damp curly hair, which made him seem childlike, muscle and sweat, but a badly bruised hand-maybe that was it, the mix of macho and vulnerability. I had turned away, but it was a second too late. He had caught me gazing at him, and worse, had gazed back with the dark eyes that were unsafe to look into.

I was relieved to find a large group of people outside the players' dressing room, waiting to congratulate their team. I took a seat some distance away, where a group of adults were waiting, keeping my eye on Patrick as he bobbed around the teens and kids gathering by the players' entrance. I counted on this group of admirers to keep Sam from being too cold to Patrick.

The woman next to me saw Patrick waving to me and gesturing with his sign. "Are you a fan of Sam's?" she asked.

"Hardly."

She tilted her head, and I realized that my response sounded rude. "What I mean is that I'm not much of a hockey fan, but that little boy is. He thinks Sam Koscinski is the greatest thing since the Queen's hats."

The woman laughed, a silvery laugh that seemed to go with her prematurely silver hair. She had beautiful skin, and dark eyes with a touch of merriness.

The players started coming out and were surrounded by friends and fans. Sam got swallowed up. I watched Patrick hopping like a bunny, trying to get his hero's attention. If I helped him I'd have to fight my way into the group, which had a rather high percentage of cute girls. I glanced down at my jeans, then my heavy boots, which were still coated with mud from yesterday's trek to the pond. I felt like a sheep farmer. Patrick was on his own.

Sam's group moved slowly in our direction. He hugged everyone on the way-girls, guys, parents, somebody's grandmother. Patrick trailed behind. I was probably going to have to do something.

"Hey, Mom!" Sam called. "We're number one!"

"Hey, Sam," replied the woman next to me, the one who had asked me if I was a fan. "Good job."

1 turned to look at her and she smiled a little.

"There's a short guy behind the other kids, Sam," she added, "who would really like your attention."

Sam craned his head to see Patrick, then glanced back at me.

"No, she's not a fan," his mother said, laughing as she had when I'd told her 'Hardly.' "Don't let the short guy down, Sam."

I wondered if Mrs. Koscinski already knew who Patrick was and how Sam had responded to him yesterday. Did she know I drove on the wrong side of the road?

"Thank you for helping Sam pick out my bracelet," she said to me, jingling the silver chain on her wrist. "It's beautiful."

A guy who talked to his mother-I would never have guessed it. A guy who remembered his mother's birthday-not his girlfriend's-not that it meant he didn't have a girlfriend, and not that it mattered, of course.

Sam was surveying Patrick's sign. Patrick was thrilled, chattering away. Sam listened and responded, acting much nicer to him than before.

"Thank you for saying something," I told Mrs. Koscinski. "This means a lot to Patrick."

She nodded graciously.

Sam knelt down to sign the poster. Seeing Patrick's hand resting on Sam's wide shoulder, his earnest little face close to Sam's attentive one, I felt a lump in my throat.

I shook off the feeling, just in time, for Sam rose and earned the sign over to me.

I guess you couldn't find anything better to do today," he said, reminding me of yesterday's remark.

"Patrick wanted to come very badly," I replied, keeping the focus on my charge. "He really enjoyed the game."

"Yeah, he just gave me the play-by-play. Thanks for making the poster. I noticed it between periods. It's great!"

"I really didn't have anything to do with it," I said. "Patrick painted it all."

Sam smiled a little, then very lightly touched my fingertips with his. Saying nothing more, he moved on.

His brief touch traveled all the way through me. My skin felt warm, my cheeks hot. I gazed down at my hands: Incriminating poster paint was stuck beneath my fingernails.

"Come on, Patrick." I rose from my seat. "Let's get going."

"Nice meeting you, Kate," Sam's mother called after me.

I turned back to her and saw that Sam had inherited her wonderful smile. "Nice meeting you, Mrs. Koscinski."

"Store's closed."

"Maybe you should lock the door, Mr. Joseph," I replied, entering Olivia's Antiques, Patrick trailing behind me. We had left the car in the college parking lot and walked to High Street.

Joseph looked up from a worn-looking ledger. "Right. And then when shoppers insist on coming in, because they are either ignorant or illiterate-" "Or stubborn?" I suggested.

"I have to stop what I'm doing, go to the door, unlock it, and tell them what is already posted on the sign. But I'm glad to see you, Katie. And please leave off the 'Mister' part. Who is this fine young man?"

Patrick looked behind him.

"You, sport," Joseph said.

I made the introductions and explained that we had just come from the game.

"Hockey, that's a nice violent activity. Well, Patrick, do you know what I have for you in the back?" Joseph asked.

"How can I if I've never been there?"

"Cute," Joseph remarked.

"Patrick, your manners," I chided. Whether he was being flip or reacting to a patronizing adult tone, I wasn't sure. Sorry.

"I have a pile of cartons that need to be broken down flat," Joseph continued. "Nowadays, they not only want you to recycle, they want you to fold your boxes like laundry before they haul them away. Do you think you could help me with that?"

Patrick looked up at me. He knew when someone was trying to get rid of him.

"It will give you something to do while Joseph and I talk," I said.

Joseph led the way to the back storeroom. After about thirty seconds, Patrick found it too much fun stomping on the cardboard boxes to care if he was being kept busy.

"So how is it going?" Joseph asked quietly, when he and I had passed through the doorway to the front of the store.

"When it is just Patrick and I, fine. I am to pick him up from school at three o'clock every day and, in the afternoon and evening, I'm going to do my best to keep him away from other members of the household-except his parents, of course."

"I was afraid you would find them a rotten lot."

"Trent is cold and barely acknowledges him. Robyn is mean and, if you ask me, a bit strange in the way she still competes for her father's attention.

Brook teases-pretends he teases-but there is no love behind it, and Patrick isn't fooled. Mrs. Hopewell is the same as ever-I think she flies on a broomstick at night."

Joseph laughed.

"Patrick's parents aren't helping any. Emily clings to him, which drives him away. Adrian loves him and makes it far too clear that Patrick is his favorite, which fuels the others' resentment of him."

I recounted the scene at dinner last night and Adrian's statement about the possibility of Patrick being the next head of the household.

"Good old Adrian," Joseph said. "He knows how to push people's buttons."

"Maybe. Even so, I like him better than the rest."

"Most people do," Joseph replied, sitting down on a piece of store merchandise. The old chair wobbled beneath his weight. "But don't trust him, Katie.

He can turn on you. Do you still have my number? Did they give you a phone?"

"A cellular," I replied, and wrote down my new number. "Joseph, why did my parents leave Mason's Choice?"

"Didn't your father tell you?" he asked.

"No. He would never talk about it." I walked around an assortment of tables and lamps, running my finger under the fringe of one of the shades. "Mrs.

Hopewell said that we were sent packing by Adrian. Adrian said my father left in an artistic huff. I remember leaving late at night in the middle of a terrible storm. My father drove without headlights, as if he didn't want anyone to see us, and I don't recall any other time in which my father got in an artistic snit and sneaked away. When he was angry, he wanted everyone to know. He had a knack for melodrama."

Joseph smiled, as if remembering that aspect of his personality. "Of course, your father was quite young then, and not very sure of himself. He may have been afraid of Adrian."

Or afraid that the ring would be discovered missing, I thought. Maybe it really did make sense.

"You know, Adrian has a history of using people and discarding them," Joseph continued.

I glanced toward the storage room to make certain there were no little ears listening in. "What do you mean?"

"When you can offer Adrian something he desires, he's delighted to make a deal and acts as if he is your best friend. But once he has gotten what he wants, he is inclined to toss people away-he'll run over you if it suits him."

Sam had indicated as much.

"So, Mrs. Hopewell assumed that he was tossing us away, that he sent us packing."

"I'm guessing that. There are some things you should understand about Mrs. Hopewell. She is very loyal to Adrian, and perhaps even more so to Robyn.

She raised Robyn-Trent, too, after Adrian divorced, but it's Robyn that Hopewell sees as her daughter. She'll do anything for her."

"Kate, c'mere," Patrick called from the back room.

"In a minute," I called back, then lowered my voice. "Joseph, do you remember the orange cat that Ashley loved?"

"The feral one?"

"He showed up last night."

"The same cat?" Joseph asked, his head bent forward as if he hadn't heard me correctly.

"One with a bitten-off tail and torn ear. It was the cat's left ear, wasn't it?"

He nodded thoughtfully. "There was something. . unsettling about that cat, the way he responded to Ashley-did what she wanted with just a look from her, without her saying a word."

"There are a lot of unsettling things at Mason's Choice," I replied. "Patrick has Ashley's furniture and Ashley's horses-he knows her secret names for them. He has Ashley's books and Ashley's outdoor play set-or I should say mine-you remember the old metal swings and bars by the workers' cottages.

He prefers them to the new equipment the way Ashley did and-" "Kate?" Patrick stood at the storage room door. "We'd better go home. I'm supposed to play with Ashley this afternoon. She'll get mad if I'm not there."

I turned back to Joseph, whose eyes had just grown larger. "That's the other thing I wanted to tell you about."

When Patrick and I arrived home, he ceremoniously carried his autographed poster to the third-floor playroom, where we hung it on the wall.

"It looks spectacular," I said, then glanced past him. Something was missing. "Patrick, where's Patricia?"

He turned quickly and saw the hamster's empty cage. The screen, which should have covered the glass tank, was propped against its side. "Patricia?"

he called softly.

Emily was going to have my head.

I remembered seeing Patrick replace the weighted screen after feeding his pet. Sometime after that, there had been five minutes, maybe less, when I had left him alone. "Were you playing with her after she ate?" I asked.

"No."

"You're certain of that? I'm not angry. I want to know because it makes sense to look wherever you last saw her."

I last saw her in her cage."

A hamster could hide in a million places in the playroom and schoolroom, not to mention the rest of the third floor-my room and the two large storage rooms.

"Maybe Ashley let her out," Patrick suggested.

"Don't blame her," I said shortly.

"I'm not blaming her. If Ashley did it, it was an accident. She probably just wanted to play and I wasn't here."

I bit my lip. He wasn't using his imaginary playmate as an excuse-he really believed it.

We searched the playroom, schoolroom, and my bedroom. When I opened the door to one of the storage rooms, I saw that the task was overwhelming.

Clothing, furniture, old athletic equipment, books-there was no way we could find a three-inch bit of fur unless she willingly came out. I hated lying to Patrick; still, I wondered how hard it would be to buy an identical hamster and pretend that a hungry "Patricia" had come home while he was in school Monday.

We searched the storage room for a while, and I saw Patrick's eyes fill up several times.

"Let's go outside," I suggested. "Since Patricia ate all of her food this morning, she won't be hungry enough to come back yet."

"But she may come back because she misses me."

"Of course. Of course, she misses you, but she's having a little adventure right now. We'll check for her later."

I had hoped we could make it outside without seeing anyone-l needed time to decide how to handle this-but when we reached the kitchen, Brook was there. Patrick's concern for his pet made him desperate for help.

"Patricia is gone," he confided. "She's not in her cage. Have you seen her?"

"Patricia," Brook replied, popping open a can of Coke. "Is she a hamster? Kind of brown?"

"Yeah! Real brown!" Patrick looked hopeful.

"Brook," I warned.

I did see her. She was carrying a little backpack, heading to the orangerie."

"Cut it out, Brook."

He shrugged at me. "I'm just telling you what I saw," he said.

Patrick rushed toward the kitchen door.

"Brook was teasing," I called, then hurried outside after Patrick. He rounded the corner of the house and ran toward the orangerie.

The orangerie, tennis courts, outdoor pool, and docks were laid out in a line along the northern edge of the estate, which bordered the river mouth. The orangerie was a long building with a row of tall Palladian windows, more glass than brick. Citrus trees and other tropical plants grew inside.

"Do you think she went in?" Patrick asked me.

"Not unless she can reach the door handle," I replied. I knew that hamsters could burrow and slip through cracks in foundations, but I assumed Patricia was holed up in some warm, snug spot on the third floor of the house. "Brook was joking. He made up that story."

"But she might really be here," Patrick insisted.

"All right. Walk around the building and see."

He did, calling Patricia's name softly, woefully. Then he hollered suddenly from the other side, "Hey, Kate. C'mere!"

Rounding the comer, I found him standing five feet from the orange cat that had perched in the window last night. The cat dismissed my appearance with the briefest of looks, then ventured toward Patrick, rubbing against his leg.

"He likes me," Patrick announced happily, momentarily forgetting about his hamster. "I told Daddy he liked me."

The cat flicked his tail, then broke into a quick trot in the direction of the tennis courts.

"I think he knows where Patricia is," Patrick said.

I hoped not, given that this wild tabby was used to catching his own dinner. Patrick followed the cat past the screen of evergreens that shielded the house from the courts, and I hurried after him. He and I caught up with the tabby near the in-ground swimming pool. The cat crossed the concrete deck and began to pace along the pool's edge, as if he had quarried something. As we walked toward him, the cat stopped and peered into the deep end.

Curious, we did the same.

The water had been removed from the pool, but leaves clotted the drains and rain had formed a half-frozen crust beneath the diving board. I thought I was seeing just another brown leaf, then Patrick started screaming, "Patricia! Patricia!"

I grabbed him by the collar as he took off for a set of metal steps. "I'll get her."

I descended the steps at the shallow end of the pool. Patrick kept wailing his pet's name.

Perhaps if she hasn't been outside too long… I thought, hoping against the odds. The first seven meters of the pool were dry, but there was a steep drop down to the diving section, and there the footing became treacherous. My feet slid out from under me. I flew down the concrete slope on my back, my feet crashing through the layer of ice and water covering the bottom of the deep end. The freezing mix sloshed over my shoes. I walked as quickly as possible toward Patricia, then scooped her up in my gloved hand.

"Is she okay?" Patrick called.

"I'll know better when I get out of the pool."

The hamster was dead, but I wanted to be close to Patrick when I told him. I had to scramble to get up the pool's slope with only one free hand. Patrick was waiting for me by the steps at the shallow end, anxiously beating his mittens together. The cat lurked a short distance behind, interested in what I was doing, staring the way cats do, as if they can see so much more than people.

I knelt down in front of Patrick, opening the hand that cradled the hamster. "I'm sorry."

He gazed down at her. "Her eyes are open," he said. "She's alive!"

"She's not. I'm really sorry."

"But her eyes are open, Kate. Look!"

I shook my head. "Animals die with their eyes open. See, she isn't moving. She isn't breathing."

"Maybe she's just frozen," Patrick said. "Let me hold her, I'll warm her up."

I laid the hamster in his cupped hands. Tears brimmed in his eyes.

"Come on, Patricia. Come on," he pleaded. "Wake up. We'll take you inside. We'll get you warm enough. We'll make you okay."

"Patrick, listen to me," I said softly. "She's frozen, and when a hamster freezes, its heart stops. Patricia is dead. There is nothing we can do."

"You're wrong!" he shouted, then lowered his eyes.

His dark lashes were wet against his cheek. He buried his chin in his chest. Tears rolled silently down his face, then he started to sob.

I wrapped my arms around him and pulled him close. "I'm so sorry. If I could make her be alive for you, I would."

He cried hard. The cat watched us for a moment, then slipped away, as if he had fulfilled his mission.

At last the sobs grew quieter. Patrick rested his head against me, his hands still cradling his pet between my chest and his. I reached for some tissues in my pocket. Patrick sneaked a peak at the hamster, probably hoping that she had warmed up and come back to life.

"Would you like to bury her?" I asked, handing him the tissue.

He nodded mutely, more tears rolling down.

"There's probably a shovel in the orangerie," I said.

Patrick wanted to bury Patricia in the family cemetery. I could have called Adrian on my cell phone and asked permission to dig there, but the hole for Patricia would be small and I counted on him to understand how fragile his son was at that moment. We fetched a shovel from the orangerie, then cut across the formal gardens to the main drive, and passed through the keyhole in the tall hedge.

Who did this? I wondered as we walked silently toward the graveyard. It seemed unlikely that the lazy Patricia would have so quickly made her way down three stories of the large house. But even if she did, I could not believe that a home-bred hamster would venture far in the cold, certainly not as far as the pool, an open area without vegetation, where no animal would seek refuge.

It was possible the orange cat had caught her close to the house and dropped her in the pool, for the cat had led us there. But why hadn't he eaten hersurely, hunting rodents was how this wild cat survived. And if he wasn't hungry, why didn't he do what a domesticated cat would-keep its prey in a cozy place where it could play with it. More curious still, how did the cat know what Patrick was searching for?

I caught myself in the middle of that wild leap of an idea. The cat was just a cat, despite what Joseph had said about the silent communication between the tabby and Ashley. People who are good with animals often seem to have an intangible connection to them. The only unnatural, abnormal thing on Mason's Choice was Patrick's heartless relatives; for, no matter what the chain of events, the crisis started when the hamster was let out of her cage.

Most adults wouldn't believe a child who said he had put the top back on a cage. I knew if I started making accusations, that's how Patrick's family would respond. But I believed him. Someone had let Patricia out, someone enjoying a bit of cruel entertainment at Patrick's expense. Brook was the most likely suspect.

We had reached the cemetery. The large plot, surrounded by an iron fence, was barren of trees. The obelisks and statues, some standing upright, some leaning, cast long shadows in the late afternoon light. No winter birds stirred here, no squirrels scurried through. The only animals inhabiting the plot were the carved stone creatures placed around Ashley's grave.

There was quiet but no peace here-I had felt it as a child, and felt it again now.

Ashley had said that the ghosts in this graveyard spoke to her. She had said they watched me when she and I were apart, that they told her what I did.

Even now it was hard to shake off the feeling of being observed.

"Where should we bury her?" Patrick asked.

"Sorry? Oh. How about here?" I suggested, pointing to a patch of grass behind the gate that was unlikely to be used for anything else.

He knelt, solemnly watching as I dug into the hard earth. I wrapped Patricia in my scarf and laid her in the hole. Patrick helped me cover her with dirt.

"She'll rest warm and happy now," I told him, and wiped the tears from his face.

"Kate, when you're dead, do you have bad dreams?"

"No, only good ones." How I ached for him!

He glanced toward the new corner of the cemetery.

"That's where Ashley is resting," I told him. "Do you want to say a prayer for her and Patricia?"

"Ashley's not there."

"If you go over to the stone with the little animals around it, you will see her name."

"I know. But she's not there," he insisted.

"What do you mean?"

"She's in other places," he said.

A chill spread over my shoulders and the back of my neck. My feet, having been soaked in the pool's frigid water, felt like lumps of ice.

"Patrick, who is telling you these things about Ashley?"

Someone had to be, someone trying to frighten him. Whoever it was wouldn't dare hurt him physically and risk the wrath of Adrian. But the person knew how to do just as much damage psychologically.

"Is it Brook?"

"Ashley doesn't like Brook," he said.

"Is it Robyn? Trent?"

"Do you think Ashley let out Patricia?" Patrick asked me.

"What?" I stood up, took Patrick's hand, and quickly led him out of the graveyard. "Why won't you tell me who is talking to you about Ashley?"

"Nobody is but you," he said.

I didn't know how to reason with him. "Why do you think she would let out Patricia?"

"Because I didn't get home in time. She was mad. She wanted to play and I wasn't home and she got mad."

"Patrick, Ashley would never hurt an animal. She loved them."

"So you can see her now?" he asked.

"No! No," I repeated in a softer voice. "It's just that everyone knows she loved animals."

"But she gets mad," he pointed out. "Sometimes she really screams when I don't do what she wants."

It was eerie how similar his Ashley was to the one I had known. But these were just imaginings, I reminded myself, and if I could not reason him past them, I could, at least, shape them for him.

"Did you ever see the movie about Casper the ghost?" I asked.

"I have the video."

"Remember how he's a nice ghost? Ashley is like that. Oh, sometimes she screams and puts up a fuss, but she's just lonely. She's just looking for a friend."

Patrick gazed up at me, his face scrunched. "Are you sure?" Yes.

So, it has come to this, I thought, as we trudged toward the house. I, who hated the way adults lied to children, was telling tales to Patrick. I'd do anything to make his fear and hurt go away.

As soon as Patrick and I returned from the burial, I spoke to Emily. She chastised me for not coming to her immediately-at a time like that, Patrick needed his mother, she said-though I had trouble imagining her trekking out to the cemetery in her Ferragamos. Since it was Saturday night and everyone was headed out, Patrick had dinner with me in the kitchen. Happily for us, Mrs. Hopewell was off Saturday evening through Sunday, so though she was still on the premises, she wasn't breathing down our necks.

The one thing that took Patrick's mind off Patricia was talking about ice hockey. After dinner, I remembered I had seen old sports equipment in the thirdfloor storage rooms. We searched and found a pair of battered hockey sticks. While Patrick ran up and down the hall, pushing an imaginary puck and dodging opponents, I went on to the schoolroom computer and downloaded information about children's hockey leagues. Logging on to Chase College's Web site, I discovered that the rink where Sam played had an open skating session from 5:30 to 7:00 every weekday evening. I promised Patrick I'd take him.

After all the emotion of the day, he fell asleep early. I didn't close my eyes till late that night, my mind continually sifting through events, trying to find logical answers for the questions that had been accumulating in the last few days, most of them circling around Ashley.

It was possible that Brook, who had liked to spy on Ashley and me, had overheard and remembered the secret names of Ashley's toy horses. And given that, when he got jealous, he used to let out Ashley's pets, it was reasonable to think he had taken Patrick's. But he was mature enough now to see the plan through, and if his goal was to upset Patrick, why would he leave the hamster in the pool beyond the orangerie? He couldn't have counted on us to find it there. Perhaps he had simply tossed the hamster outside, never meaning for it to be found, but the cat had caught it. Or perhaps his plan was to torment Patrick with a fruitless search, and then, a few days later, pretend to have discovered it himself.

Despite my suspicions, I decided it best not to accuse him or anyone else. After denying they had any part in it, Patrick's loving family members might use the pet's death for their own cruel pleasure, discussing it, distressing him even more.

When I finally closed my eyes, my sleep was made restless by dreams, a series of images, past and present, one melting into the next. I saw Patrick's hamster struggling to escape the ice at the bottom of the pool. I rushed toward her, trying to reach her in time. When I leaned over to scoop her up, I saw Ashley's face, Ashley trapped beneath the ice of the pond, staring up at me. Her mouth moved, but I couldn't understand her words.

I took a step back, afraid. The surface broke and Ashley rose up through the dark water, her eyes sparkling like blue ice.

"I dare you, Katie."

The edge of the round pond straightened and it became the pool again. I was on the diving board, walking its length slowly, my legs shaking.

"Go all the way to the end," Ashley instructed.

I did what she said. I tried not to look at the bottom of the pool far below me, but the icy crust covering the drain drew my eyes like a sore.

"Now jump up and down. Jump and land on the board again. I dare you, Katie!" "I–I can't."

"Scaredy-cat, scaredy-cat," Ashley taunted. "Jump, Katie, jump!"

But what if I missed the board coming down? What if my feet slipped off?

"Mom-my!"

I awoke shivering, sat up, and glanced around. When I went to bed, I had closed the door to the hallway; it was open now. I pulled my blanket and quilt around me, but they were useless. The cold came from within, an anxious cold crawling in my belly.

I slipped out of bed and crept toward the door, listening. A small night-light, plugged into the wall outside the third-floor bathroom, provided the only light in the hall. I glanced over my shoulder toward the steps to Patrick's room. I should check that he is there, safely asleep, I thought. Then I heard a noise from the other side of the hall, close to the main stairs, a rustling soft as cloth brushing against cloth. I reached for the light switch in my room.

My overhead light illuminated a wide swath of the rectangular hall. If anyone was there, he or she clung to the shadows. I stared into the dark corners, listening. My muscles tensed. From the other end of the hall came a thin, scratching sound. Rodents, I thought, calming myself. Then the main stairs creaked.

I moved forward silently. They creaked again-it sounded as if the noise came from the bottom of the stairs. Someone had tread on them, someone had descended from the third floor before I turned on the light. I rushed across the hall.

Reaching the top of the stairs, I stopped suddenly, surprised to see Patrick alone in the schoolroom. He was writing on the blackboard, his chalk making the scratching sound I had heard. Distracted, I lost precious seconds on the person trying to get away.

I hurried down the steps. The night lamp in the second-floor hall suddenly went out. I stumbled, caught hold of the railing, and continued on. But with the night lamp extinguished and bedroom doors closed, the darkness on the second floor was thick as velvet. I paused at the bottom of the stairs. I couldn't remember which side of the hall the lamp was on or the location of the wall switches. All I could do was listen and try to hear where the person was going. There were a number of exits from the second-floor hall: the bedrooms, the stairs down to the first floor, and the hallways to each wing.

My ears ached to hear the slightest movement. Then a faint crack of light showed. It came from the direction of Robyn's wing. The sliver of light darkened for a moment, all but at the top, then shone again just before it disappeared completely. I replayed the sequence in my mind, trying to figure out what I had just seen: Someone had opened a door into a softly lit area, passed through it, then closed it.

I remained still, fixing in my head the exact way the light had shone. From where I was standing in the second-floor hall, the door into Robyn and Brook's quarters opened straight on. But Mrs. Hopewell, with rooms in the connecting section between the main house and their quarters, would have a door along the hallway-not straight on, but to the right. I was fairly sure the light had been angled from that direction. I wriggled my shoulders at the thought of the housekeeper silently opening my bedroom door and looking in while I slept. Had she roused Patrick? Was she the one talking to him about Ashley?

I hurried upstairs, making no effort to be quiet. Patrick was still at the blackboard, writing one sentence beneath the next, like a child who had been kept after school and made to write one hundred times "I will not talk in class." But his message was far more chilling: You can't hurt me.

I stared at the repeated lines, then entered the room. "Patrick, what are you doing?"

He kept writing.

"Patrick, stop."

When he didn't, I reached out and turned his face toward me. He blinked, but there was no recognition. I uncurled his fingers and took away the chalk.

He gazed at me blankly.

"Wake up, Patrick. You're not in bed. Wake up." I gently shook his shoulders.

He blinked again and turned his head away from me to look around the room. He was awake now.

"Patrick, how did you get here?" I asked.

He continued to look around. "I don't know."

"Do you remember climbing out of bed?"

He shook his head.

"Did you hear something? Maybe you heard a noise and got curious?"

He thought for a moment and shook his head again.

"Were you talking to Mrs. Hopewell?"

His eyes grew wary. "Where is she?"

"She's in bed now. I thought you may have seen her earlier."

"No."

I pointed to the sentences on the board. "You wrote this. Who wants to hurt you?"

He rubbed his eyes. I don't know. I forget."

I took a deep breath. He was exhausted, and he really might not remember. I reached for his hand. "Do you think you can walk with me back to your room?"

"Yes."

We went by way of my bedroom and the back steps. He climbed into bed willingly.

"Would you say it?" he asked as I tucked him in.

"Say what?"

"Left and right and starlight," he prompted.

I swallowed hard. "Of course." I leaned down to kiss him on his forehead, and then, as my mother used to, placed a kiss on each eye, saying, "Close your eyes, left then right. Good night, starlight."

Sunday morning I checked on Patrick as soon as I awakened. He didn't remember the events of last night-l asked him directly. A few minutes later, Emily came into his room and chatted about what they were going to do together that day. When Patrick realized that it was my day off and I wouldn't be spending it with him, he put up a fuss. Emily's mouth drooped, her feelings hurt. Patrick's fuss turned into a tantrum, and I exited quickly, knowing he would keep it up as long as I was there.

I had planned to show Adrian the writing on the blackboard, but he wasn't available. Uncertain about how Emily would react, I decided to talk to Adrian alone when I returned. I didn't want the others to see the board-they might be inspired with new ways to upset Patrick-so I wiped the slate clean before leaving Mason's Choice.

At Amelia's bed-and-breakfast I had seen an ad for Tea Leaves, a bakery and cafe on High Street. I drove into town and parked at the top of the street, where I found two spaces together, making it easier for me to slip in from the "wrong" side of the road. As I walked down the town's main street, my heart grew lighter than it had been since I'd arrived at Mason's Choice. Everything was so normal and cheerful.

People walked dogs and carried fat Sunday newspapers under their arms. On the steps of a church, families poured out, adults and children bursting to talk, their breath making clouds in the cold air. Shops were closed, so pedestrians strolled the sidewalks like patrons at an outdoor museum, pausing at store windows to see what they framed.

As I neared the cafe, I caught sight of a familiar figure across the street. Trent stood at the door of an old hotel, the Queen Victoria, talking with a woman dressed in a businesslike red suit-the hotel manager, I thought, the one Robyn deemed beneath Westbrook standards. The woman and Trent were so intent in their conversation, they didn't notice me. I studied them as I walked, my head turned sideways.

"Umph!" My ear banged against somebody's chest.

"You walk worse than you drive," Sam said.

I stepped back quickly. "Sorry. You might have stepped out of the way," I added.

"And let you crash into that tree?"

I glanced at the sycamore behind him, part of the row that lined the brick walk.

"Okay, next time," he said agreeably, then gestured toward the cafe. "They make the best doughnuts in the world. You should try some, Kate."

It was the first time he had called me by my name. I heard the way he said it-and I felt it, too, somehow.

"That's where I was going," I said, taking a step toward the door.

"Me too."

I hesitated and he laughed.

I think there is room enough in there for both of us," he said, "even if you can't stand me."

That wasn't why I'd hesitated. Now that he had been nice to Patrick, it was doubly dangerous to be around him. I didn't want to meet his dark eyes and nurture this lunacy inside me.

He reached for the door and held it open, waiting for me to go through.

I can open my own door."

He walked through and let it slam in my face.

I took a deep breath and entered. There was a mob around the glass cases, so I didn't have to stand next to him. He took a number, then I took a number. We went to opposite ends of the bakery shelves, but both of us gravitated toward the center, to a seductive tray labeled "cheese pastries." There were six left.

I hope there are more of those in the back," Sam said, glancing sideways at me.

"How many do you eat?"

"Six."

When his turn came he bought all six, then turned around and offered me three. ' "Thanks, but I prefer doughnuts," I lied.

1 saw the twitch of his mouth and the light in his eyes. I looked away, annoyed. I was doing my best to be prickly and off-putting, and he found it entertaining.

I ordered cinnamon doughnuts to go, paid, and headed for the door, looking neither left nor right. It was a relief to step into the brisk air. I turned toward the riverfront, then heard footsteps behind me.

Sam strolled next to me, chewing a pastry.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"Eating. Walking. Being friendly. I would have left with you, but I was waiting for you to do your door thing," he explained. "Trade you a cheese Danish for a doughnut."

"No thanks." I wasn't going to be seduced. "But you may have a doughnut."

His hand dove into the bag. "Do you act like a cactus with everyone?"

I didn't respond. We crossed the street and continued down another block.

"Maybe you kind of like me and are just pretending."

"That's an interesting theory," I replied.

"So, where's the short guy today?"

"Patrick? With his mother and headed for a concert. It's my day off."

"I owe him an apology," Sam said, "but since I don't think he realizes it, I'll apologize to you. I'm sorry I was a jerk. It's stupid to judge people by their parents. It's not like we get a choice."

We walked on silently, he seeming much more at ease than 1.

"So," Sam said, "can Patrick and you come to the play-off game next Saturday?"

"We're planning to. It will be good for him."

"And for you?"

"It's entertaining," I said.

We had reached the public dock, a large wooden platform that jutted over the river, with pilings for temporary docking. On a cold day like this, it was deserted. I sat down on a bench facing the river and Sam sat next to me. Maybe it was just the roughness of the water and the way the wind came off it and wrapped around us, but I was very aware of Sam's closeness and warmth. Part of me wanted to move even closer to him; part of me wanted to move away.

He was staring at me again.

"Didn't your mother teach you not to stare at people?"

"She tried, but it didn't take," he said. I don't pretend, Kate. I look where I want to look, except when I'm playing hockey. Don't your ears get cold?"

"Because my hair is short? No colder than yours."

"They're bright red. You look like you've got a rose stuck on either side of your head."

I covered my ears with my hands. "You have such a way with words."

He took a wool hat out of his pocket and put it on my head, pulling it down too far, then adjusting it, carefully rolling back the edge around my face. His big hands were surprisingly gentle. His thumb brushed my cheek. It felt warm where he touched me.

What was happening to me? How could I find a guy who said my eyes looked like green pop bottles and my ears poked out like roses in any way romantic?

His dark eyes swept my face. That was how.

I couldn't think of anything to say. I turned my face away from his, pulled my shoulders in, and folded my arms in front of me, as if I were cold. Out of the comer of my eye, I could see him smiling, as if he guessed I wasn't doing that to stay warm.

"So how old were you when you learned to play hockey?" I asked.

He tilted his head slightly, perhaps trying to decide whether I was truly interested or simply making polite conversation.

"I started skating when I was four. My dad taught me. He had grown up near a rink in Brooklyn and loved to skate." Sam's voice grew warm. "When we moved here from New York, they had just built the rink at Chase-it's an old college, and they keep trying to be like Harvard. Anyway, Dad would take me there every chance he got. He taught me a little about using a hockey stick. Then, well, then, a year or so after Dad died, when I was six, my mom enrolled me in lessons and then a league."

"Your father died?" I repeated quietly.

He nodded. "After his death I became an angry little kid. Mom hoped sports would help me channel that. It did more-it earned me a college scholarship.

Nothing too impressive-to Chase-but it's full tuition for four years."

"Congratulations. Your father would be very proud."

"Yeah."

I heard the wistfulness in his voice.

"I'm sorry." I thought of telling him that my own father had died recently, but sometimes, when people respond to your sadness by immediately telling you their own, it's as if they take away the importance of yours. We sat quietly, watching the gulls, which had discovered us and were circling close, hoping for a handout.

"I want to get Patrick started in hockey," I said at last. "He's a kid with some problems, and it would help him to get involved in a team sport."

"What kind of problems?"

"It's a long story."

I have three more Danishes and can chew very slowly."

I told Sam about the situation at Mason's Choice, the quarreling and resentment, and the way Adrian's cancer and the favoritism he showed Patrick made a bad situation worse. I recounted how the others treated Patrick, ending with my suspicions about the loss of his hamster.

"They'd kill a little kid's pet? Don't they have anything better to do with their time? I can't believe it-though I don't know why!" The anger in his voice surprised me.

I have no proof that it was deliberate, but I'm suspicious. Brook used to do the same kind of thing to Ashley, let out her pets, though we usually found them."

"Ashley-the girl who was murdered?"

"Drowned," I corrected. "She fell through the ice."

His eyes narrowed. "You said, 'we usually found them.' Who is we?"

"My mother and I. My father was an artist hired by Adrian, and my mother sometimes took care of Ashley. We played together."

"You're-you're Venerelli's daughter!" He spoke it like an accusation.

"That's right."

He hurled the pastry straight out in the river. The gulls dove.

"Is that some kind of problem for you?" I asked.

"You might say that." When he looked at me, his eyes were cold black glass. "My father was a detective for the N.Y.P.D. We moved here because the violence he saw every day was getting to him. My mother grew up on the Eastern Shore-it was the only other place they knew. But Dad had trouble getting work in Wisteria-all his training and experience were in detective work-so he hung up his shingle as a private investigator. He was hired by Adrian Westbrook to investigate Victoria Venerelli."

"Investigate.. my mother-why?"

"For killing Westbrook's granddaughter."

For a moment I was speechless. It was like being in a dream, trying to scream, wanting desperately to tell him he was wrong, but unable to make a sound.

I rubbed my throat. "No one killed Ashley. She fell through the ice."

"Or she was pushed."

"She was looking for her rabbit!"

"Okay, she was lured," he said.

"By my mother? You're mad, you're completely mad!"

"By whoever took the rabbit, then placed it on the ice."

I was outraged. Victoria wasn't capable of murder. She was too motherly a person-before she ditched her only child, I reminded myself. How could I presume to know anything about the woman who had abandoned me?

Still, what motive was there? I regained my composure. "She had no motive."

Sam stood up and paced back and forth behind the bench.

Joseph was right, I thought. I couldn't trust Adrian, telling that tale about my father's artistic temper tantrum. No wonder he was nice to me now. He was responsible for my parents' sudden departure, frightening them, hiring a private detective to find evidence against my mother. My father probably stole the ring because he knew they'd have to lie low for a while, but when my mother left us, it became possible for him to work in the open again.

My thoughts took a surprising turn: Maybe my mother hadn't really wanted to leave us. Maybe she had had no choice. But if she was innocent, why would she have run scared? Perhaps she was guilty — at least, of neglect.

"She had no motive," I repeated to Sam. "Didn't you hear me? What is your problem?" I asked angrily.

"Dad was following your parents the night they left Mason's Choice. Later the sheriff received a call about a possible accident. They found Dad's car upside down in a ditch. He was dead."

I mouthed Sam's words silently, trying to understand them. I felt sick, the taste of cake going sour in my throat. I remembered huddling between the seats of our car, terrified of the storm and the speed at which my father was driving. The car had taken a sharp turn, then spun out of control. I remembered the crashing sound that came almost immediately after our car had stopped. It was deer, my parents said, a herd of them rushing across the road and crashing into the brush on the other side. Farther on, at a dark petrol station, my father had made a telephone call. He never told me that someone had been following us that night, that someone had been killed on the road.

I rose, the liquid in my stomach threatening to come up. Steadying myself, I walked past Sam. A distance away, I stopped to look back. He was kicking at the planks in the dock, jamming the toe of his shoe against the uneven edges.

"Feeling sorry for yourself?" I asked.

He looked up. "I don't expect you to understand. Your parents and Westbrook are responsible for my father's death. Hating them helped me get through it."

"At least you have your mother," I replied, "which is one more parent than I."

"What do you mean?"

I continued walking, heading toward my car, wanting to get away from him. I, too, was good at feeling sorry for myself. Like Sam, I had dealt with the pain of losing a parent by turning it into anger and resentment. I had funneled my hurt into an effort to hate-hate my mother. And I suspected that, in the end, the effort had brought as much peace and happiness to Sam as it had brought to me, which is to say none.

I spent the rest of the day on the road and in stores, driving as far as a popular shopping mall in Delaware, but it was impossible to drive away from my thoughts. It occurred to me that Joseph had been no more forthcoming than Adrian regarding the investigation of my mother. He must have known about it, yet he had gone along with Adrian's story about my father's artistic temper tantrum, indicating that was the reason we had left Wisteria. About 7:30, angry at everyone, I returned to Mason's Choice.

"I warned Mr. Westbrook you would bring trouble," Mrs. Hopewell greeted me as I came in the kitchen door.

"It's lovely to see you, too, Mrs. Hopewell."

I knew it from the moment you telephoned."

"And you made it quite clear," I said, continuing toward the hall. I guessed that something had happened while I was gone, but I would not take her bait and ask what was wrong. I walked quickly, anxious to find Patrick.

"Kate," Robyn called.

I stopped reluctantly at the dining room door. The supper candles were still burning, and several chairs had been pushed back from the table at odd angles. She and Trent sat nursing their coffee.

"Yes, ma'am?"

"Come in," she said.

I took one step inside the door.

"When I give you an instruction to come in, young lady-" "Let it go, Robyn," Trent interrupted. "Kate, have you been talking to Patrick about your time here as a child?"

"No, sir, I haven't said a word about it."

"Don't lie," Robyn hissed between her teeth.

"I don't," I replied.

"After you left today," Trent went on, "Patrick climbed a tree growing close to a cottage, the one where your family lived."

"Children climb trees, they have for centuries," I pointed out. "And, unless someone else told him, he has no idea where I used to live. He doesn't know my family stayed at Mason's Choice."

"He was trying to climb in the bedroom window," Trent pressed on, his eyes sharply observing me. Ashley had climbed that tree the day she threw my doll through the window-he remembered that as well as I.

"Were the windows and doors on the first floor locked?" I asked.

"Shuttered and locked," said Robyn.

"So then, it makes sense that he tried to get in through the second floor."

Trent took a sip of coffee. "When questioned, he told us he was playing with Ashley." Trent's voice was steady, but I heard the china cup clatter in its saucer. "Ashley and the orange cat."

"He has been talking a lot about Ashley," I admitted.

"Since you arrived," Robyn said quickly. "Emily told us that this talk started when you arrived."

"Did it?" I replied. "Then I can't help but wonder why someone would choose that moment to start telling ghost stories, for that is what I'm hearing from Patrick. Does someone want to frighten him, or is this directed at me? Perhaps it's an effort to get rid of me by upsetting others. What do you think?"

Trent and Robyn exchanged glances.

"Who found Patrick doing this?" I asked.

"Roger, the groundskeeper," Robyn replied.

"I thought he was off today."

"He lives in the cottage next door. He heard Patrick cry out when he fell."

"Fell! Why didn't you tell me? Is Patrick all right? Where is he?"

"This discussion isn't over," Trent said as I turned to exit.

"Then you will have to finish it yourselves," I replied, and rushed toward the steps.

I found Patrick in bed, wearing his sailboat pajamas, making action figures climb over the little mountains that were his knees under the quilt.

"Kate, you're back!" he said, his face lighting up. His right cheek was bruised, and there was a slight cut over his eye.

"Hel-lo, you're looking colorful! What happened to you?"

Patrick immediately pulled up his pajama sleeve to show me a bruised arm.

"Impressive. How did you do that?" I asked.

I fell out of a tree."

"That doesn't sound like a fun thing to do."

He cackled. "I didn't try to, Kate."

"Glad to hear it. So why were you climbing the tree?"

"Ashley dared me."

The breath caught in my throat-dared him, the way she had dared me. But daring is something children like to do, I reminded myself, and it provided a good excuse.

"We were playing with November," he said, "and he climbed the tree."

"November?"

"The orange cat. That's his secret name."

My skin tingled. Ashley would never tell me the cat's name-she had enjoyed tormenting me with it, as she had tormented Brook with the names of her horses. November was an unusual name for Patrick to have chosen on his own-but not for Ashley, I thought suddenly. The cat had first appeared at Thanksgiving, which would have been November.

"From now on, Patrick, when someone dares you to do something-l don't care who it is-say no."

"I told her I didn't want to go any higher, but she kept daring me."

"Ashley can't tell you what to do," I said, sounding eerily like my mother.

His legs moved restlessly under the quilt. "Kate, are you sure she's like Casper?"

"You mean a friendly sort of ghost?"

He nodded.

I sat on the edge of his bed. "Perhaps she is like children you've met before, sometimes a good friend and sometimes not. But I'm certain of one thing: Ashley can't tell you what to do. If she tries, you come tell me."

"So," said Emily, entering the room, "you do talk to him about Ashley."

I didn't start it," I said.

"You know, Kate, I defended you in front of the others.

"We talk about Ashley when Patrick wants to," I explained, "when he feels uncomfortable about things."

She looked more tired than angry, her usual pink lipstick worn off, her fair skin showing gray under her eyes.

"Patrick, this kind of talk has to stop," she said. "It makes Trent and Robyn very unhappy. Daddy doesn't like it either. And Mrs. Hopewell is angered by everything you do. There can be no more mention of Ashley."

Patrick pressed his lips together, locking his thoughts inside.

Emily asked if I would help her put Patrick to bed. Ten minutes later, when we emerged into the main hall, with Patrick's door closed behind us, I turned to her. "What does Adrian think about this Ashley talk?" I asked quietly.

"He says that it is nothing, that it's just a stage Patrick is going through"-Emily glanced toward their bedroom door-"but I know that it, along with some other things happening in this house, is upsetting him. This evening he looked as bad as the last time he went into the hospital." Her whisper grew ragged with anger. "His children are heartless. Heartless! You would think, after all he has given them, they'd try to make his last year a happy one. But all they can think of is themselves and what they would acquire if Adrian hadn't married me. If it were up to me, they'd find themselves out on Scarborough Road without a cent."

Eyes burning with tears, she turned her face away from me, then slipped into a hall bathroom, the small one Patrick used. She probably wanted to cry without Adrian seeing her. Knowing better than to offer sympathy to an employer who was sensitive about authority and position, I took the main stairs up to my room.

I felt badly for Emily and worse for Adrian, but his serious illness made it all the more necessary that I talk to him as soon as possible. Someone was preying on Patrick's mind, and if he was the designated heir, the greedy, vicious members of this household had plenty of motivation to go after him. It occurred to me that Ashley had also been Adrian's favorite. What if Sam was right and she was murdered?

Impossible, I thought. And yet Adrian thought it possible enough to investigate my mother. Why? Things were being hidden from me. What didn't I know about Patrick's situation? What didn't I know about my own?

The phone call came early Monday morning while Patrick and I were eating breakfast. Mrs. Hopewell looked incredibly annoyed. "These are your working hours," she said to me. "Socializing is to be done on your own time."

I took the phone from her hands without asking who it was. I would have chatted with someone selling real estate at the North Pole. "Hello?"

"Kate? Sam. I know this is a bad time, but it seemed too long to wait all day. I'll make it quick. I'm sorry about your dad. I'm sorry about his cancer and death and all."

That certainly was quick-a sudden jab to the heart.

"My mother said she saw the obituary a couple months ago," he continued. "It must have been hard for you. I'm really sorry."

I had received many condolences and had responded graciously to people ranging from Princess Ann to the postman, but all I could do now was stare at my toast.

"Are you there?"

"Yes."

"I'm sorry about your mother, too," he said. "I didn't know anything about that. I can't really understand what it's like to be in your shoes, but it's got to be tough."

After several months, what I couldn't understand was why I was suddenly close to tears. Sam was no poet, but it was as if I heard his words deeper inside me, as if they reached some part of me that other people's words did not.

Patrick tugged on my sleeve. "Who is it?" he asked. Sam.

"Sam! Can I talk to him?"

"Thanks for calling," I said. "Patrick wants to talk to you." I handed over the phone with relief.

"Hi. We're eating breakfast," Patrick told him cheerfully. "Toast with grape jelly…. Yeah… yeah." As Sam spoke to him, Patrick began to study my face.

"Well, she's just sitting there No, she hasn't eaten anything yet.

I stuffed a piece of toast in my mouth.

"Now she has-why is that funny?" Patrick asked. "I think she's okay. Okay, I will." He hung up. "Sam said I should be good today and try to make you smile."

"That's nice," I said, and swallowed in lumps the rest of my breakfast.

Immediately after I dropped Patrick at school, I drove to Olivia's Antiques, hoping to find Joseph in early. I could have called him on the cell phone Adrian had given me, but I wanted to see Joseph's face when I questioned him. His reaction would guide me in how to proceed with Adrian.

"Just the person I was hoping to see," Joseph greeted me, when I opened the shop door, making the bells jingle.

"Aren't you supposed to say, 'Shop's closed'?"

He smiled. "I'm on my way to Crossroads, to see what prices some of these unforgivably ugly objects are fetching at auction. Would you like to come along? Someone told me they have a painting that looks like one of your father's-a retriever with a goose. It seems strange that he would leave such a number of paintings unsigned."

"He signed only those he was satisfied with," I explained, "and he had very high standards. I'd like to have a look."

"My S.U.V. is around back."

Joseph drove to Crossroads and I bided my time, wanting a clear view of his face when I told him what I had discovered. He was in a good mood, chatting about his public relations job at the conservatory in Baltimore, fussing about the prima donna attitudes of the visiting musicians.

Crossroads was outside of town, but on the other side of Wisteria from Mason's Choice, north of Oyster Creek. The large building sat at an intersection of Eastern Shore routes, roads that provided easy connections west to Baltimore and Washington, and north to Wilmington, Philadelphia, and New York.

Joseph said that it was one of the three major auctions serving Mid-Atlantic dealers, each one running just one day a week. But it had also kept its old role, having an outdoor auction where local people and flea-market enthusiasts bid on "the ugly and the useless."

We parked in an open field, and I soon saw what he meant. Spread on a sandy lot next to the auction house were rows of items that should have been taken to the dump-worn Christmas decorations, old propane tanks, paintings of rock stars on velvet, rusted appliances covered with flowered Con-Tact paper, and furniture that one couldn't imagine buying when new. A motorized cart, manned by an auctioneer, rolled up and down the rows, trailed by bidders.

Joseph and I followed at a distance. "Maybe Mother left me more than I realized," Joseph said. "I'll bring her things here, though I'm going to have to wear a disguise. I wouldn't want anyone to think they're mine."

We moved slowly in the direction of the auction house, then turned at the head of the next row. I stopped to look at a batch of sports memorabilia, which included a hockey stick.

"You're really into the sport," Joseph remarked.

"No, Patrick is," I replied, "and he needs someone to be into whatever he's into. Joseph, do you remember the guy who came to Olivia's to buy a bracelet last week?"

"The eloquent one who left his fingerprints all over the glass counter?"

"That's right. He plays hockey for the high school. His name is Sam Koscinski."

I watched for a reaction. Joseph's beard and mustache hid most of his mouth, and the skin around his eyes stayed as smooth as before.

"Do you know the family?" I asked.

"I knew of a man who might have been his father, Mike Koscinski."

"A private investigator," I prompted.

Joseph nodded slowly.

I lost patience. "Why didn't you tell me my mother was a murder suspect?"

Joseph pulled a pen from his pocket and stuck it in his mouth. "Because I was afraid you'd ask the next question."

"I'm asking it. Why did Adrian suspect her?"

Joseph chewed on the pen, then drew it out of his mouth like a cigarette and started walking.

"Adrian suspected a lot of people, Katie. He was desperate for someone to blame. People get that way when there has been a terrible accident." We stopped at the edge of the auction lot, next to a large placard pointing to the building entrance. "He suspected me, even Mrs. Hopewell. Anyone who wasn't family was looked at askance."

"Perhaps, but it was my mother whom Mr. Koscinski was hired to investigate-Sam told me. It was my mother who was being chased by him the night we left."

Joseph clicked the pen in his hand.

"Tell me what you know," I insisted. "I'm talking to Adrian this afternoon and I'm going to ask him about it. I will get to the bottom of this, you can count on it."

He rubbed his perpetually damp brow. "Katie, let me explain something to you and perhaps you'll understand why I didn't want you to ask too many questions. There was-uh-a connection between your father and Corinne, Trent's wife."

I steeled myself. "What kind of connection?"

"You know what I mean-you're almost an adult. They were lovers. It happened before your father met your mother, when Corinne first came to Mason's Choice as Trent's bride and your father came as a very young, very handsome artist. I wasn't around then, of course, but people don't change. Trent is quite intelligent, and probably the most boring, uptight person on the face of the earth. Your father was dashing, dramatic-" I wasn't interested in excuses. "When Dad came back with my mother and me, did he keep it up?"

"Yes. And he discovered he had fathered two little girls, Katie and Ashley."

"Ashley." It was like looking into a convex mirror-I recognized all the objects shown, but everything looked different, their spatial relationships changed.

I wanted to deny what Joseph said, to deny any pain my mother might have felt because of my father's unfaithfulness, which would then require me to feel sorry for her. But I remembered how my father loved to see Ashley and me playing together, how he would do little sketches of us with our arms around each other, how he wept when he was told of the accident. And I remembered the times when Ashley and I came upon my father and her mother together. We were too innocent to figure it out-at least, I was.

"Did my mother know?"

"She found out two weeks before Ashley died."

I leaned against the sign.

"I didn't want to have to tell you that," Joseph went on. "Of course, it was just a coincidence, but you can see how Adrian, needing to blame someone, would turn on your mother."

"And feel remorseful about it now-perhaps that is why he is so nice to me. Perhaps he spun that story about my father's artistic tantrum because he thought the reality would be too painful for me."

"Or for him," Joseph said bluntly. Even with the beard, I could see one side of his mouth draw up. "Adrian hates to be wrong."

"He was wrong, wasn't he?"

"Katie! How can you think otherwise?"

Easily. My parents had told me half-truths. So had Adrian and Joseph. Why should I believe any of them now? I jammed my hands into my coat pockets.

"Are you all right?" Joseph asked, after a long moment of silence.

"Just cold," I replied crisply. "Let's go in."

The building, covered with pale siding and a new tin roof, showed its age inside. As long as an athletic field, it had a concrete floor and a loft that ran along three sides. The loft area was crammed with furniture, and a sign on the stairway that led to it said, note to customers: YOU CARRY IT UP THE STEPS, YOU CARRY IT DOWN. I guessed it was used for items that were waiting to be picked up by the buyer.

Joseph and I walked along one side of the building, scanning the merchandise. We passed a door with a sign prohibiting entrance and warning that dogs were inside-the ones Trent had spoken of, I assumed.

An auction was going on at either end of the building, two motorized vehicles moving along the floor trailed by crowds of interested buyers. Joseph decided to follow the furniture auctioneer at the far end, while I wandered the rows of tables spread with smaller items-glassware, china, mirrors, statues, and paintings, looking for a portrait my father might have done, the retriever carrying a goose. But I barely saw what was in front of me, for memories were running inside my head like old films, cinema that I was watching with older, more knowing eyes.

Was my mother capable of killing out of revenge and hurt? Could she have done something less deliberate than murder, such as ignore the safety of a child she could no longer endure?

I found the painting that was thought to be my father's and knew immediately it wasn't. I realized that, with regard to my father, the only thing I could be certain about was whether he had done a particular painting. Since he had been the one constant in my life, this new uncertainty made everything I thought I knew seem questionable.

I turned away from the painting, aware of someone's eyes on me. Trent, with file folders tucked under his arm, gazed at me through a half-glass wall that sealed off the auction's business office.

I looked back. Did he know who Ashley's real father was? Since that fact had generated Adrian's investigation, he must have.

"Ah," said Joseph, who had materialized at my elbow, "you have found the painting."

"It's not my father's," I told him. "That goose not only looks dead, it doesn't look as if it were ever alive."

Joseph laughed.

"Trent is watching us from the office," I added.

Joseph glanced up and the two men nodded at each other.

"I don't understand, Joseph, why wouldn't Trent have been a suspect? He had the same motivation-he'd been cheated on. And why wasn't Robyn considered a possibility? She was jealous of Ashley-even as a five-year-old I was aware of that. I can see how she deals with Patrick now, with anyone whom she thinks is competition for her father's attention and money. Trent, Robyn, Brook-all of them were home that day. All of them knew Ashley loved to go to the pond. Why didn't Mr. Koscinski investigate them?"

"Because he was hired by Adrian." Joseph replied, he and Trent turning their backs to each other at the same time. "The Westbrooks will claw one another's eyes out in private, but in public they are loyal and strive to keep up their fine family image. Those kinds of suspicions are something Adrian couldn't even consider."

"Well," I said, "he should consider them-for Patrick's sake."

"All right, Kate," Adrian said, three hours later, "what is this business that is so pressing you got past Cerberus, my three-headed dog-otherwise known as Mrs. Hopewell," he added in quieter voice.

There was a sharp rap on the office door.

"Almost got past," he corrected himself. "Yes, Louise?"

She opened the door. "I told the girl she could not see you."

"Thank you," Adrian replied. "I'm quite sure you did."

Mrs. Hopewell waited, as if he might ask her to escort me out.

"What do you have in your hand, Louise? May I see it?"

She stepped into the room, but walked no farther than the credenza, depositing the FedEx envelope there rather than carrying it to Adrian. I believed it was her small way of protesting the fact that he had granted me a meeting.

After the housekeeper left, Adrian rose from his chair a bit stiffly, closed the door, then picked up the envelope. "Some days are good and some days aren't so good," he said, returning to his seat across from me. He gave me a wry smile and sat down wearily.

"So, Kate, I trust that you have the phone, the microwave, the refrigerator, and whatever else you need."

"Yes, thanks. It's Patrick I want to talk about."

"His loneliness."

"That, too," I said.

"Oh dear, there's a list."

I was silent for a moment, ordering my questions and points.

Adrian leaned forward, smiling. "I'm kidding you. I am interested in all that you have to say."

"Patrick definitely needs friends," I began. "We should encourage him to invite other children to the house. I would be happy to supervise them. I think it would be good if we could get him to join a team. He likes hockey, but that season is almost over. Any kind of sport would do-just something that would place him with a group of children. He is too isolated at Mason's Choice."

"I agree.

"But there's something more to consider," I rushed on, "and that is the reason why he doesn't have friends. Tim moved away, and Patrick doesn't talk about any other children."

"Except Ashley," Adrian remarked dryly.

"When I pick him up from school, I see the boys playing together and him standing alone."

Adrian sighed. "I've been too caught up in my ridiculous therapy."

"Many children have only one parent and do fine," I assured him. "If you want my opinion-and I'm going to give it to you whether you do or not-l think the problems he has here at home are affecting his ability to get along with other children. I suspect he is acting like an impossible brat at school or withdrawing entirely. Either would be a natural response, given the hostile treatment he receives from those who are supposed to be loving family members-Robyn, Trent, and Brook. Mrs. Hopewell doesn't help any."

"You're quite blunt, just as your mother was."

"They're quite nasty, just as they were to Ashley."

I saw the brightness in his eyes-whether it was surprise or amusement, I wasn't sure.

"True enough," he said. "And so you want me to put the leash on them."

Yes.

Adrian pulled the tab on the FedEx package and shook out a blue-striped envelope, which he slit with a letter opener.

"I can't do that, Kate, though I wish more than anything I could spare Patrick the pain. But it is better for him to go through this while I am still here to keep an eye on it.

"See this?" he waved the blue letter at me. "Someone wants money. They all have heard the enticing news of my cancer." He grimaced. "Every college on the East Coast, every charitable institution, a flock of former employees, and relatives I haven't heard from in years are suddenly interested in making contact with me.

"Perhaps you can understand then that Patrick, as my heir, will need to become tougher, to grow a much thicker skin. He will spend his life dealing with greedy people, many of them his own relatives. He has got to learn how to keep them from getting to him."

"In time," I agreed. "But he's only seven years old."

"And he is doing well enough for a little boy," Adrian replied, "keeping them at bay with this Ashley nonsense. Eventually he will learn to do better than that: He will intimidate them when necessary. And trust me, it will be necessary for Patrick's survival."

I felt helpless. Adrian understood what I was saying, but he believed it called for a different response.

"In the meantime," I said, "why don't you speak to the school counselor? I'm a little surprised the counselor hasn't asked to speak to you."

"She has, but I have no use for her prying and suggestions. One has to look no further than psychologists' children to see that these people don't know what they are doing. Patrick is in a very special situation, one his teacher and the counselor could never understand."

"I think you are wrong," I said.

"Rarely," he replied. "Is there anything else you wish to discuss?"

"Yes. Why did you lie to me about the reason my parents left? You were having my mother investigated for the death of Ashley."

Adrian leaned back in his chair for a moment, as if catching his breath, then moved forward, leaning on the carved arm, looking me directly in the eye.

"As I said, I am rarely wrong, but I was that time, and it shames me. It shames me each time I look at you. Anything else?" he repeated, this time more softly.

"Just one thing. I am very afraid for Patrick."

"So am 1, Kate. So am I."

"But Kate, I kno-o-ow it's frozen," Patrick protested Monday afternoon. He looked longingly out of the schoolroom window. "I can see the ice."

I laughed. Surrounded by tall evergreens, the pond wasn't visible from any window of the house.

"The ice isn't thick enough. Besides, we made a deal. We'll skate at the college rink this evening, but only if you finish your homework."

Patrick sighed. He was failing math and had brought home remedial work from his teacher. It was taking him a long time to complete his subtraction problems. His focus would wander, and he would forget what he had borrowed from the adjacent column. My reminder to write it down only made him angrier.

"All right, shall we work on the next problem?"

He stared at the numbers.

"Can you take seven from five?" I prompted.

He pushed his pencil hard against the paper. The point broke.

"Think it through," I said, calmly handing him a fresh pencil.

He threw it down. "I hate this!" He pushed back his chair, looking pleased when it fell over. Striding around the room, he poked at things, his hand skipping from books to art supplies to a plastic globe, knocking them over. He'd already fidgeted his way through one "time-out"; I doubted another one was going to help, but I also wasn't going to give in to playtime. He needed an activity that was physical as well as mental to work off some energy and help him concentrate. "Let's take a break and try piano." "Piano?" He sounded interested. "Yes, but don't forget that we're going to have to finish these problems if you want to skate."

For the first ten minutes, he seemed intrigued. I taught him the way I remembered Joseph teaching Ashley and me. After numbering the fingers on his right hand with a marker, I called out one to five, and he would practice wiggling them. When I mixed up the order, it became a game for him. Then I assigned five black piano keys to his fingers and called out the numbers again, this time for him to play. He made a mistake. His jaw clenched. "You're doing well. Everyone makes mistakes when learning, and afterward, too. Let's try again. Ready?"

He made another mistake, and I suppose it was one too many that day. He slammed both hands down on the piano. I hate this!" he screamed, jumping off the bench. His arm swept across the top of the piano, knocking off a pile of music books. They were Ashley's, their bindings old and dry. Sheets of music flew everywhere.

"Stop it, Patrick!"

A second pile was thrown to the floor.

"You can forget about skating," I said angrily.

"I hate it! I hate you!" he cried.

Leaning over to pick up the books before he damaged them further, I noticed a pair of black shoes in the doorway. Perfect timing. I straightened up.

"Hello, Mrs. Hopewell."

She nodded stiffly.

"Is there something I can do for you?"

"You can control him," she said. "And if you can't, you should resign."

Patrick gazed up at her wonderingly. For a moment I was speechless. "Well, thank you for clarifying the situation."

Mrs. Hopewell stepped into the room and gazed down at the music sheets, her face grim. Patrick backed against me-I was his best friend again.

"Pick them up," she ordered.

He jutted out his jaw, trying to look defiant, but I could see his little hands shaking. "I will if Kate tells me," he said.

I almost laughed. Just as she followed Robyn's orders over Emily's, he followed mine over hers. It angered her. A vein on the side of her head, a small blue one close to her hairline, pulsed.

"Let's do it together, Patrick," I suggested.

"He'll do it himself," Mrs. Hopewell said. "You and I have something to talk about."

"I can talk and pick up at the same time."

"You were at the auction house with Joseph Oakley." She spoke it like a challenge.

"Yes, this morning," I replied. "Here, Patrick, I think this page goes with the book you're holding."

I am telling you for your own good, you cannot trust that man."

"Thank you for the advice, Mrs. Hopewell, but I learned not to trust people a long time ago."

"It would be foolish to make any deals with him regarding your father's paintings."

I glanced up from my handful of sheets, surprised. Why would she care? What was it that really vexed her?

She walked over to the window and looked out, her chin raised, surveying the property. "To Joseph Oakley, a fair deal is anything that works out well for himself." That's not unusual in business." She faced me. "Joseph hasn't the brains to be a businessman. His only skill is whining. He sees himself as a victim of circumstances who deserves whatever he can get his hands on. I hope his view of the Westbrooks will not pervert yours."

I make my own judgments of people," I said, then turned to Patrick. "Let's put these on top of the piano and order them later. Why don't you finish up your math problems, so we can get to the skating rink by five thirty?"

He set aside the papers and dutifully sat down at his worktable.

"Five thirty. . today?" Mrs. Hopewell asked. "He is scheduled for dinner."

"I spoke with Emily. She gave me permission to take him skating from five thirty to seven."

"But you must clear it with me," the woman insisted. "Everything that goes on in this house is cleared through me."

"It is? How long has that been the rule?"

"Since Mr. Westbrook divorced his first wife."

"I see. Then perhaps you can help me."

The firm line of her mouth told me that she had no intention of helping, but I gestured toward the hall, counting on her desire to know what everyone was doing. After a moment she followed me, and I closed the door behind us.

"Mrs. Hopewell, what do you remember about the day Ashley died?"

Her short eyelashes flicked. "Good employees do not gossip about their employers' personal business."

"It's my business too," I pointed out, "since my mother was investigated for the death."

"This sounds like Joseph's nonsense. You're a fool to believe him."

"Adrian confirmed it."

Not a muscle moved in her face, but her hands tensed.

"Where were you that day, when we were looking for Ashley's rabbit?"

"What an absurd question to ask! How would I remember?"

"How could you forget?" I replied. "It was a rather dramatic day. Where was Robyn?"

The woman's thick fingers curled into her palms. "There is no reason I would know that."

"You just told me everything is cleared through you. Even if you didn't know beforehand, I am sure you pursued the details afterward."

The blue vein again, pulsing like a warning light before a structure blows.

"That's why you came here, isn't it," she said, "to stir up the past, to pry into matters that were settled long ago. I knew you meant trouble."

"Then you're prophetic, Mrs. Hopewell, for I came simply to return a ring to Adrian."

"What ring?"

"But you gave me such a difficult time," I continued, I had to devise an excuse to get inside the house and see him. I decided I liked my excuse-it would be interesting to work here. Since then, I have discovered some unsettling things about the time when Ashley was alive. I have remembered a few things as well."

"Things such as what?"

"You didn't like Ashley," I went on. "Why? Were you jealous, as Robyn was? Perhaps it bothered you that you couldn't control Ashley."

"I controlled that child better than anyone," she said between her teeth.

"You tried," I replied, "but she wasn't afraid of you. She wasn't afraid of anyone or anything."

Mrs. Hopewell's flat voice chilled. "Only the foolish and the dead have no fear."

"As proven by Ashley, who ended up dead," I replied.

I knew she was warning me, hoping that fear would keep me from prying into family secrets. Unfortunately for Mrs. Hopewell, when I become afraid I find it unbearable to pull the covers over my head. No, I am the kind who, when frightened, must open the closet door.

My rental skates had blades as blunt as butter knives. Not that it mattered-Patrick and I weren't going to be ice dancing anytime soon. He had been given a beautiful pair of skates at Christmas, but the time to take him skating was something no one in the family could seem to afford. He had never been on the ice, and his legs went every which way but forward.

After ten minutes of brave effort he hung on to the side of the rink like an exhausted swimmer hanging on to a pool wall. "This is kind of hard, Kate."

"I know. Everything is at first. Rest a moment and, when you're ready, we'll try again."

I needed the break as much as he. I had made Patrick wear thick pants, knee pads, and a padded snow jacket, which had protected him from the tumbles we had taken. But I, dressed in thin, stretchy pants and a sweater, was starting to feel like a mashed frozen vegetable.

Fortunately, there were few people using the rink that evening. The guy who had stamped our hands had said the college was on spring break. The high school team moved off the ice at 5:30, and the college team didn't practice until 7:15. I had dawdled a bit, reading athletic plaques aloud to Patrick, to make sure we didn't run into Sam. My anger had faded with the phone call this morning. Having learned since then that Mr. Koscinski had had a legitimate reason to suspect my mother, I was embarrassed.

"Ready," Patrick announced.

"Take my hand," I said. "Remember, push, glide, push, glide."

He faltered, then surprised me, all at once figuring it out. He had his balance, and we were moving steadily forward.

"I'm doing it!" he shouted.

"Good! Keep it going. Push, glide. Easy now. Easy!" I warned.

With a burst of confidence, Patrick took off, dragging me by the hand. Suddenly, he discovered his feet weren't under him. His arms rotated like propellers. I reached forward to steady him, and we went down in a heap.

"Are you all right?"

He nodded. "I guess I went too fast."

"You guess right."

He scrambled halfway up on his feet, then fell back down. "The wall's too far away," he complained. We had been using it to pull ourselves up.

"Okay. Let me stand first."

But before I was all the way up, he pulled on me, eager to get going. I lost my footing and came crashing down with him.

Others skaters laughed.

"Patrick, you must wait," I said, attempting to rise again.

Something in him just couldn't. We landed on the ice once more.

"Patrick!"

"I didn't mean it!"

"I know, but you must listen to me." I rubbed my backside and glanced around the rink. At that moment, my body hurt a lot more than my pride. "Why don't we crawl to the wall," I suggested. "Come on, make like a dog."

Patrick thought that was funny, and barked and crawled. I reached the wall first and pulled myself up.

"Hello, Kate."

Sam. He was sitting in the first row, his arms draped casually over the seatbacks, his school pack on one side, his skates and sports bag on the other.

"Sam, you're here!" Patrick said joyfully, using me and the wall to pull himself up. "Guess what, I'm skating!

"Is that what that is. And what is Kate doing?" Sam asked.

"She's teaching me. Want to skate with us?"

Sam glanced at his watch.

"I'm sure he's too busy, Patrick."

"Are you?" Sam replied. "Do you know my scheduler "Well no, of course not," I sputtered. "I simply didn't want you to feel as if you had to."

I never feel as if I have to do something," he said, then laughed at himself. "I'm cool. Here's the situation. I've got a pile of homework, but I'm waiting for Dion." He pointed to a guy skating backward on the ice. "He was late today. Coach assigned him laps. So, maybe I can give you a few pointers, Patrick" he glanced at me uncertainly-"or maybe not."

For Patrick, this was better than Christmas. "That would be very nice," I said.

Sam slipped the plastic guards from his skates, then pulled them on. His sweater sleeves were pushed up, revealing the muscles in his forearms. I watched his strong fingers as he quickly laced his skates. He glanced up, and I turned away."Do you want me to stay around for the lesson?" I asked, when Sam had stepped onto the ice. His shoulders were huge, even without the hockey padding. Patrick gawked up at him.

Sam studied my face. "You don't want to."

I thought it might be easier without me."

Sam smiled; he didn't believe the excuse.

"Call if you need me," I said, pushing off quickly, aware of the heat in my cheeks.

For the first five laps I skated looking straight ahead, but when I thought they had forgotten about me, I stopped to watch from a distance. Patrick listened intently to Sam, taking in every word. I laughed to myself when his little-boy arms gestured the same way Sam's did, imitating even the non skating moves. How could a guy resist a child who so adored him?

Sam squatted next to Patrick and adjusted the position of his feet for the hundredth time. Patrick skated, began to turn, and took a spill. Tears startedfrom frustration, I thought, rather than hurt. Sam crouched down again. He talked to Patrick, holding his face in his hands. How could a girl resist a guy who was so tender with a child?

Skate, Kate, I told myself, and moved my legs faster, as if I could give my thoughts and feelings the slip. Dion, making his laps, caught my eye and flashed me a smile. I wondered about Sam's friends, who they were, what they did, what kind of girls he dated. I skated on and tried to think about other things, focusing my attention on the talk show that was being broadcast over the college's radio station.

"Is there anyone here named Kate?"

I looked quickly to the right. Sam had caught up with me. "Sorry, were you talking to me? Where's Patrick?" I asked, spinning on my skates, looking for my charge.

"He's okay. Dion's taking care of him."

I skated more slowly, checking out the situation across the rink.

Sam matched my strides. "So how's it going?"

"I think he's catching on. You're a good teacher."

Sam sighed. "I was asking about you."

"Oh. Everything is, uh, going well."

"Everything like what?" Sam asked.

I felt confused, by his presence more than his question. "Like… whatever it is you were asking about!"

He laughed, and the back of his hand brushed the back of mine.

"About Patrick," I began.

"A safe subject," he remarked, "especially given the others we share."

"Do you know where they sell hockey sticks for little boys?"

"Yes. I can go with him when he's ready to buy. But don't rush him. Let him get his confidence as a skater first."

Sam's hand brushed my hand a second time.

"In the meantime I should get him some kind of crash helmet," I said.

"Definitely."

"About your hat, the one you lent me yesterday, I'll get it back to you."

"No hurry." His hand touched mine a third time.

"Kate, when a guy skates with a girl and brushes her hand, she is supposed to take it."

"I know that."

"But you choose not to. Okay," he said, laughing. He skated ahead, then turned around quickly, skating backward, facing me.

"I really appreciate your spending the time with Patrick."

"It's fun." Sam skated closer to me, his legs matching the movement of mine like an ice dancer's.

"I can't see past you," I told him.

"You don't need to. Just follow me."

"Follow a guy who is skating backward and can't see where we're going?"

I know when someone is behind me," he replied. "It's a sixth sense."

He skated closer still, as close as he could without actually touching me.

He's doing this on purpose, I thought.

"You'd skate better if you didn't look down," Sam said. "You don't have to worry, my feet will move out of the way of your feet."

"I'm not worried," I insisted.

"Look up. Keep your eyes on my eyes. Trust me," he said.

I glanced up, briefly meeting his eyes, then tried to look past his left shoulder.

"Trust me, Kate," he said softly. ''I can't."

"Give it a try. It's not hard. Just skate and look me in the eye."

I did, and it wasn't hard. In fact, it was far too easy.

There was no music, but we were in perfect rhythm. We didn't touch, but his dark eyes held me, his intense gaze keeping me there, his body tantalizingly close.

Then suddenly, that sixth sense of his failed. Sam was stopped as if he'd backed into a brick wall, and I flew into him. His arms wrapped around me. We spun off the rink wall and he held me tightly against him. His face was a breath away from mine-he could have kissed me. His eyes lowered, and I thought he might, then Dion's laughter burst the moment. Patrick cackled.

Sam and I released each other slowly.

"Dion, you jerk!" Sam said, grinning at his friend, who had skated into us.

I laughed, trying to act like a normal teen girl with school friends, but nothing seemed normal to me. How can it, when your heart is beating absurdly fast and you feel a person's fingers like heat under your skin?

Dion looked pleased with himself. Patrick tried to laugh with a deep voice like the older boys, which made them laugh more. I got through the moment by focusing on Patrick, playing my nanny role.

Sam reminded Dion about their pile of homework, and the two of them left. Patrick and I skated a little longer. When we emerged from the college athletic center, a soft snow was falling.

Patrick swung his skates, kicking up the thin frosting on the grass. "No school tomorrow, Kate! They'll have to close school."

I think we'll need a few more flakes than this," I said, though it was falling in the quiet, steady way that is the beginning of big snows.

At home, Patrick told his parents of his glorious night, then fell asleep almost immediately. I sat for a while by his bed, listening to his soft breathing and watching the snow. I wished the peace of that moment was mine. But everything was stirred up inside me, questions and suspicions running wild. And through it all I kept thinking about the feeling of being in Sam's arms, being there longer than necessary. Which one of us had been reluctant to let go?

I sat up in bed with a start and glanced around my room, wondering what had awakened me. My sleep had been dreamless. With the heat turned back for the night, the house was cold and silent, not even the banging of old pipes to break the quiet. Shivering, I climbed out of bed and tiptoed to the window.

By the light of the garage lamps I could see that it was still snowing, a windless, silent snow.

Check Patrick, I thought; perhaps he cried out.

I donned my ski jacket, which was warmer than my dressing gown, and started toward the stairway that connected our rooms. Halfway there I turned around. Music-piano music-was coming from the schoolroom. The simple tune sounded familiar, like a nursery school song one had sung repeatedly as a child but had long since forgotten.