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.