I didn't answer right away. I would have done anything to protect Patrick from more pain. I knew what it was like to grow up without a parent you loved deeply, to believe terrible things about that parent and try to hate her, hurting only yourself each time you did. If Sam and I covered for Adrian, we could give Patrick a few more precious months with his father and some happy memories. At seven years old, he had suffered enough.
"It's not what I want, but it's what is going to be," I replied. "I won't keep any more of your horrid secrets. In the end, secrets come back to haunt. I don't know how it will happen, or when, but someday Patrick will stumble on something that doesn't quite make sense. He'll start asking questions and realize that people lied to him in significant ways. Then he'll begin to doubt everything else he knows and experienced. He'll doubt even the good things that have happened to him. He'll mistrust people who try to get close, and become more and more alone."
Adrian rose to his feet, his face bathed in perspiration. At the same moment the front door of the auction house opened. The person who entered stopped just inside the door and gazed about. At first I didn't recognize Robyn. Her hair hung loose and untidy, as if she had yanked it out of its clip. Her shirttail, usually tucked in neatly, billowed out from beneath her* short jacket. She strode toward us, her bam boots thumping against the concrete, then stopped midway down an aisle of furniture.
"This is a pretty mess," she said, turning her face away from the sight of Joseph lying on the floor.
From a distance, with her skin pale and her hair wild, her eyes glistening as if wet from riding in the wind, she looked younger, like a schoolgirl who had just ridden the newest horse in her daddy's stable. But as she grew closer, the shine in her eyes and the pallor of her skin looked unnatural. Her hands shook and her gait became unsteady.
"Hoppy was right about you being here," she said to her father. "There is nothing Hoppy doesn't hear or know."
"Robyn, you don't look well," Adrian observed.
"I feel wonderful," she replied. "I feel… liberated."
Adrian's brow creased, a look of apprehension spreading over his face. "Come, sit down for a moment." He patted the place next to him on the silk settee. "You see that Sam Koscinski and Kate are here."
He's warning her not to say too much in front of us, I thought.
"I see," she said, her voice flat. "I see that all my hard work has come to nothing."
Her words were uneven, as if she couldn't catch her breath.
"And why is that?" Adrian asked quietly, soothingly. He patted the seat next to him again, but she didn't sit down.
"Because I'm a fool! A total fool!" she cried angrily. "I have spent my life caring for you, pleasing you, protecting you when you were too cocksure to protect yourself. I knew she'd blow the whole thing apart," Robyn said, with a jerk of her head toward me. "Hoppy knew it too," she went on, "but you weren't going to be cowed by anyone." She shook her head. "All I've done for you, Daddy, all I've done for you. I tried to get rid of Kate, pushing her from the top of the stairs, getting Brook to break the window, as Ashley had, poisoning the cat, hoping to scare her into leaving.
"It didn't work. Hoppy had said it wouldn't. I was getting desperate, knowing it wouldn't be long before Kate figured out what I had guessed long ago about Ashley's death. So Hoppy laced the pie.
When the plan went bad, I added the open bottle of cough syrup, and finally you fired Kate. Once again I had helped you. I thought it was all over."
"Then Patrick was abducted," I said.
She acted as if she didn't hear me.
"It was Trent who took him," Adrian told his daughter.
"I wish the devil himself had and he had carried Patrick all the way to hell! But you, you would have gone there to get him back. You would do anything for him, and yet you never notice what I do for you. You didn't notice with Ashley around, and you don't with Patrick, either."
She ran her hands through her hair, her fingers separating the strands, then bunching into fists, tangling them up. "All you could think about was your missing son. I saw that Emily was going to be as useless as ever, worrying about Patrick, not you, not even considering the effect of this on your health.
So I phoned your doctor.
That's right," she said, responding to the sudden lift of Adrian's head.. "I spoke to your doctor about my fears for you." Robyn laughed out loud. "You know what she told me, don't you. You haven't been getting experimental treatment. Your cancer was cured."
I blinked.
"You've got the health of a man fifteen years younger-that's what your doctor said. You were manipulating us, Daddy! All of us, even your wife! You were dangling your money in front of us, seeing which dog you could make jump the highest!"
Robyn circled the settee, then sat next to him. "But once again I fixed things for you. I'm keeping you to the plan. There was poison in the cup of coffee I brought you today, the one you drank just before you left."
Adrian stared at her with disbelief.
"Surprised? Surprised as I was at what Daddy's girl could do?" She started to cry. "All my life, all I wanted was to please you."
Adrian bowed his head.
"But I didn't want you to die alone, Daddy. You know I wouldn't do something that horrible to you." She laid her head on his shoulder. "I drank it too."
"Robyn!" Adrian closed his eyes and rested his cheek against her head.
"Sam, we have to call a paramedic," I said.
"Too late," Robyn whispered. "Too late." She snuggled like a small child against her father.
"I need your phone," Sam said, reaching toward Adrian, but Adrian kept his arms around Robyn, slowly stroking her hair. Sam reached into Adrian's pocket to retrieve the phone, then flicked it open and punched in the numbers.
He was talking to the dispatcher when the sheriff arrived. I explained quickly as much as I could, then rushed outside to Patrick. I found him asleep in Sam's car, unaware of what was going on.
Robyn died in her father's arms before the paramedics arrived. Sam said that Adrian refused treatment and died shortly after.
The week that followed the events at the auction house was, in many ways, more difficult than that which followed my father's death. When Dad died, I knew what I had lost. But while I felt depressed and saddened by the deaths of Adrian and Joseph, whom could I mourn-the people I thought they were?
They were cold-blooded murderers. They had betrayed not only me, but people I loved, my parents and Patrick.
I could do nothing to ease Patrick's pain and confusion, not that week. In his mind, Ashley's fear of her tutor was still too vivid for him to trust me. But Sam knew better than anyone how it felt to be a little boy who had lost his father. He missed his hockey game Saturday night-didn't make it as far as the team bench-not because of the stitches in his leg, but because Patrick needed him.
If Dr. Parker was right, Patrick's sensitivity to Ashley would fade and finally disappear when Patrick's life became different from the kind she had known. The dynamics at Mason's Choice had already changed, and Emily was talking about leaving the estate, which I hoped would hasten the process. I knew I had to be patient.
Trent, Sam, and I spent much of that long week talking to the police, trying to patch together the recent events, though some things would never be verified. Trent told the authorities he had suspected that Ashley was murdered, but did not know who did it. While admitting he felt no affection for Patrick, he said that the prospect of another child's death was a painful reminder to him of the death of Ashley. He also realized that a child's death, occurring twice in a generation, would call unwanted attention to the family and create suspicion. After I was fired, he feared that Patrick was vulnerable, and removed him from the house till he could figure out who was threatening him. Looking back now, I should have realized that if Trent had wanted to hurt or kill Patrick, he wouldn't have brought him to a hotel in town and wouldn't have left behind such an obvious paper trail.