"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?