Carol O'Connell - Bone by Bone

"It took me a long time to find a horse with that same odd coloring," he said. "Call it a reward because you stayed for more than half a day this time. Your mother won't need you for a while, but that poor beast down there could use some company."

The day he had bought her the first stallion, she had instantly fallen in love with the horse. And Addison had believed that ten-year-old Belle had finally come to love him, too-for a day.

When she had flown down the tower stairs, leaving him alone on the deck, Addison resumed his puzzle of Sarah's most recent stupor and her secret stash of booze. Where did she keep it? He had looked everywhere. And now he searched the lay of his land. The garage was far enough away that the start-up of automobiles would not disturb the lightest of sleepers. The expensive engines purred so softly in motion; they could covertly sail past the lodge and down the drive.

Perhaps he should not be looking for secret bottles but a secret set of car keys.

He turned back to the open door of the tower room and raised his eyes to the high shelf of journals-an excellent hiding place.

Isabelle entered the stable's tack room to find her old saddle waiting for her on a sawhorse. And the leather saddlebags were right where she had left them after her last time out with old Nickel. She filled both bags with her mother's journals. Once upon another summer, they had been packed with her own birder logs and lunches for treks along the forest paths.

Years ago, Oren Hobbs had hiked those same trails. Aided by one of her mother's telescopes, she had caught glimpses of him from the deck at the top of the house. And she had risked encounters with that beautiful boy-risky because sometimes wishes came true, and, a time or two, she had thought of running him down with her horse and pounding him into the ground.

Saddlebags slung over one shoulder and bridle in hand, she carried her saddle out to the paddock to make the acquaintance of the second Nickel. If birds would not come to her, horses had always liked her well enough, and this one trotted toward her with some urgency. The sight of the saddle must have given him hope that she would take him away from this place.

"I know just how you feel." She held out one flat palm to offer him the solace of a sugar lump grabbed from the kitchen. His breath on her hand was a warm memory of better days.

While Isabelle saddled the horse, intending to rescue them both for some quiet time in a calmer place, a yellow Rolls-Royce was heading toward her. Most visitors parked in the circular driveway at the front of the lodge. Ferris Monty had probably assumed that no one would be at home to him, and he was right. The car stopped by the paddock, and the driver waved to her. He stepped out, leaving the door hanging open, perchance to make a fast retreat. With all his money, she wondered why he did not buy a better hairpiece that would blend more gracefully with his thick gray eyebrows.

"Hi there." He hesitated at a distance, lifting off the balls of his feet, saying on tiptoe, "I was hoping to have a word with your mother."

Isabelle, having nowhere to hide, resented being cornered this way, but she recalled a lesson in journalism learned at Addison 's knee: Always toss a bone to the dogs of the Fourth Estate. If you make them work for their supper, they'll turn on you and eat you alive. And so, because her mother was too fragile to be chased down for an interview, Isabelle bestowed a smile on the worm-white little man. "Mom's kind of busy right now." She gestured toward workmen on ladders, nailing up lights to frame every window. "Its quite a production. Will I do?"

"Oh, yes." He rushed forward, grinning.

And she took one step back.

His cologne was repulsive, though she recognized the brand as a wildly expensive one. No doubt Monty had bought it for status only. Certainly he had never realized that personal body chemistry added something to the mix of every wearer. In his case, the blend of his natural odor worked an unfortunate effect: riding just below the signature scent was a faint smell of piss, as if he had recently wet himself.

The little man pulled a notebook and pen from the inside pocket of his blazer, and his eyes slowly narrowed with a catlike smile. Later in the day, she would remember him with restrained claws and faint purring.

"It's about the birthday ball," he said. "I was so looking forward to attending this year. Assuming I'm welcome. Your father was-"

"Of course you're welcome. Everyone in Coventry has an open invitation." She smiled, as if she had no idea that Monty was the only exception. Addison despised this man, and Isabelle's only joy in life was thwarting her father. "I'll tell the caterer to seat you in the ballroom, unless you'd rather have an outside table." She borrowed his notebook and scribbled a personal invitation that would get him past a gorilla doorman hired for the event.

"Oh, this is wonderful," he said, insanely pleased.

While answering his interview questions, she slowly steered him back to his car, hoping to see him off before her mother awoke to appear on the deck. "Sorry," she said in response to his last inquiry. "I don't remember the year Addison started building this place." She looked up, shading her eyes to see the high tower. "It seems like we've always lived in the castle."

The mangling of this famous line of American gothic was not wasted on Monty. His eyes flickered, and his face brightened as he committed her words to paper, maybe embellishing on innuendo to create something worse than the truth about her family life.

Fat chance.

As I recall," he said, "you left town a few days after Joshua Hobbs disappeared."

"Well, there was nothing odd about that." And now she thought of another lie. "It was time to go back to school. I had summer sessions that year." She neglected to mention that she had been sent farther away than her eastern boarding school. Her plane had landed in Paris, where she had learned to speak French and miss her mother.

"But you never came back." His pen described small circles above the page of his notebook, a subtle prompt.

"Oh, you mean for the summer. No, you're right. This is my first summer back in Coventry. In my college years, I did internships during school vacations, and I picked up my graduate degrees in London. That's where I work now. So my visits home were short ones, holidays mostly." And they had indeed been short stays, years apart and never lasting for an entire day.

Isabelle and Ferris Monty smiled at each other, and there was no protest or insinuation. They had mutually and silently agreed that he would have to make do with this stew of truth and lies.

"Oh, one more thing." He held up his index finger, as if to test the wind. "Shortly after you left, your mother also went away for a while."

And that would have been the time, recently recounted by Addison, when her mother had been committed to a hospital for wealthy people with eccentricities, patients who eccentrically acquired the angry red tattoos of razor scars on their wrists. On another occasion, her mother had downed sleeping pills like handfuls of candy.

Bet you can't eat just one, Mom.

"My parents used to take separate vacations," said Isabelle. And so they had. Her father had gone off to the circus of his high-profile law practice down in LA, and her mother had gone insane.

The red cedar house in the woods had the steeply pitched roof and filigree of a Swiss chalet. Oren Hobbs was sitting on the doorstep when Ferris Monty came home.

The little man seemed resigned to his fate. His feet were dragging as he left his Rolls-Royce and crossed the yard to face his visitor. Without the exchange of a single word, the two of them entered the house.