Элизабет Чандлер: The Deep End of Fear

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."