Элизабет Чандлер: The Deep End of Fear

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.

As for Mrs. Hopewell's and Brook's roles in all these events, we knew only what Robyn had claimed before she died. The housekeeper was gone by Sunday morning, leaving no forwarding address. Trent confided to me that she had a sister in Virginia, but he. did not tell the police that, for I wasn't filing charges over the laced pie. I had no evidence to support what a court would consider the "hearsay" of a dead woman.

Brook left for Florida nearly as fast, after denying knowledge of any- and everything that had happened; one would have thought he was living in England for the last week and a half. While I will never know if he was the one who killed Patrick's hamster, my hunch is that he did it just for fun-his kind of fun, upsetting a child. In retrospect, I think Brook lacked his grandfather's steel, which had the curious advantage of making Brook nasty, heartless, and petty, but not actually evil. I think that when he realized more serious things were going on in the house, he pulled back from his own pranks.

Whatever the case, Brook will eventually be a very wealthy nineteen-year-old, for it turned out that Adrian did not change his will-had never planned to, according to his attorney. He provided for his wife and divided the rest evenly among his three children. Brook would inherit all of Robyn's portion.

During that week, Sam gave me his father's old notebook to read. It was Mr. Koscinski's jottings that had moved Sam to seek out Adrian the morning Patrick was missing. Putting together a log of the money spent by Joseph and bank reports on Olivia, whose cash had been tied up in her new shop, Sam suddenly realized that his father had been working on a new suspect-someone who had been present at the time of Ashley's death, someone with a surprising amount of money immediately after: Joseph. But who had paid him to kill Ashley? The most likely candidate was Adrian, Sam had thought, though Trent also had access to company funds.

Sam's plan had been to talk to Adrian and see what kind of visceral response he'd get when mentioning his belief that Joseph was dangerous. He never got that far.

Robyn interrupted, bringing in her father's tainted coffee, then Joseph and I phoned from the hotel. Adrian asked Sam to follow him to the auction house so that he could drive Patrick home. I suppose Adrian wanted Patrick safely out of the picture while he talked to Joseph and me. He didn't realize how much Sam knew, and made a fatal mistake in assuming that Sam could be bought, as the young and ambitious Joseph had once been.

Sam, his mother, and I attended the private funeral of Robyn and Adrian. On a dreary afternoon they were buried in the family cemetery, a place that, for me, would always be full of ghosts. Three days later, Friday of that week, we went to a small memorial service for Joseph, given by his friends in Baltimore. It had rained all week; that day, it sleeted. I didn't think winter was ever going to let go.

Then Saturday morning dawned with a washed blue sky. The wind had a different feel, a lighter touch. Shy flowers called snowdrops raised their heads.

In a sunny spot against a brick wall a crocus dared to open. I knew the temperature would drop again and that, for a while, winter would be mixed up with spring. My mother was coming in a week-she had sent me her flight number-l got hot and cold just thinking about it. Even so, it was time, time to find out if we could still be mother and daughter, time to find out if Sam and I could be anything more than friends.

I found him flat on his back, under his car.

"That's a clever way to protect the environment," I said, crouching down to peer under the old sedan. "Lie beneath your car and let it drop oil on you."

Sam turned his head sideways. "So, you're feeling like yourself again."

"Yes and no," I replied honestly, sitting on the bristly grass next to the driveway.

He slid out from beneath the car and reached for a wad of paper towels to wipe his hands. "Actually, I'm involved in a complex operation. I'm trying to see if I can install a steering wheel on the right side of my car, so you can park it without threatening the lives of passing pedestrians."

I laughed, which made him raise an eyebrow.

"When I say something like that, you're supposed to act like a porcupine."

"Excuse me?"

"Get your quills up, Kate, do your cactus act. You're no fun anymore!"

I glanced away.

"Uh-oh. Sorry." He rested his hand on mine, as he had many times in the last week. His hand covered mine completely, and I wanted to turn my palm upward, to see what it felt like to slip my fingers between his.

I pulled my hand away. "There is something I have to tell you."

He waited, but not very patiently. "Spit it out."

"You have such a poetic way of putting things."

"That's what you wanted to tell me?"

"No!" Frustrated, I plucked at the grass on the edge of the driveway.

"Kate, you're starting to do that thing again-looking away, not meeting my eyes."

"I know." In the last week, I had needed his friendship and comfort so desperately, I hadn't thought about things like the shape of his hands and the luminous darkness of his eyes. But I was thinking about them now. Sometimes that was all I could think about.

"Want to tell me why you do that?"

I stared at a greasy wrench.

"Do you know why you look away?" he asked, his voice gentle.

I nodded.

"We've shared an awful lot, Kate. Can't you tell me?"