Dark Secrets 2: No Time to Die; The Deep End of Fear (32 page)

"I'm
making things harder?" I exclaimed, so loudly that a person passing by turned around to look at us. I waited until the man had moved on. "I'm not the one who—"

"You," Trent interrupted, "are the only one in the house who still has a choice in the matter. You can choose to let go of the past and encourage Patrick to forget about Ashley. Let sleeping dogs lie, Kate."

"They've lied too much already," I said.

He shook his head. "Don't make Patrick pay the price for your curiosity about the past. I'm warning you, Kate, and I'm not going to warn you again." He pivoted and reentered the cafe. I stared through the window at him, but he had sat down and turned his attention to his lady friend.

I walked away, upset by his words. Was I pursuing the truth for Patrick's sake or my own? I had thought I was doing it for Patrick—at least, it had started out that way. But I had learned that the past was tied up in lies, lies that had changed my own life. I was doing this for both of us now, though it was only myself I had the right to endanger. The question was, which was endangering Patrick more: pursuing the truth or letting it go?

Chapter 18

When I picked up Patrick at school that afternoon, he seemed happier than he had earlier in the day. He had done well on a spelling test and had discovered another boy in his class who liked ice hockey. But the little bit of brightness in his face faded by the time we reached the end of the long road up to Mason's Choice. A few minutes later, when I offered him an after-school snack, he took a tiny bite out of the peanut butter cracker I had fixed, then set it down.

"What's wrong?"

He looked at the plate of crackers warily. "I don't want a tummy ache."

"They won't hurt you. I fixed them myself."

"I'm not hungry."

Trust me! I wanted to say, but even I could recognize the irony of that coming from me.

"Do you want to go for a hike?" I asked.

"No."

"Not even down to the pond?"

"The pond?" He was interested.

"Why don't you change into your play clothes? I'll put your crackers in a bag, and we can take them along for a picnic."

His face lit up, then he reconsidered. "No, thanks. I'm not hungry."

"Then we'll skip the picnic part, but go change your clothes."

Mrs. Hopewell entered the kitchen as soon as Patrick left. I had the feeling she had been eavesdropping.

"Patrick and you will eat with the family tonight."

"Is that what Adrian wishes?" I asked.

She hated it when I called him by his first name. Yes.

I nodded, put an unopened bag of crackers in my coat pocket, and headed upstairs. When I got to Patrick's bedroom, I saw that he had taken out his ice skates.

"Patrick, can you see how foggy it is outside?" Yes.

"When warm air comes in contact with the cold of the melting snow, it makes fog. The air is very warm today, the temperature well above freezing. The ice on the pond will be too soft for skating." "No, it won't."

"I'm sorry, but it will."

"It won't!" he said, swinging his skates, banging them against his closet door.

"It will," I said firmly.

He dropped his skates and threw himself on the bed. "Then I don't want to go."

"All right. You stay here and do your homework. I'm going on a hike to the pond." I strode across the hall, wondering how far I could go before having to give up the bluff. He followed me down the main stairs, keeping about ten steps behind. Out of the corner of my eye I saw that he was carrying his skates.

When I reached the first-floor hall, I heard voices in the library—more fighting. I walked quietly toward it, trying to decipher Robyn's words. Trent cut her off, then Emily's high-pitched voice interjected something. Patrick caught up with me just as the library door opened. At the sound of their angry voices, he cringed.

"It's okay," I whispered.

Brook emerged. Seeing Patrick and me, he grinned as if he knew a secret. "The cat's away," he told us, "and you know what happens then." He pointed to the library.

"My cat is dead," Patrick replied solemnly.

"Oh yeah, I forgot about that old thing."

"Close the door, Brook," I said.

He reached back and pulled it shut, muffling the sound of the raised voices, then walked toward us. "Do you think your cat ate some raspberry pie?"

I glared at him. "Sometimes, Brook, I can't tell if you are exceptionally mean-spirited or simply stupid."

"I've never been exceptional at anything," he replied, shoving his hands in his pockets, "so I must be stupid. Grandfather thinks so." He shrugged, as if it were unimportant, but there was an edge in his voice. "He has gone into town to see his attorney. Grandfather's personal attorney always comes here, of course. I guess the old man wants some privacy while deciding how to divide up his loot. Anyway, when the cat's away—"

"The mice will play," I finished for him. "It's just a saying, Patrick."

"Oh, it's more than that," Brook said. "It's advice. Be on your guard. The mice can play rough, especially when the cat frustrates them."

The library door opened again. Trent emerged, his face the color of vanilla ice cream, his brow pinched. With barely a glance in our direction, he headed toward his wing. Robyn came out and stared straight at us, but I wasn't certain she saw us. Her cheeks flamed with anger. Emily was still in the library, her fists clenched, tears running silently down her face. Hoping Patrick didn't see his mother, I quickly turned him in the direction of the kitchen, where we kept our boots, and gave him a little push.

"So where are you going, Patrick?" Brook asked.

Patrick didn't reply.

"To the pond," Brook guessed, noting the skates. "What a great idea, ice skating on a nice warm day like this!"

I told him the pond was too soft. He wants to see for himself. Excuse me."

Patrick was halfway down the hall and I took long strides to catch up with him. In the kitchen, we pulled on our boots, then exited out the back of the house.. Patrick walked swiftly, wordlessly toward the snowman we had built two days ago. Our hockey player had shrunk into a troll.

"He's melted," I observed.

Without replying, Patrick picked up the snowman's hockey stick and circled the house to the front. I could have stopped him there and given him the choice of dropping the skates and stick or going to his room, but going back inside that angry house was too stiff a penalty for any child to pay. We'd settle the matter when he could see the ice for himself.

We walked silently down the main road, then cut across a garden and orchard, Patrick leading the way, making a wide circle to skirt the horse bam. The stand of trees around the pond looked eerie in the fading afternoon light, like an island floating in the snow and mist. We entered the ring of cedar and pine, following the short trail through dripping branches. Fog darkened the wood and hung over the pond, turning the straggly trees near the shore into ghostly figures. The ice was leaden gray. Off-center, larger than before, was the circle of black water.

Patrick picked up a stick and threw it on the ice. "See? It's frozen."

"Patrick, sticks float on water."

"But it's not floating," he replied. "It's just sitting there."

"The point is that sticks are so light, they can float on water. You are much heavier."

"I float," he argued. "I float on my back."

Struggling to keep my temper, I took the skates and hockey stick from him. "You can't go on the ice. I don't want to hear any more about it."

I put his things at the entrance to the path, then dragged two heavy limbs to the narrow margin between pond and trees, and pushed them together.

"Do you want to sit on my new bench?" I asked, taking out the bag of crackers. I had brought the buttery ones, his favorite. "You may open them if you like."

The sulk could be sustained for only so long. Patrick sat down next to me. After a moment, he tore open the crackers and gobbled up several of them. As he did, I thought about how to facilitate his contact with Ashley's thoughts the day she died. I knew the first part of the story; perhaps all I had to do was get it started, and let Ashley finish it.

I never mentioned this, Patrick," I said, "but I used to play with Ashley—"

My cell phone rang, startling both of us. I reached in my pocket to turn it off, but before I could, the three-note ring sounded again.

"It's your phone," Patrick said.

I sighed and pulled it out. "Hello."

"Miss Kate?"

"Yes."

"It's Jack, one of Mrs. Caulfield's grooms."

"I'm sorry?" The voice sounded low and raspy, the connection unclear.

"Jack, from the bam. We got a kind of problem here. I found some painting on the bam, spray paint, low down on the west side. Don't know how long it's been there—no one goes around that way. I had to call Mrs. Caulfield about it. She's mad and coming down to see herself."

He paused.

"So?" I asked, but I could guess what was coming.

"She said you should be here waiting to explain."

"Did she now."

I reminded myself that it wasn't the groom's fault that Robyn had leaped to this conclusion. And, to be fair to Robyn, Patrick had earned her suspicion.

"Would you hold for a moment, please?" I pressed the mute button. "Patrick, did you spray paint the outside of the horse barn?"

"No."

"Are you sure?"

His face grew anxious, his mouth moving silently before he spoke. "I don't have any spray paint."

I mentally ran through the forty-eight hours since he had dropped the manure through the hay chute. He had slipped off that afternoon when I had found him on the diving board, and had slipped away again at dawn when I had found him here at the pond, but I doubted he had gone anywhere other than the pool and pond. Of course, the vandalism might have been done before that and not noticed til now. "Have you had any dares from Ashley that I don't know about?"

"No. Am I in trouble?" He had taken off his mittens to eat the crackers, I saw the tense way he curled his hands, leaving his knuckles bony white.

"Not if you didn't paint the barn." Someone else could have, I thought, someone hoping the blame would fall on Patrick.

I released the mute button and spoke into the phone again. "Please tell Mrs. Caulfield that I have questioned Patrick, and that it would make more sense if the person who
did
it was there to explain."

"Uh, yeah, I know what you mean. But she's my boss and told me to get you, so I have to do it. Maybe you, uh, want to leave young Mr. Westbrook behind and talk to her yourself first, just until she cools down. She's a little—you know. You know how she is."

I know very well. Neither Patrick nor I will be there." I clicked off and slipped the phone in my pocket.

"I don't go too close to the barn now," Patrick said to me. "Really, I don't."

I heard the tremor in his voice.

"I believe you."

"Do you think Ashley did it?" he asked.

"No. I think someone else in the house is playing pranks."

"They don't like me."

It was pointless to deny it. "It's their problem, Patrick, not yours. I want you to remember that I like you very much. So does Sam. Tim did—he was your good friend, and I bet the boy at school who knows about hockey likes you."

"Ashley, too," he suggested softly. "She doesn't say it, but I think she does."

"I believe so. You know, Ashley was my friend too."

He took another cracker from the pack, then gazed up at me, frowning slightly. "Ashley usually plays with Katie."

I nodded. "That's right. That's what Ashley called me. We used to play in many of the same places that you like. One of them was the play set by the cottages. Ashley was an excellent swinger. She could go really high."

"And sing," he added.

A shiver went through me. "Yes, she always sang when she swung. We liked to climb trees. She and November could climb all the way to the top of some of them. I wasn't as brave."

Patrick stared out at the pond, no longer worried about the barn, in another world now.

"I thought she had the best toys. Often we played with her horses—Silver Knight was my favorite."

"I like Silver Knight too," he confided.

"Ashley's favorite was Banner."

He nodded. "She likes his mane, the way the plastic looks ripply, like it's blowing in the wind."

I was talking in the past tense, he in the present, but we knew the same girl.

"Ashley had lots of pets—puppies and rabbits, some chickens she kept in the old cow barn, hamsters and fish. But her favorite pet was her brown and white rabbit, the one named Silly."

"Because he has one floppy ear," Patrick said knowingly.

"Yes. One day, when the weather was foggy, like it is now, Silly disappeared from his cage."

Patrick looked surprised for a moment. "Like my hamster?"

"Yes. Ashley was very angry, and afraid, too. My mother, Joseph, and I tried to calm her and help her find Silly."

Patrick thought for a moment, then nodded, as if he knew that now, as if he had caught up with the story told by the trace of Ashley's mind. "Silly isn't in the house," he said quietly.

"No, no, he wasn't. We thought someone might have let him outside."

"She thinks Brook did it," Patrick said.

"Yes. So my mother and I and Ashley and Joseph went out to look for the rabbit."

"Ashley is crying."

"She… is," I said, shifting tenses. "She… loves Silly very much."

Patrick nodded and continued to gaze out at the pond.

"The four of us are looking for him. Each of us goes a different way. Though my mother tell s us to stay close, we don't Ashley runs here to the pond. The ice looks as if it might be frozen." That was as much of the story as I knew for sure. "She—she thinks she sees Silly on the ice," I ventured.

"She
does
see him." 

"So—"

"Kate!" Robyn's shrill voice broke into our story. Patrick's body went rigid.

"I've had all I can take of that hellion!" Robyn shouted, sounding as if she were on the path, coming toward the pond.

Patrick turned to me, his eyes wide. "She found us."

With Brook's help, I thought, for he knew we were going to the pond.

"Don't worry, I'll handle her. I want you to stay quiet, Patrick, and let me talk to her. Stay on these logs. Don't move a millimeter, all right?"

He nodded.

I rose to intercept Robyn at the end of the path, keeping an eye on Patrick and, at the same time, blocking her access to him. In the last twenty-four hours he had become too fragile to withstand her explosions.

"Kate," she cried as she rounded the final bend of trees, "I'll have you fired for this!"

Her barn jacket sat crookedly on her shoulders, buttoned incorrectly, its mismatched front flapping open. Long strands of hair had come loose from the clasp that held it at the back of her head. The fury on her face was far out of proportion to a spray-painted patch of bam.

"We can discuss it later," I said, "when you have your temper under control."

"We'll discuss it now. Brook told me what that monster did."

"I was talking to Brook before we left the house," I said, glancing back at Patrick. He was still on the logs. "Why didn't he say something then?"