"We have a number of paintings in this house done by a Luciano Venerelli," she said.
"He was my father. He died three months ago."
"Really! Are you an artist? Can you teach art?"
"I—I could teach some of the basic things my father taught me when I was a child."
"Do you play a musical instrument?"
"A little bit of piano."
"So you could teach it?"
"The basics," I replied, with the uncomfortable feeling that she was getting too interested in hiring me. "Of course, I have no experience in tutoring children."
"You say here that you have baby-sat quite a bit."
Yes, I thought, but that was to get me inside your front door, not fetch myself a job.
She picked up a desk phone. "Mrs. Hopewell, please send in Patrick."
I had to act fast. "Mrs. Westbrook, I need to explain why—"
"Let me tell you what we are looking for," she interrupted, with the air of someone who expected others to listen to her. "We call it a tutoring job because we want a nanny who is educated and can teach Patrick in a manner that is appropriate to his position in life. We want an employee who speaks English well and can correct Patrick's mistakes, someone who can assist in his studies, and introduce him to other things a well-bred person should know."
There was a light knock, and the door opened. The little boy who entered was definitely a Westbrook-dark hair, blue eyes, fair skin, with a child's smattering of freckles. For a moment I felt like little Katie gazing at Brook. Clearly, Patrick had already been bred in a manner "appropriate to his position in life": His walk and raised chin indicated that he believed he owned the place. I almost laughed.
"Patrick, darling, this is Kate Venerelli."
Patrick surveyed me, not like a curious seven-year-old, but like an adult who was deciding whether I would do. I surveyed him with the same measuring eyes, as if deciding whether he would do. He suddenly turned into a little boy, backing up and moving closer to his mother.
"Kate is going to be your tutor."
I swallowed my gasp. "I'm sorry?"
"I've made up my mind," Mrs. Westbrook told me. "You are educated, you are familiar with the arts, and you speak very well."
"But—but don't you think you should have references?" I asked.
"Do you have any?" No.
"It doesn't matter," Mrs. Westbrook said. "No one supplies bad references. Recommendations don't prove anything about a person."
"But I'm sure Mr. Westbrook would like to interview me too," I suggested. I considered explaining my ruse, but if she grew angry and sent me off, I'd have no excuse to return.
"Patrick's father has been ill. He will be returning Friday from Hopkins, where he has been receiving cancer treatments."
"Oh." I still winced when someone mentioned cancer. I glanced at Patrick, but his expression didn't change. Either he didn't understand, or he was already proficient at wearing a public face.
"When he arrives, Mr. Westbrook will have many other things to tend to," she went on.
I need some time to think about this," I said, hoping to keep the masquerade going for one more day and hand deliver the ring.
"Perhaps you would like to get to know Patrick a little better," she suggested. "Darling, be a good boy and show Kate your room and the rooms on the third floor. Would you do that for Mommy?"
Darling didn't answer right away. Perhaps he was thinking about refusing or, better still, driving a bargain with Mommy.
I wanted this chance to see the places in which I had once played. "I'm sure you have some smashing toys in your room," I said encouragingly.
Patrick looked at me with new interest. "I'm not supposed to smash them."
His mother laughed. "That's an expression, Patrick. She means wonderful toys, exciting toys."
I think he would have preferred that I meant smash able toys, but he nodded and started toward the door, calling to me over his shoulder, "Come on, Kate."
I followed him out of the office. The entrance hall, which was furnished to serve as a formal reception room, ended at a wide passageway that ran from one side of the house to the other—that is, to the left and right, continuing on to the wings of the house. The living room and dining room, the two large rooms at the "back" of the house, were behind the passageway—facing the water, I remembered. The main stairway rose to our right, running parallel to the passageway.
The house had other stairways, in both the main section and wings, back steps that wrapped around the corners of its many fireplaces. It was a perfect place to play hide-and-seek, with three floors and so many escape routes connecting them. But it had also made me uncomfortable. I never knew for sure where Brook was, because he could sneak up and down stairways without us seeing him. Ashley had loved to leap out from behind a door and make me scream, immediately after my mother, who earned extra money by babysitting her, would tell us we must play quietly.
Patrick and I climbed the wide stairway. Halfway down the second-floor hall I paused at a secretary filled with photos. I scanned them quickly, disappointed again to find none of Ashley. Amelia had said that Trent was divorced; perhaps Ashley's mother had taken all the pictures with her.
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 t
hink 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. "Wel 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 fel through the ice."
Robyn quickly cut her off. "We don't need to go into that, Hoppy. The point is, Emily, this girl will bring back bad memories and upset Daddy and Trent. I can't allow it."
"Well, you talk to Daddy when he gets home," Emily replied, "and I will talk to my husband, and we will see if he chooses to listen to his daughter, his housekeeper, or his wife concerning the welfare of his son." The strength of Emily's words were betrayed by the high pitch of her voice. I guessed that she was intimidated by Mrs. Hopewell and Robyn.
But I wasn't.
"Who are they talking about?" Patrick whispered to me as I took his hand and started down the main stairs.
"Your new tutor."
Chapter 3
I can't remember the last time I did something so impulsively. Curiosity about why my family had left and sheer defiance made up my mind. I had no idea how long I would stay, or rather, how long they would keep me. It worried me that I would be one more person in Patrick's life who didn't stay around, but I didn't know what I could do about that.
The scene at the bottom of the stairway had been brief and tense, Mrs. Hopewell responding to my introduction with one sentence: I know who you are."
Mrs. Caulfield—Robyn—had informed me that the final decision on my hiring would be made by Mr. Westbrook.
Amelia had been bursting with curiosity when the door of the library reopened. The ladies had closed it in order to have their argument, but she had heard bits and pieces. I told her several times that the two older women had confused me with someone else, which, not surprisingly, she didn't believe.
That evening I stole away from Amelia's questions, taking a walk through town.
The fog, which had rendered the afternoon so dismal, now made the night seem brighter, the mist holding the apricot light of streetlamps and shimmering on the brick sidewalks. Though it was only seven o'clock, most of the shops were closed. Lights shone in the rooms above them and through the fanlights and windows of the old homes that fronted the eighteenth-century street. Somewhere ahead of me, at the end of High Street, was the river, but fog blotted out everything more than a block away. Peering in a shop window, pressing my face close to the glass, was like looking in a crystal ball, the objects inside magically clear.
I stared at a painting of a cat. I knew the artist at once, recognizing his attentiveness to the cat's ears, the expression in the animal's tail, and the tone of the background, carefully chosen to bring out the colors in the cat's coat. It was an early work by my father. I took a step back to read the shop's sign: OUVIA'S ANTIQUES.That's what you get for dying, Dad, I thought; your paintings are antiques now.
A man was working inside the shop, staring down at his clipboard, a pen hanging out of one side of his mouth like a cigarette—ex-smoker, I thought, recognizing my father's habit.
I pushed open the front door, unloosing a flurry of bel s.
"Shop's closed," the man said, pointing to a sign.
"I was hoping I might look at the painting of the cat.
"It's not for sale. Nothing here is for sale. I'm just taking inventory."
"It's a Venerelli, isn't it?"
He removed the pen from his mouth, perhaps surprised that a teenager would know something like that. "Unsigned," he replied.
"Even so, it is," I told the man, walking over to the painting to study it more closely.
He put down his clipboard and joined me in front of the painting. "How do you know that? It would be worth a lot more if I could be certain."
"He was my father. I'd recognize his work anywhere."
Now the man tipped forward on his toes to look at my face. "Katie!" he exclaimed softly.
I took a step back.
I never expected to see you in Wisteria, but still, I should have recognized you. You look exactly like your mother."
"Not exactly."
"You don't remember me, do you?" the man continued. "You were only a little girl the last time I saw you."
I waited to see if his face surfaced in my memory as Mrs. Hopewell's had. "No, I'm sorry, I don't."
"Joseph Oakley." He held out his hand. "I was Ashley's tutor."
"Mr. Joseph! I do remember you." Though I didn't recall him looking anything like he did now. Ashley's tutor, a college student, had been skinny, with a little knob of a chin. The person in front of me had the shape of a plump, middle-aged man, and sported a full beard flecked with gray. But he was younger than he appeared; the skin on his face was smooth, almost lineless.
"My condolences about your father," he said.
I nodded.
"I know how it is," he went on. "Mother died several months ago."
"I'm sorry.
"That's why I'm back in town, settling her affairs. This was her shop."
I glanced around at the odd collection of things—a beautiful oil lamp, a tacky ceramic of a fisherman, an elegant silver brush set, a purple teapot shaped like an elephant's head—his trunk was the spout. Next to my father's simple painting was a very large canvas: Several robust women with 1920 hairstyles bathed at a pink spring while odd-looking winged creatures darted about.