'Come on, Patricia. Come on,' he pleaded. 'Wake up. We'll take you inside. We'll get you warm enough. We'll make you okay.'
'Patrick, listen to me,' I said softly. 'She's frozen, and when a hamster freezes, its heart stops. Patricia is dead. There is nothing we can do.'
'You're wrong!' he shouted, then lowered his eyes.
His dark lashes were wet against his cheek. He buried his chin in his chest. Tears rolled silently down his face, then he started to sob.
I wrapped my arms around him and pulled him close. 'I'm so sorry. If I could make her be alive for you, I would.'
He cried hard. The cat watched us for a moment, then slipped away, as if he had fulfilled his mission.
At last the sobs grew quieter. Patrick rested his head against me, his hands still cradling his pet between my chest and his. I reached for some tissues in my pocket. Patrick sneaked a peak at the hamster, probably hoping that she had warmed up and come back to life.
'Would you like to bury her?' I asked, handing him the tissue.
He nodded mutely, more tears rolling down.
'There's probably a shovel in the orangerie,' I said.
Patrick wanted to bury Patricia in the family cemetery. I could have called Adrian on my cell phone and asked permission to dig there, but the hole for Patricia would be small and I counted on him to understand how fragile his son was at that moment. We fetched a shovel from the orangerie, then cut across the formal gardens to the main drive, and passed through the keyhole in the tall hedge.
Who did this? I wondered as we walked silently toward the graveyard. It seemed unlikely that the lazy Patricia would have so quickly made her way down three stories of the large house. But even if she did, I could not believe that a home-bred hamster would venture far in the cold, certainly not as far as the pool, an open area without vegetation, where no animal would seek refuge.
It was possible the orange cat had caught her close to the house and dropped her in the pool, for the cat had led us there. But why hadn't he eaten hersurely, hunting rodents was how this wild cat survived. And if he wasn't hungry, why didn't he do what a domesticated cat would-keep its prey in a cozy place where it could play with it. More curious still, how did the cat know what Patrick was searching for?
I caught myself in the middle of that wild leap of an idea. The cat was just a cat, despite what Joseph had said about the silent communication between the tabby and Ashley. People who are good with animals often seem to have an intangible connection to them. The only unnatural, abnormal thing on Mason's Choice was Patrick's heartless relatives; for, no matter what the chain of events, the crisis started when the hamster was let out of her cage.
Most adults wouldn't believe a child who said he had put the top back on a cage. I knew if I started making accusations, that's how Patrick's family would respond. But I believed him. Someone had let Patricia out, someone enjoying a bit of cruel entertainment at Patrick's expense. Brook was the most likely suspect.
We had reached the cemetery. The large plot, surrounded by an iron fence, was barren of trees. The obelisks and statues, some standing upright, some leaning, cast long shadows in the late afternoon light. No winter birds stirred here, no squirrels scurried through. The only animals inhabiting the plot were the carved stone creatures placed around Ashley's grave.
There was quiet but no peace here-I had felt it as a child, and felt it again now.
Ashley had said that the ghosts in this graveyard spoke to her. She had said they watched me when she and I were apart, that they told her what I did.
Even now it was hard to shake off the feeling of being observed.
'Where should we bury her?' Patrick asked.
'Sorry? Oh. How about here?' I suggested, pointing to a patch of grass behind the gate that was unlikely to be used for anything else.
He knelt, solemnly watching as I dug into the hard earth. I wrapped Patricia in my scarf and laid her in the hole. Patrick helped me cover her with dirt.
'She'll rest warm and happy now,' I told him, and wiped the tears from his face.
'Kate, when you're dead, do you have bad dreams?'
'No, only good ones.' How I ached for him!
He glanced toward the new corner of the cemetery.
'That's where Ashley is resting,' I told him. 'Do you want to say a prayer for her and Patricia?'
'Ashley's not there.'
'If you go over to the stone with the little animals around it, you will see her name.'
'I know. But she's not there,' he insisted.
'What do you mean?'
'She's in other places,' he said.
A chill spread over my shoulders and the back of my neck. My feet, having been soaked in the pool's frigid water, felt like lumps of ice.
'Patrick, who is telling you these things about Ashley?'
Someone had to be, someone trying to frighten him. Whoever it was wouldn't dare hurt him physically and risk the wrath of Adrian. But the person knew how to do just as much damage psychologically.
'Is it Brook?'
'Ashley doesn't like Brook,' he said.
'Is it Robyn? Trent?'
'Do you think Ashley let out Patricia?' Patrick asked me.
'What?' I stood up, took Patrick's hand, and quickly led him out of the graveyard. 'Why won't you tell me who is talking to you about Ashley?'
'Nobody is but you,' he said.
I didn't know how to reason with him. 'Why do you think she would let out Patricia?'
'Because I didn't get home in time. She was mad. She wanted to play and I wasn't home and she got mad.'
'Patrick, Ashley would never hurt an animal. She loved them.'
'So you can see her now?' he asked.
'No! No,' I repeated in a softer voice. 'It's just that everyone knows she loved animals.'
'But she gets mad,' he pointed out. 'Sometimes she really screams when I don't do what she wants.'
It was eerie how similar his Ashley was to the one I had known. But these were just imaginings, I reminded myself, and if I could not reason him past them, I could, at least, shape them for him.
'Did you ever see the movie about Casper the ghost?' I asked.
'I have the video.'
'Remember how he's a nice ghost? Ashley is like that. Oh, sometimes she screams and puts up a fuss, but she's just lonely. She's just looking for a friend.'
Patrick gazed up at me, his face scrunched. 'Are you sure?' Yes.
So, it has come to this, I thought, as we trudged toward the house. I, who hated the way adults lied to children, was telling tales to Patrick. I'd do anything to make his fear and hurt go away.
As soon as Patrick and I returned from the burial, I spoke to Emily. She chastised me for not coming to her immediately-at a time like that, Patrick needed his mother, she said-though I had trouble imagining her trekking out to the cemetery in her Ferragamos. Since it was Saturday night and everyone was headed out, Patrick had dinner with me in the kitchen. Happily for us, Mrs. Hopewell was off Saturday evening through Sunday, so though she was still on the premises, she wasn't breathing down our necks.
The one thing that took Patrick's mind off Patricia was talking about ice hockey. After dinner, I remembered I had seen old sports equipment in the thirdfloor storage rooms. We searched and found a pair of battered hockey sticks. While Patrick ran up and down the hall, pushing an imaginary puck and dodging opponents, I went on to the
