He sniffed his fingers, then nodded in agreement.
She still hadn't acknowledged me. Perhaps she was miffed that I hadn't been at the bam to stop Patrick, but I wasn't the one who had turned off my alarm clock.
'Sounds as if there's a problem,' I remarked quietly.
'She's the problem,' Emily retorted.
I walked with them toward the kitchen.
'Daddy said I shouldn't wake you up, Kate.'
'That was kind of him, and of you, too,' I replied. 'Speaking of kindness, that was a rather mean thing to do to Robyn.'
'I was just playing,' he said, then glanced at his mother, as if expecting her to defend him.
'Would you have liked Robyn to dump the manure on you?' I asked.
He grinned. 'I wouldn't care.'
Of course not-I was talking to a little boy.
I pushed open the kitchen door. 'The point is, adults don't like it, and you know that.'
'He's just a child,' Emily protested.
She would be saying that when Patrick was thirty-five. I felt as if we were replaying a drama that this house had witnessed before: Corinne had always defended Ashley, undercutting Joseph when he would discipline her.
'You had better use the utility sink,' I told Patrick. 'Did you clean up the mess you made in the barn?'
'No.'
'The grooms can do it,' Emily said. 'I'm sure they already have.'
A nice thing to teach a child, I thought: Misbehave, make a mess, and others will clean it up for you. I wasn't letting Patrick off the hook so easily. 'Then you owe both Robyn and the grooms an apology.'
Patrick's brow furled, just like his mother's. 'It wasn't my fault!'
'Whose fault was it?'
'Ashley's. She told me to do it.'
Emily sighed. 'I thought we weren't going to talk about Ashley anymore.'
Patrick stretched his hands over the sink, and I pushed back his sleeves-Emily didn't want to touch anything that might stink. 'When someone tells you to do something that you know is wrong, Patrick, you should say no.'
I did,' he whined, 'but she dared me.'
'If Ashley dares you again, come and tell me-or your mother,' I added quickly, for the color was rising in Emily's cheeks. I wasn't trying to take over her role, but he was only a child, and someone had to teach him.
Patrick scrubbed and dried his hands. I turned to Emily. 'Do you think it would be a good idea if Patrick wrote notes of apology to Robyn and the grooms?'
'You're asking me?' she snapped. 'Why bother? You'll have him do whatever you want. And if I question it, Adrian will defend you.' She picked up a copy of the morning paper and walked off, her flat snakeskin shoes clicking.
'All right, Patrick, let's go upstairs and start those notes.'
He looked at me defiantly. 'No.'
'Sorry?' 'I won't.'
I studied him for a moment. His blue eyes shrank as he stared back at me, their lids tightening. The skin on my face felt cold. He looked like Ashley when she'd bore into me with one of her looks. No, like any child-I told myself quickly-it was simply the way children's round eyes appear when they become defiant.
'You have made a lot of extra work and trouble for Robyn and the grooms,' I told him. 'You owe them an apology.'
'You can't make me do it.'
I gazed at him until he turned his face away.
'No, I can't,' I agreed. 'And if you want to remain upstairs for the rest of the day, that is fine with me. My shoulder hurts. I don't want to play in the snow that much.'
He turned back, the defiance gone from his face.
'Did you hurt it when you fell down the steps?' He laid his hand lightly on my arm. 'Does it hurt a lot?'
'It's not too bad.'
'Maybe you should put your arm in a sling,' he suggested.
'No, nothing is broken.'
'You could take some aspirin,' he said. 'It's locked in the cupboard in my bathroom. I'll get you a soda to drink with it.'
'Thank you, but no,' I replied, puzzled by Patrick's sudden concern for me. A turn of his head and his mood had shifted dramatically. It was as if he were two people in one.
Shaking off an uneasy feeling, I started up the steps. He followed quietly and, when we reached the schoolroom, sat down to write.
Later that morning I carried the notes of apology downstairs. Ideally, Patrick should have hand delivered them, but I didn't want to push our luck with a second trip to the barn and perhaps another confrontation with Robyn. I gave the grooms' notes to Roger, who was heading toward the barn to finish plowing. I placed Robyn's note in her mailbox outside the office door. As I turned away from the mahogany boxes, a woman emerged from the office.
'You must be Kate,' she said, then held out her hand in greeting.
The woman was pretty, in her late sixties, I thought, with pale blond hair that had the molded and sprayed look of someone who went weekly to a salon.
'I'm Elaine, Adrian's personal secretary. I work part-time now, once or twice a week.'
'It's nice to meet you.'
She reached into a folder she was carrying. 'I have a phone number that was requested by Patrick.'
I glanced down at the square of paper she handed me, surprised. 'Sam Koscinski?'
'He said Sam was his friend.' Her eyes brightened with amusement. 'Patrick has the same demanding way as his father when he wants a phone number pronto.'
'He demanded it?' I wasn't amused at the idea of a seven-year-old talking to an adult as if she were his employee. It was so easy to turn a sweet kid into a brat.
'Well, thank you. Thank you very much.' I slipped the paper in my pocket and climbed the steps to the third floor.
I had left Patrick playing a game on his computer and, upon reaching the last flight of steps, expected to hear pinging sounds against a background of music. When I heard an electronic voice asking repeatedly Hey, want to play? I quickened my pace toward the schoolroom. He wasn't there.
'Patrick?'
I checked the playroom, then hurried to my room and downstairs to his. He was nowhere in sight. I listened for footsteps above my head, in case he was hiding, then returned to the third floor to search the two storerooms.
'Patrick? If you're hiding, I want you to come out now.'
Nothing in the two rooms appeared to be disturbed. The old hockey sticks, deflated basketball, and other sports equipment lay in the same places as before. The furniture was coated with dust and bore no fingerprints or streaks.
I wavered between anger and fear.
He is playing games with me, being a brat, there is nothing to worry about, I told myself. But after the incidents of the last few days, all I could think of were the dangerous things Ashley had dared me to do when
