see them!” She turned, shears in one gloved hand, and gave Patrick such an appraising look that he wondered if she was planning to cut him, too, and add him to the basket. Then a hint of a smile played at the corners of her mouth. “Well, look at you,” she said. “All dressed up, and looking human!”
Patrick rolled his eyes. She was going to gloat.
Instead, she turned back to her task. “So I assume it went well?” she asked.
Patrick understood, then, that her visit had nothing to do with the tulips. “What went well?” he countered, deciding to make her pull the details of his meeting with Alison out of him one by one, if he chose to give her any of them at all. He took the flowers she handed him and laid them carefully in the basket.
“Coffee with Alison,” she said, making it a statement rather than a question, and still not looking at him.
“Well enough, I suppose,” he said, masking his true feelings. In fact, it had been almost impossible trying to talk to a near-total stranger about what his life had been like since Christmas Eve. And yet, after the first few minutes, he had seen something in Alison Montgomery’s eyes that told him that she did, indeed, understand exactly how he felt, and how hard it was even to talk about it, let alone deal with it. “I’m going to a meeting with her tonight. She’s picking me up.”
“That’s marvelous,” Claire said, then stood upright, rubbing her lower back with one gloved hand as she handed Patrick the shears with the other.
“I’m not so sure it’s
If she noticed the hint of sarcasm in his voice, she ignored it. “Of course it is,” she said, pulling off her gardening gloves and eyeing the heap of tulips in the basket. “I think those should do it. Come along — I’ve told Neville to make his raspberry iced tea.” She brushed his cheek with a kiss as she passed him, and he followed her back along the path toward the house, until he caught a glimpse of the mausoleum and stopped dead in his tracks. Embers of last night’s nightmares were still smoldering in his memory, and when he turned away from the mausoleum, a flash of reflected sunlight from the windows of a yacht on the Sound seemed to fan the embers into hideous flames.
“Patrick?” he heard Claire say, but her voice seemed far in the distance. “What is it, darling? What’s wrong?”
He squeezed his eyes shut against the bright sunlight and shook his head as if that could rid him of the images. When he finally reopened his eyes, he made himself focus on the basket of flowers in his hand.
Brilliant color.
Beauty.
Life.
“Nothing,” he said, finally answering Claire’s question. “I’m all right.” Then he continued to follow his sister up the path.
Claire pulled her sun hat off as they went in the French doors and left it on a sideboard as they passed through the butler’s pantry into the kitchen. “We’ll have our iced tea in the library, please, Neville.”
Patrick shook his head. “Not the library.”
“Why not?” Claire asked, and Patrick thought he detected a hint of steel concealed in her blithe tone. “Let’s open it up and air it out.”
“Not the library,” he repeated.
Her eyes glinted for a split-second, and then she shrugged. “Very well. The conservatory, then.” She selected two vases from the half-dozen Neville had set out for her and began to arrange the tulips into perfectly symmetrical bouquets. “I think we should open the house today,” she said as she worked. “It needs fresh air and sunlight. Spring is here, and it’s time this old rock pile started looking like it.”
Patrick said nothing.
“Including the library,” Claire went on. This time Patrick opened his mouth to protest, but she stopped him with a gesture. “In time,” she temporized. He followed her out of the kitchen, and held the door to the drawing room for her. “Why you even want to keep living in this old sepulcher is beyond me,” she said as they moved on into the conservatory, where she set the flowers on a table and looked straight at him. “Why don’t you sell it, Patrick? Why don’t you get out of here? Buy something new, something fresh! You could get one of those fabulous condos in the city, overlooking the river or something.”
He stared at her. “You’re kidding, right?”
“Kidding?” she echoed. “Of course I’m not kidding.” And he could tell by her expression that she was, indeed, serious.
He shook his head, still barely able to believe it. “How could I ever sell this place? All my memories are here — all
Claire’s eyes fixed on him, but before she could say anything else, Neville appeared in the open door with a tray bearing a silver pitcher, two glasses, a bowl of sugar, napkins, spoons, and a vase containing one single perfect tulip. As he set the tray on the table, Claire nodded toward the two vases she’d placed on it only moments before. “One of those is for the sitting room, Neville. And I’d appreciate it if you’d open it up and air it out. The other should go into Patrick’s bedroom.” Her gaze shifted to Patrick, but when she spoke again, her words were still for his servant. “And maybe tomorrow we’ll air out the library and fill it full of flowers, too.”
A silence hung over the conservatory for a moment, and then Neville took the two vases, offered Claire the smallest of nods, and left the room.
Claire’s eyes still coolly fixed on Patrick, she lifted the pitcher from the tray.
“Tea?” she asked.
Chapter Twenty-four
Patrick dropped into his leather recliner and closed his eyes for a moment. His head sank into the headrest, but tonight — for the first time since Christmas Eve — it wasn’t despair that had drained him to the point of exhaustion. No, tonight it was something else: a faint sense of hope; hope that perhaps, after all, he might find a way to survive the grief that until now had seemed utterly fatal.
Granted, that sense of hope was faint, little more than a tiny pinpoint of light piercing what seemed an infinity of darkness. He opened his eyes as if to see the faint glimmer of light better and found himself gazing at a vase of daffodils that Claire had somehow managed to sneak into the library while he was gone. They glowed on the mantel like a beacon, each of them perfect, each of them seeming to infuse the library with a feeling of life.
Claire had been right to fill the house with flowers this morning.
And she’d been right about the support group tonight, too.
Alison Montgomery had said little as she drove them the two miles or so to Shelley and Gordy Castille’s house a few hours earlier, and he’d had no idea what to expect. What he found were a half-dozen cars — ranging from a battered and rusty old VW beetle to a brand new Mercedes-Benz — parked in front of the kind of house that looked as if it would be owned by someone with a Ford Explorer.
Inside, nine people were murmuring over glasses of wine. All of them smiled at him, but no one offered any of the sympathetic words he’d heard so often over the last months that they’d become nearly meaningless. As they sat down, Shelley Castille turned to a wan-looking young woman who seemed to be melting into the corner of the sofa. “Beth?” she said.
It seemed that the young woman had not heard her name, but then she stirred, tried to speak, and pressed a sodden tissue to her eyes with one hand as she clenched the other into a fist of frustration at her failed attempt. After a moment she took a deep breath, then another, reached for her wine, then seemed to think better of it. “My husband ought to be here,” she finally said. “I think that’s what’s killing me the most.” She took another ragged breath, and her eyes moved to Patrick. “Our baby died—” she began, then choked on her own words and pressed the tissue to her nose and mouth. “Oh, God, it’s so hard to say that.”
“Take your time,” Shelley said, gently touching Beth’s shoulder.
