Chapter 1
12 Years Earlier
I huddled under the blankets in the backseat of the car. Wind rocked the body of our old Ford. Sharp needles of sleet beat against the windows.
"Mommy?"
"Hush, Katie."
I raised my head, peeking out of the blankets, wondering where we were going in the middle of the night. I could see nothing, not even the headlights of our car.
"Did you fasten Katie's seat belt?" my mother asked.
"She was asleep," my father replied, "so I laid her down on the seat."
"Luciano!" My mother always used his full name when he had done something wrong. "Stop the car."
"Not yet. We haven't cleared the estate. Do you see the main road?"
"I can't see a thing," my mother replied tensely. "Put on the headlights."
"And let everyone know we're leaving?"
My mother sighed. "Quickly, Katie, sit down on the floor. All the way down."
I wedged myself into the seat well, the space between the rear seat and front, where people place their feet. "Why are we leaving?"
There was no answer from the front of the car.
"When are we coming back?"
"We're not," my father said.
"Not ever?" I had liked it at Mason's Choice. "But, I—"
"There's Scarborough Road," my mother interrupted.
The car turned and headlights flicked on.
"I didn't say good-bye to Ashley."
For a moment all I heard was sleet and wind.
"Ashley isn't here anymore, remember?" my mother prompted quietly. "Ashley has gone to heaven."
That was what everyone said, but I had trouble understanding how it could be so. I still heard her and played with her. Sometimes I saw her by the pond, though Mommy said they had pulled her out of it. Ashley always scared me a little, but on the big estate there were no other children to play with, and that had made her my best friend. "I want to say good-bye to Ashley," I insisted.
"Luke! In the mirror, behind us!" My mother sounded panicky, and I stood up in the seat wel to see.
"Get down, Katie!" my father shouted. "Now!"
I quickly dropped between the seats. Daddy sometimes shouted at the people who hired him to paint portraits of their pets. He'd scream at his paintings, too, when he got frustrated, but never at me. Our car suddenly picked up speed. I pulled the blanket over my head.
"There's ice on the road," my mother warned.
"You don't have to tell me, Victoria."
"We shouldn't have tried this."
"We had no choice," he said. "Do you remember the cutoff?"
"The one that runs by the Chasney farm—yes. About a hundred meters before it, there's a sharp curve."
My father nodded. "We'll get around it, I'll cut the lights, and he won't see us take the cutoff."
Our car picked up speed.
"But the ice—"
"Katie, I want you to stay on the floor," my father said, sounding more stern than I had ever heard him. I hugged my knees and my heart pounded. The car motor grew louder. The wind shrieked, as if we were tearing a hole in it by going so fast.
"Almost there."
I wished I could climb up front and hold on to Mommy.
Then the car turned. Suddenly, I couldn't feel the road beneath us. The car began to spin. Mommy screamed. I felt her hands groping behind the seat for me. I couldn't move, pinned against the backseat by the force of the rotating car.
We came to a stop.
"Katie—?"
"Mommy—"
The still ness lasted no more than a few seconds. The next sound came like thunder—I could feel as well as hear it.
"Behind us, Luke," my mother gasped.
Yes.
"Oh, God!" Her voice shook.
I jumped up to see what was behind us, but my father drove on. All I could see were darkness and a coat of ice halfway up the rear window of the car.
We turned onto another road.
"I've got to keep going, Vic. For Katie's sake."
My mother's head was in her hands.
"If we go back and he isn't injured, we'll walk into a trap. If he's badly hurt, there is not much we can do. The gas station farther up has an outside pay phone. It's closed now—no one will see us. I'll call in the accident."
My mother nodded silently. For a moment I thought she was crying. But she never cried—my father was the emotional one.
"What happened, Daddy? Did somebody get hurt?"
My mother raised her head and brushed back her long yellow hair. "Everything's all right," she said, her voice steady again. "There—there was a herd of deer by the side of the road, and your father was trying to avoid them. You know how they do, Katie, bolting across before you can see them. Some of them crashed into the wood. One went into the little dip next to the road."
"Did the deer get hurt?" I asked.
"I'm not sure," my father answered.
"Of course not," my mother said quickly, giving me the answer I wanted to hear but didn't believe. She unfastened her seat belt and knelt on the seat, facing me, to buckle me into my restraint.
My father drove more slowly now. There was a long silence.
"Victoria," he said at last, "I'm sorry."
She didn't reply.
Sorry for what? I wondered, but I knew they wouldn't tell me.
A chilly loneliness had settled around me, the way a winter fog settles in the ditches along the roads on the Eastern Shore. The silence deepened as we drove north to Canada and, a few days later, flew to England, my mother's birthplace. My mother and father shared a secret—I had known that from the day Ashley died. It was a secret that I was left to discover twelve years later, after both parents had disappeared from my life.
Chapter 2
My dearest Kate.
You are the most wonderful daughter a man could have. You can't possibly know how much I love you. I fear that the last few months of my illness have been very hard on you. and I hesitate to ask any more of your generous heart. Still, I must leave you with two requests.
First, do not forget that your mother loves you as much as I. I know you don't believe me—I see it in your eyes each time I say this—but I was the reason your mother left. It broke her heart to be separated from you. Below is the name and number through which you can contact her. Please do so, Kate.
Right, Dad, I replied silently to his letter, as soon as the, sky falls.
Victoria, as I now refer to my mother, had left Dad and me the day after we arrived in England—left without explanation, simply walked out the door while I was sleeping. I was five years old then and needed her desperately. At seventeen, I did not. I glanced back down at the letter.
Second, in the chimney cupboard. I have left a ring that belongs to Adrian Westbrook of Wisteria, Maryland. I took it the night we left the estate.
Please return it.
I frowned and refolded the letter, as I had done many times in the three months since Dad had died. His second request, and the brilliant sapphire and diamond ring I had found in the cupboard, baffled me. In his career as a painter of animal portraits—horses, dogs, cats, birds, lizards, snakes, leopards—my father had worked for fabulously wealthy people, with access to the homes and estates where these pampered pets lived; as far as I knew, he had never stolen anything. I did not look forward to presenting this piece of missing property to Adrian Westbrook or to seeing a place that I connected so strongly with my mother. But I had to honor at least one of my father's final requests.
I carefully returned the letter to my travel bag and paced the room I had taken at a bed-and-breakfast in Wisteria, Maryland. After airport security, a six-hour transatlantic flight, customs, and a two-hour ride in an airport shuttle to the Eastern Shore town, I longed for a decent cup of tea, but the sooner I got this over with, the better. I headed downstairs to a small room equipped with a guest phone and punched in the number I had found in an Internet directory.
M
y call was answered on the third ring. "Mason's Choice."
For a moment I was confused, then I remembered that that was the name of the estate where Ashley had lived.
"May I speak with Mr. Westbrook, please, Adrian Westbrook."
"Who is calling?" asked a woman with a deep voice.
"Kate Venerelli."
"Excuse me?"
Aware that years of schooling in England had given me an accent more clipped than Americans were accustomed to, I repeated my name slowly.
"I'm sorry. Mr. Westbrook is not available."
"When may I call back?" I asked.
"You may leave a message with me now."
I hesitated. An image of a person I had long forgotten formed in my head: a cap of straight gray hair, a pale stone face, a mouth and forehead carved with disapproval. Mrs. Hopewell. It seemed as if the housekeeper should be 103 by now, but of course, when you are five, anyone older than your parents seems ancient to you. She was probably in her sixties.
"Thank you," I said politely, "but I would like to speak to Mr. Westbrook myself."
Click.
I stared at the phone—she had hung up. Quickly I dialed the number again. "May I speak with Mrs. Westbrook, please?" I knew from Dad's clients that rich old men always had wives, usually young, pretty ones.
"Who is calling?"
"Kate Venerelli." There was no reason to lie—I was certain the housekeeper took note of the number displayed on her phone and realized the same person was calling.
"Mrs. Westbrook is not available," Mrs. Hopewell replied.
"Who is it?" I heard a younger woman ask in the background.
"Someone selling something, a marketing call," the housekeeper said, just before the click sounded again in my ear.
I put down the phone. My reluctance to carry out my father's request had melted in the low heat of Mrs. Hopewell's voice. I strode down the hall, hoping to learn something current about the Westbrook from the owner of the Strawberry B&B.
I found Amelia Sutter in the kitchen, finger-deep in bread dough. She was very glad to talk, but I discovered that conversation with her was harder to steer than a flock of birds. It took twenty minutes of kneading to learn that Adrian had married a young woman named Emily and now had a little boy. Both of Adrian's grown children, Trent Westbrook and Robyn Caulfield, had divorced and never remarried. Of course, there was much more to those stories, details worthy of a racy novel, but those were the only statements made by Mrs. Sutter that I believed to be facts.
As her stories wandered on to other subjects, so did my attention. I tried to think of a reason to show up at the gates of Mason's Choice, some excuse that would get me past Mrs. Hopewell. Until I understood why my father had taken the ring, I wasn't going to reveal it to anyone but Adrian Westbrook. I stared down at a college newspaper lying open on the kitchen table. cars towed, a headline read. That was an idea—I could pretend I had a disabled car and needed help. I continued scanning the page, my eyes stopping at an ad with a familiar phone number—the one I had just called.
Wanted: tutor for 7-year-old child. Duties incl. transportation to school, homework, & some rec time. Excellent job for college student. Room, board; salary dpdt. on experience.
My ticket in! I thought, jumping up so fast, I startled Mrs. Sutter. I didn't actually want the job—I had plans to tour cross county before attending university—but an interview would get me onto the estate, inside the house.
"Oh, there I've gone and offended you." Mrs. Sutter sighed. "I forgot how proper you English folks are."
"I'm American," I said, bluntly enough to prove it, then remembered my manners. "Would you excuse me? There is something I need to do—to do as soon as possible."
I hurried upstairs and grabbed my coat. Certain that the vigilant Mrs. Hopewell wouldn't answer a third call from the same number; I headed out in search of a pay phone.
At 4:20 that afternoon, about ten kilometers outside of town, Mrs. Sutter—Amelia, as she had asked me to call her—pulled up to the iron gates of Mason's Choice.
They swung inward, triggered by an electric eye, an orb less discriminating than Mrs. Hopewell's. My plan had worked. Having used a phone at the local college, a bad French accent (I was afraid my American Southern wouldn't convince a native), and a polite request to speak to Emily Westbrook, I had gotten past the housekeeper.
My job interview was at 4:30, but the gloomy weather of early March made it appear later than that. A chilly fog had settled over the Eastern Shore, turning even the small wood that shielded the estate from Scarborough Road into the forbidding forest of a fairy tale. Massive vines and dripping black branches crowded close to both sides of the private road that led to the house. Amelia sped up, as if eager to get through the wood. A broken branch whisked across the windshield. Past the wood was an open area of lawn, bounded by a long hedge, perhaps three times the height of an adult, with a keyhole cut through where the entrance road passed. As a child I had found this living wall rather menacing; it didn't seem much friendlier now.
Then I remembered and turned my head quickly to the right. "Amelia, could you stop for a moment?"
"Yes, of course, dear. What is it?" she asked.
"A cemetery."
She strained to see. Had I not already known it was there, I wouldn't have noticed it—the wrought-iron fence and weeping angels. It had been foggy like this the week Ashley had fallen through the ice. After her funeral, I had visited her grave with my mother.
I remembered gripping my mother's hand as I watched the wisps of mist slip between the leaning stones. Ashley had claimed that the ghosts in the graveyard whispered to her; even when we weren't together, she said, the spirits watched me and told her what I did.
I shook off the eerie memory. Every day had been exciting with Ashley, but she had also frightened me. That summer, autumn, and winter, she and I had had the entire estate for our playground—gardens, pool, docks, play equipment, an old barn, and deserted outbuildings. She had loved daring me to try the forbidden. Spoiled and hot-tempered, and two years older than I, she had known how to scare me into doing what she wanted.
"Thanks, Amelia," I said, turning back. "We can keep going."
Passing through the hedge, we drove through the formal gardens bordering the long drive. The flowering plants were clipped clean to the ground, and the boxwood was perfectly manicured in patterns that looked as if they had been formed by big biscuit cutters. The house lay straight ahead.
Like many homes built in the American Colonial period, it was brick and impressive in its simplicity. The house rose three stories, the third being a steep roof with five dormer windows across. A wing extended from each side of the main house. Structurally, the wings were smaller versions of the house, turned sideways and attached to it by small brick sections that had roofs with dormers as their second story. There were no outside shutters, which made the house's paned windows seem to stare like unblinking eyes. Its red brick was stained dark with moisture.
Amelia stopped the car and craned her head to see the house. "I've changed my mind. I don't want to live here after all," she said, as if she had been seriously considering it. "If I owned this place, I'd sell it and buy myself three cozier homes."
"I think it has a view of the bay from the other side."
"I'd never see it," she replied. "I'd always be glancing over my shoulder. I didn't realize there was a graveyard here."
"Most old estates have them."
"I'd dig it up."
I laughed. "Then you certainly would have something ghastly standing at your shoulder, looking for a new place to rest," I said as we climbed out of the car.
Fortunately, an older gentleman, an employee I didn't know, answered the door. Mrs. Hopewell might have recognized me, at least, recognized a young "Victoria." During the last year I had cut my hair several times, starting with it wel below my shoulder, shortening it to shoulder-length, chin-length, and finally having it snipped to wisps of gold that barely made it to
the tips of my ears. I told Dad it was "sympathetic hair," for he was bald from the cancer treatments. But actually, it was my resemblance to the woman I remembered from twelve years back, her green eyes and cascade of blond hair, that had motivated me.
Amelia was asked to wait in the library on the left side of the spacious entrance hall, and I was escorted to an office on the right. A few moments later, Emily Westbrook entered. She was a slender woman with strawberry blond hair—probably tinted, for her eyebrows were much redder. She moved quickly, elegantly, as if she had been raised on ballet lessons.
We sat in chairs placed by a large, mahogany desk. While she studied my hastily created resume, I studied the family pictures displayed on the fireplace mantel, curious to see the people whom I knew only through a child's eyes. I spotted Adrian's children, who were close to my parents' age, now early to mid-forties: Robyn in her horse-show gear, and Trent on a sailboat. Emily Westbrook and a baby—perhaps the little boy in need of a tutor—were in a large photo at the center of the mantel. Brook Caulfield, Robyn's son, who I thought was the same age as his cousin Ashley—two years older than l—sulked in a photo taken during those "wonderful" years of early adolescence. We all have those photos—I burned mine. Adrian, handsome, physically fit, looked nearly the same in all of his pictures, except his hair had turned from black to silver-streaked to pure white.
I checked the pictures on the desk and those placed on shelves, disappointed that there were none of Ashley. Perhaps the family had found it too painful to display her photos. It occurred to me that the woman interviewing me might not know who I was or that I had lived here once. If her son was seven, she would have been part of the household for at least eight years, but it was possible that what had occurred four years before that was never talked about.
"So, you were educated in England," she said, looking up.
"Yes, ma'am, and sometimes, because of my father's work, we lived on the Continent, but I was born here and am an American citizen. As you can see from my resume, I completed my A levels and will be applying for university next year. Because I learned through correspondence when we traveled, I was able to finish up a year early," I added as an explanation for my age.