CHAPTER SEVEN

I read three chapters of Huckleberry Finn. By the time I finish, the day has warmed considerably, and the near-constant cloud cover has parted to reveal a glimpse of sun. Samuel is still recovering, but I am of the old-fashioned opinion that there is no better remedy to a cold than fresh air and sunshine.

I close the book and say, "Children, I believe we should take a walk before lunch. I am eager to see the grounds under a blue sky and not a gray one. Perhaps Elijah will treat us to a foray into the deep grounds and show us where he goes when he meditates."

Elijah shuffles his feet. "Actually… I was hoping to talk to you. Alone."

I frown. "Is everything all right?'

"Fine. Just…" he glances at Samuel.

Isabella catches the look and says, "I can take Samuel out. You haven't had much time to talk to Elijah. We'll be back in a couple of hours for lunch."

"Aww, but I want to go to the deep grounds!" Samuel protests. "You never take me there!"

"Next time, buddy," Elijah promises.

Samuel mopes for a moment, but no boy can resist the allure of a sunlit day for long. He soon overcomes his disappointment and allows his sister to lead him—bundled in a thick woolen coat with scarf and gloves—outside.

Elijah watches them leave with an almost parental love in his eyes. "He'll come back sweating like a dog wearing all that."

"Sweating is good when one is ill. He can take a bath after lunch and change into fresh clothing. Besides, the snow is already several weeks late. It could arrive any day, and who knows when we'll see clear weather again?"

"When the sun comes back."

I give him a wry smile. "Keen observation, Mr. Ashford."

He chuckles. "That's just what Dad always used to say when I was stuck inside during the rain. I'd ask him what made the rains come, and he'd say, ‘The clouds got here.' Then I'd ask when the clouds would leave, and he'd say, ‘When the sun comes back.'"

"No doubt that frustrated you to no end."

He shrugs. "Yes and no. I mean, I wanted to play outside, but it kind of helped me learn to accept it, you know? Some days will be cloudy, and some days will be sunny. Maybe it's silly, but I liked it."

His smile fades, and I risk approaching the topic of his grief. "You must miss your father very much."

He chuckles, a little bitterly. "Keen observation, Miss Wilcox."

My heart sinks a little, but it's not about my feelings. I'm here to help him, not prove that I'm some brilliant counselor. "You said you wanted to talk to me?"

His expression darkens. "Yes. I have something to show you."

He stands and leaves the family room, striding purposefully. He's nearly as tall as his father's six-foot-one, and I have to hurry to keep up with him. I think of asking him to slow down so I can walk rather than trot, but I sense that he's moving quickly to avoid losing his courage, and I don't want to get in the way of that.

He doesn't slow as he ascends the stairs, and I am nearly out of breath when we reach the third floor. I'll have to take more time for exercise.

He leads me to his room, and when he finally stops, I have to catch my breath a moment before I speak. While I do, he opens his closet and retrieves a small item from the top shelf of his closet.

"What's that?"

"It's a flash drive," he says. He plugs it into his laptop and starts the computer. "This is what I want to show you."

It takes about a minute and a half for the computer to boot up and Elijah to log in and open the first file on the flash drive. My eyes widen when I hear Doctor Harrow's voice.

"And you're sure you're not overexaggerating the risk?"

"How could I be? You heard the voicemail. You tell me that means something other than what I think it does."

The voice that answers is a baritone, deeper by far than Elijah's. But its inflections are the same, and there's a slight broadening of the vowels that indicate the New England ancestry of its owner.

Those qualities are a perfect match for Elijah's own speech. Am I listening to the voice of Johnathan Ashford? I glance at Elijah, and he confirms it. He pauses the tape and says, "This is my father's therapy session tape from a month before his death."

I redden. "Oh, I can't listen to this."

"You want to know how he died, right?"

I hesitate. It's absurdly inappropriate of me to involve the children in this. I'm to care for them, and that means helping them find closure for their father's death, not fueling rumors that may not have any foundation in truth.

Then again, Isabella shows me that note from her father's desk, and now I'm listening to the man himself confirm his fear of Elena's intentions.

I meet Elijah's eyes, and the boy's expression tells me that he shares my suspicion and has held that suspicion for far longer than I have. I'm not sparing him anything by pretending I don't want what he already knows I do.

"Yes."

"Then listen."

He presses play and Doctor Harrow says, "Those could simply be the vented frustrations of a business rival."

"We're not supposed to be rivals," Johnathan replies. "We're supposed to be partners."

"Why not fire her?"

A pause. "It's not that simple. Removing one of the partners requires a board vote. She has a lot of the board on her side."

"You don't think you'd succeed?"

"I think I would succeed," Johnathan counters, "and I wonder if that's more dangerous."

"I don't follow."

"She has friends in high places. Friends in high places have friends in low places."

This time, Doctor Harrow pauses. "That's a little like the pot calling the kettle black, Johnathan. Wouldn't you agree?"

Johnathan pauses for a much longer time. "Yes. It is."

"Speaking of that, have you spoken to Simon about reducing your dependence on opiates?"

I stiffen and look at Elijah in shock. The boy smiles ruefully. "Ol' Dad and his demons."

After a moment of silence on the tape, Doctor Harrow says reprovingly. "You haven't."

"I'm going to," Johnathan replies defensively, "but I can't risk another enemy right now."

"Is he that dependent on your business?"

"He's… I just… the thing is, if I stop buying from him, he's going to try to pressure me. He knows things about me that could ruin things with Cecilia and the kids. I'm already in hot water with her, I don't need to be in hotter water."

"But you know things about him, don't you?"

"What are you saying?"

"I'm saying that perhaps it would be prudent to expose Simon's activities to the proper authorities in exchange for immunity from legal repercussions to yourself for partaking of his extralegal products."

I stiffen again. It is horridly improper of a psychologist to offer a patient legal advice. Then again, if Johnathan felt his life was in danger, he should have gone to the police. I relax a little.

"So, blackmail him?"

"Convince him that it's in his best interests to leave you alone."

"You don't understand. People like him don't leave people alone. People like Elena don't leave people alone. When they want something from you, they take it, and if they can't take it, they keep fighting for it until they can. They won't stop, and if they have to get someone out of the way, they'll do it."

"Johnathan, do you really feel that your life is in danger?"

"Yes, I do."

A chill runs through me. I have suspected foul play in his murder but hearing that he worried of the same thing only weeks before his death is still shocking.

"Hell, I can't even trust the staff," Johnathan continues. "You know Theresa's been stealing from us for years?"

"No, I wasn't aware."

"Well, she has. I found a nice little stash of jewelry and dresses in a storage closet in the North Wing. Probably half a million dollars' worth."

"Oh my."

"Oh my is right. That's enough for her to retire on."

"Have you confronted her?"

"Are you kidding? Hell no."

"But Johnathan, that is your house. That is, I assume, your wife's property."

"The jewelry is. The dresses are all custom made. Not sure what she uses them for since I've never seen her leave the house, and she definitely isn't wearing that stuff in front of us."

"So why not tell her? Or at least tell your wife?"

He laughs. "Cecilia barely talks to me anymore. There are days when I wonder if she even still loves me."

I reach forward and stop the tape. "There's no need for me to listen to any more of this," I say. "Or for you. Your father loved you very much, and your mother still does."

"Mom loves herself," Elijah counters, "but that's about all that's useful, anyway."

He ejects the flash drive and returns it to the closet. "You know what Dad's official cause of death was?"

"A heart attack, I believe."

"And a stroke. Officially, they called it a massive ischemic event. Basically, his blood pressure skyrocketed, and a bunch of arteries exploded at the same time."

"My word."

"Yep. They ruled it natural causes, but I don't think it was."

"What could have caused that, though? I mean, without being detected."

I don't mean to think out loud in front of Elijah, but this tape is the most sobering evidence yet that there was foul play in Johnathan's death, and since I'm asking nothing that Elijah hasn't already asked, I'm not sparing his feelings. After all, it was he who wished to talk to me. It's a thin excuse, I suppose, to use Isabella and Elijah's overtures as a reason to involve myself in an investigation that I'm very much not qualified for, but if Johnathan was murdered, and no one else is looking into this, then don't they deserve to have someone on their side? On their father's side?

"No idea," Elijah said. "Part of me hopes nothing. I'd rather the people who wanted him dead just got lucky, and Dad kicked the bucket without them needing to do it for him. But I don't know."

"Have you told anyone else about this? Your mother?"

He chuckles. Then he says again. "Mom loves herself. I don't think she misses Dad nearly as much as she likes to pretend she does."

"But surely she—"

I cut myself off, but it's too late. Elijah looks at me, his eyes filled with more weight than any child should have to carry.

"I don't know."

We stand in silence for a long moment. My thoughts spin.

Johnathan Ashford feared death on all sides. His business partner, his maidservant, and his drug dealer. My interaction with Doctor Harrow, brief though it was, makes me suspect that his intentions are far from pure, and his behavior on this tape only deepens my concerns.

And Elijah has confessed to suspecting his own mother.

Could Cecilia have been involved in her own husband's death?

"We should probably head downstairs," Elijah said. "I'll go catch up with Isabella and Samuel. Paolo's probably on his way into town to get supplies for dinner, so you'll have to put something together for lunch. You can make whatever you want. Isabella will complain about anything short of chocolate cake, and Samuel will eat anything you put in front of him, so it doesn't really matter."

"What would you like?"

He gives me a tight smile. "What I would like is to find out what really happened to my father."

I don't know if it's wise of me to respond the way I do. In fact, I'm pretty sure it's unwise.

Even so, I feel firmly convinced that it's the right thing to do, even if it's not wise. I put a hand on his shoulder and say, "We will. I promise you."

His smile morphs into one of gratitude rather than anger. I feel a leap of joy, but with it comes a touch of misgiving. It's one thing to agree to investigate Johnathan's death. It's quite another to involve a child in that investigation. What kind of danger am I exposing him to?

Then again, Elijah was already looking into his father's death. It's too late to shelter him.

Once more, I feel a sense of inevitability. It's as though by its forbidding nature the house was trying to warn me to stay away, but now that I'm here, I have no choice but to become entangled with the mystery that consumes this family.

For better or worse, I am a part of this now.