Beyond Midnight (30 page)

Picking up on the key words, Katie whispered,
"
Me, too.
"

But then she heard her father
'
s voice in the hall, low and friendly and laughing. Something in the sound of it made her face light up.
"
Mommy
'
s back!
"
she cried, and scrambled to her feet.

She hears intimacy,
Peaches thought calmly.

She intercepted the child, then decided to let her run. Katie shot off toward the hall, with Peaches moving swiftly behind her. She was in time to see Katie come to a screeching halt in front of her father and Helen Evett, who was dressed in an amazingly ordinary dress of yellow challis patterned with blue cornflowers.

Clearly baffled, Katie whirled around to Peaches, then back to her father. Peaches thought she
'
d want to know where her mommy was, but the child surprised her by not saying anything at all. Instead, she seemed to be studying Helen Evett.

Helen stooped down to Katie
'
s level; her off-white linen jacket skimmed the antique Persian that carpeted the entry hail. She wore pale stockings and bone shoes, probably Brazilian, certainly not Italian. Peaches was interested, as before, to see that she still wore her wedding band and a small solitaire engagement ring. Her black hair was pulled away from her face and pinned in back; the rest fell straight and loose on her shoulders.

Plain, plain, plain, despite her good color,
thought Peaches.
She can
'
t possibly have his attention.

She certainly had Katie
'
s. The child
'
s hands shot up to the bow in her hair—a band of pink roses on white—as she said,
"
I
'
m all dressed up for my tea party.
"

"
And you look very pretty,
"
said Helen. Her smile took in Peaches, who returned it, but it dwelled on Katie.
"
Did you pick your clothes out yourself?
"

"
Uh-huh. How did you know that?
"
asked Katie, wondering.

Because that
'
s what three-year-olds do,
thought Peaches, suppressing her irritation behind an amused and loving grin.

"
Well, when my daughter was as old as you, she always wanted to pick her own clothes out.
"

"
And I can even dress myself,
"
Katie said. She looked up at Peaches.
"
I can,
"
she insisted. It didn
'
t happen very often; her nanny discouraged such acts of independence.

"
You can do lots of things,
"
Peaches said as she straightened the bow in the child
'
s hair.

Nat had his hands in his khaki pockets, as if he were strolling among guests at a garden party. Nat being Nat, he should
'
ve felt harried and out of place; but he was clearly interested in the way Katie and the preschool director were relating.

More than that: He was interested in the preschool director herself. Peaches watched as his gaze moved from the top of her head to the hem of her dress, which lay on the carpet in a puddle of cornflowers. He came back to Helen Evett
'
s face, and suddenly Peaches saw what he saw: high cheekbones kissed with natural color, green-gray eyes rimmed in thick lashes, full lips barely touched by lipstick.

She didn
'
t like what he saw.

He seemed to have to shake himself loose from his rev
erie.
"
Katie and I were just about to have tea,
"
he said with a fond glance at his daughter.

"
Uh-huh,
"
said Katie, nodding her head.
"
And you could come, too. Okay?
"

Nothing in Peaches
'
s carefully planned campaign had prepared her for the child
'
s about-face. Tea with Helen Evett! The little brat had forgotten everything. And then the morning—wasted. Because of that stupid, damned drunk of a cook.

"
Well, thank you,
"
the Evett woman said to Katie.
"
I
'
d be very happy to have tea with you.
"

"
But we don
'
t know where to have it,
"
Katie said with a fretful sigh.
"
Daddy says it
'
s too wet outside. And that silly
owl
is in the tree. What if it could eat up all our cookies?
"

Peaches noted that some of the color drained from Helen Eve
t
t
'
s face. Interesting: Suddenly she wasn
'
t quite so pretty. The nanny smiled; a little makeu
p would've prevented all that.

****

"
An owl?
"

Helen
'
s heart took a dive at the mention of the word. She hadn
'
t thought about the owl since the day Linda Byrne died; but the owl and the death were entwined in her memory, and the memory was disturbing.

"
Uh-huh. It lives in our tree. And it eats all the mouses.
"

"
My goodness!
"
Helen said to cover the faintness she felt.
"
And does it say
'
who, who
'
?
"

Katie shook her head.
"
But sometimes it sneezes.
"

Nat smiled and said,
"
Our neighbors have a potting shed filled with sacks of birdseed. The shed
'
s not tight; every mouse in the county has figured it out. In the meantime the owl
'
s figured out about the mice.
"

"
I thought owls hunted at night,
"
Peaches remarked.

Nat shrugged.
"
Not this one. Well, w
here do we set the table, Katie-
kins? Music room or your room?
"

Katie clasped her hands together and lifted them over her head.
"
Mine!
"
she said, reaching a decision at last.

"
Yours it is, then,
"
her father said solemnly, extending his hand to her.

Katie and her father led the way; Helen fell in behind with Peaches. The nanny, who
'
d taken Helen
'
s purse and jacket, was going on in a pleasant way about a Monet painting that hung in a lighted alcove at the foot of the grand staircase, but Helen wasn
'
t hearing much of what she said. Her attention was focused on two things: father and daughter.

Her emotions, already wound tight before she got there, had corkscrewed still further when Nat had answered the door instead of Peaches. Had he any reason to do it besides laughing off the grease fire earlier? Or was Helen looking for meaning where there was none? He
'
d greeted her warmly; but then that was his way.

And the owl. What was that all about? Was it the association with Linda Byrne
'
s death that had set Helen
'
s heart thundering? And yet Katie didn
'
t seem to be afraid of either the owl or Helen right now. So maybe none of it meant anything.

Helen tried to erase her mind of preconceptions and simply enjoy the moment. By now she
'
d given up trying to fight the deep, deep sense of attraction she was feeling for Nat. Appropriate, inappropriate—it really didn
'
t matter. She could hide it, but she couldn
'
t deny it.

In the meantime, Katie had taken it upon herself to explain the floor plan.
"
And this is Peaches
'
s room and that
'
s my room and over there is Daddy
'
s room. It
'
s all different now,
"
she added.

For one brief second Helen saw a kind of haziness appear in the child
'
s face, as if she were losing focus. Then she snapped out of it with the same kind of determination that
an elderly
woman uses when she speaks of offspring that have passed on before her.

It was a remarkable feat for a three-year-old.
It's because she's so excited to have someone new to play with. But we're not enough; she needs playmates her own age.
The sooner Katie began at the preschool, the better.

They all filed into the nursery, which Nat explained had been converted from the master bedroom, and Katie conducted a personal tour for Helen
'
s benefit.

"
These are my clothes,
"
she said, dragging Helen over to the first door, which led to a dressing room walled on one side with painted white bureaus and lined on the opposite side with enough racks of clothing to s
tock a fair-
sized
Baby
Gap store.

"
And this is my bafroom,
"
Katie said, rushing off to the second door. The walls of that room were charmingly hand-painted with images of Snow White, her seven pals, and—not surprisingly—no witch. A red step stool with the name
"
Katherine
"
in blue letters on it was pulled up to a porcelain basin imprinted with trumpet vines and hummingbirds. A slew of toothbrushes in every known color and cartoon character jammed a bright plastic holder alongside. The towels, red and yellow and blue, were all embroidered with the name
"
Katie.
"

Who had bathrooms like that besides royalty?

A third door led to a small library—
"
small,
"
as compared to, say, the New York Library. Helen couldn
'
t believe it. There were hundreds, perhaps thousands, of books, many of them out-of-print collector
'
s items, lining three walls of shelves. Arranged on top of the low wrap-around bookcases was a staggering collection of stuffed animals, all of them with hopeful expressions on their faces.
Take me, hold me, love me,
they begged.

One little girl. All those toys. It couldn
'
t be done.

"
I will set the table now,
"
said Katie, finished with the tour.
"
You can wait right here. Okay?
"
She turned to her nanny and said in a stage whisper,
"
Peaches, you help me,
"
and hauled her by the hand into the nursery proper.

That left Nat and Helen surrounded by a hundred pairs of prying stuffed-animal eyes.

"
Well! This is really
...
something,
"
said Helen, not having any idea what to say about the almost mindless ostentation. There was something not right about it. The place looked like a toy warehouse.

She couldn
'
t keep herself from murmuring,
"
You spoil her.
"

"
I can afford to,
"
Nat said without taking offense.

"
You can
'
t afford to. That
'
s just it.
"
God, she was lecturing. She didn
'
t want to lecture. She tweaked the ear of a four-foot stuffed panda that filled a tufted spoonback chair and said,
"
Polly Panda, I presume?
"

"
You
'
ve met?
"
he asked, smiling.

Helen remembered too late that the toy was somehow tied in with an angry outburst by Linda Byrne.
"
Katie did mention her.
"