Mansions Of The Dead by Sarah Stewart Taylor Page A

her mind. It had been summer and she had been watching birds along the Cliff Walk and had walked back to the house. She’d been coming back up the path when he’d come running with thedogs—they’d had four goldens then, Rufus and the ones who were dead now, Molly, Sally, and Polly.
    Brad was dead now too! It seemed impossible. She decided that if someone had asked her three days ago how she would react if one of her other children were to die, she would have said that she knew what it was like, that she knew exactly how she would feel. But it was not like that at all. This was different, this was Brad. But of course she had felt that way about Petey too. She felt the tears begin to fall again and she stood there stupidly, looking out over the ocean.
    “Dogs?” she said, choking on a sob. “Come here, Rufus, Ollie, Bella.” Where were they? She felt suddenly that she needed them, needed the weight of them leaning against her knees. She needed to stroke their silky heads.
    She wiped her eyes and looked back up toward the house for them.
    Andrew was standing at the top of the path, the dogs leaping delightedly, happy to see him.
    “Hello,” he called. “I thought I’d find you here.”
    She just stared at him, seeing Brad in his face, and turned away.
    She sobbed quietly while he scrambled down to her. He was wearing perfectly pressed trousers and a new pair of loafers, and he slipped a little on the loose earth of the path.
    When he reached her, he touched her arm and flinched when she turned away. He put his arms out and pleaded with her, “Kitty, please . . . our son.”
    She sobbed once and turned to him, letting him hold her for a minute. When she pulled away, she saw that there were some tourists on the Cliff Walk, looking up at the house. “Let’s go up. I’ll make you a cup of tea or something.”
    “Okay,” he said, taking a deep breath and following her up the path. “This is one of those times I wish I was still drinking, you know?”
    She didn’t smile.
    It was odd having him in the house again, after four years. It was her house—she felt this with an intensity that surprised her sometimes, considering she had only begun spending time in it in her adulthood.In the years of their marriage, the house, in the Putnam family for one hundred years, had grown to be hers, gradually shed its formal wallpaper and carpets and objets d’art and taken on her more relaxed style. But he moved around it assuredly, remembering where everything was, and it made Kitty feel strange and somehow violated, as though the years of freedom had been turned back in the instant he’d entered Cliff House. When the water had boiled, she filled a pot with loose Earl Grey and the hot water, and set it on a tray. She carried everything into the den.
    “How are Camille and Jack and Drew?” he asked. “They said they were coming up last night.”
    She didn’t say anything, just looked over his shoulder and out the window, where the sea was. He let her be silent for a moment. Through the glass, she could just hear the waves.
    “Did they tell you? Did the police tell you? About how he was found?”
    He didn’t say anything for a few minutes. Then he looked at her and nodded. “A bit, the basics. They seemed nervous about telling me too much.”
    “What does it mean, Andrew? What does it mean? It can’t have been . . . They wouldn’t.”
    “I know, I know. No . . . they wouldn’t. Of course not. It must be something else.”
    She stared over his shoulder for a few long moments. “You know how I’ve always hated the way the Putnams sweep in when something goes wrong, how they try to
control
everything?”
    He nodded.
    “Well, I want someone to control this. I have a bad feeling about what may come out of it. I mean we don’t even know if . . . ”
    “I’ll call someone,” he said.
    “But, how . . . ?”
    “Kitty, don’t worry. I’ll call someone.”
    She choked back a sob then and turned away from