"Kathy. Did you take anything?"
"Is something… missing?" Kathy asked.
"No, I didn't mean that. Pills. Did you take anything like that?"
"No." Kathy's hand moved, groping. Pat took it in her own and the girl's slim fingers tightened on hers. "Don't go away. Stay here. Please."
"Of course, if you want me. But you must tell me-"
"Thank you…" The words trailed off in a long sigh. Kathy slept again.
Still holding the girl's hand, Pat caught Friedrichs' eye.
"Is she-"
"She's sound asleep," Pat said. "It looks like normal sleep. Mr. Friedrichs, it's up to you. I'm not going to advise you, but-"
"If she were yours?"
"I'd let her sleep it off, and see how she is in the morning."
Friedrichs nodded. He looked like a man who had just finished running twenty miles.
"I have no right to ask this, but-could you stay?"
"I have no intention of leaving. Didn't you hear me promise?"
"I heard you. But I didn't expect…" He sat down quite suddenly, not as if he had intended to do so, but as if his knees had given way and there just happened to be a chair behind him. Pat freed her hand from Kathy's grasp and started toward him, but Friedrichs shook his head. "I'm all right. Why don't you lie down on that chaise longue, where she-she can see you if she wakes. Would you like some coffee?"
"Yes, thanks. And have some yourself-with plenty of sugar."
"I'm all right," Friedrichs repeated. "I'll get the coffee. Is there anything else you would like?"
The meticulous formality of the speech sounded so incongruous that Pat smiled unwillingly.
"Yes, as a matter of fact. I'd like to leave a note for Mark, in case he wakes and wonders what has become of me. Perhaps you could take it next door."
"Certainly. There is paper here-" He indicated Kathy's desk, which was piled with books and other student impedimenta. Pat took a pen and a sheet of notebook paper and scribbled a brief message. She handed it to Friedrichs without folding it.
"You'll see that I didn't mention names, only that someone was ill and I was needed. Please stick it on the refrigerator door with one of the little magnets."
The lawyer's eyes flashed briefly, as if he appreciated the implied permission to read the note. He did not do so, only took the key Pat gave him and left the room, after a final glance at the sleeping girl.
Pat took off her coat and hung it over the back of a chair. Her purse was still in the car. She should have asked Friedrichs to get it, but it didn't seem important. Her house keys were in her coat pocket, and she made it a rule never to carry much cash when she was out late at night.
She went back to the bed. Kathy had turned on her side, her cheek pillowed on her hand. Pat brushed strands of silky hair away from the girl's forehead; Kathy's lips quivered as if she were about to smile. She sighed deeply.
Pat had no intention of lying down on the chaise longue or anywhere else. She had done a foolish thing-a damned fool thing, Jerry would have said-in advising Friedrichs not to call a doctor. Oh, she hadn't actually said it, in so many words, but she had implied as much, and the responsibility weighed heavily on her mind. She would watch the girl's every breath until she woke; at the slightest sign of trouble she would call the rescue squad. In the meantime…
Her lips set in an expression, if she had but known it, very much like Friedrichs' when he searched his daughter's possessions, Pat pulled out the top desk drawer and sifted through its contents. Friedrichs had seemed to search thoroughly, but perhaps he had missed something-something he really didn't want to find.
As she went through the room, finding nothing except a little dust and the more or less blameless records of a young girl's school and social life, she was thinking, not about Kathy, but about Kathy's father.
She had been prejudiced against Friedrichs from the start, and therefore ready to think the worst of him. Still, that didn't mean that her assessment had been wrong, or that his performance that night had been genuine. She had seen people lie just as convincingly-girls with eyes as big and blue as Kathy's solemnly swearing they had never heard of heroin, though their arms showed the damning marks of injections; cultured men in expensive clothes denying indignantly that they had ever laid a hand on their wives, while the women nursed black eyes and broken bones and flinched at the very sight of their husbands. Yes, Friedrichs could be lying. So why was she now as prejudiced in his favor as she had formerly been biased against him?
That was easy. She was sympathetic because, if his story was true, she knew how he must be feeling. In a perfect agony of terror and doubt, that was how-just as she would feel if this had happened to Mark. To have the one you loved best in all the world turn on you, striking out with hate, rejecting the help you wanted to give… And the fear-the wild, terrible theories. Drugs? Brain tumor? Paranoia, mental illness? The fear of losing the only one you had left.
Her hands were shaking so badly she decided to abandon the search. She had dropped one delicate little china figurine; it would have broken if it hadn't fallen on the rug. She had searched every place she could think of and found absolutely nothing incriminating, except a paper-back copy of The Joys of Super Sex under Kathy's mattress. Pat smiled weakly as she returned it to its place. Nothing abnormal about that.
It began to appear as if Friedrichs were right. The kids weren't that smart or that careful. They usually left some evidence lying around. So if it wasn't drugs, what on earth…?
When Friedrichs returned she had settled into a comfortable overstuffed chair, her hands folded in her lap. He was carrying a tray-and her abandoned purse.
"I hope you don't mind," he said, handing it to her, "but I took the liberty of putting your car in your drive-way. You had left the keys in the ignition, and I thought-"
"You were quite right," Pat said, with a smile. "I didn't even park it; I just stopped in the middle of the street. Thank you."
Friedrichs acknowledged her thanks with a grave incli nation of his head, and offered her coffee. Pat took it, marveling at the man's strength of will. He had been on the verge of collapse when she burst in; now he had acquired enough self-control to collect her belongings and restore them to their proper places. And the way he had retreated, instantly, when she took over with Kathy- offering to lock himself in the library… Was that consciousness of guilt, or evidence of a mind that was both rigorously logical and intuitively sensitive to other peoples' feelings?
"She's sleeping," Pat said, as Friedrichs turned toward the bed. "I'll watch her, don't worry. The rescue squad can be here in five minutes, if… You don't have to stay."
Friedrichs' lips twisted. He sat down at the desk. "Do you suppose I could sleep? I don't expect you to believe me, Mrs. Robbins, but I told you precisely what happened. I almost wish what you suspect were true. It would provide an explanation." His eyes went to his daughter, lingered, and then moved around the room as if he were really seeing it for the first time that night. "You didn't have to clean up in here. Merely staying is kindness enough."
"I just put a few things back in their places," Pat said. "books and ornaments-not much. She must have knocked them down when she ran."
"Would it be out of place for me to suggest that fact substantiates my story? Or do you suppose I came in here to attack her?"
With an effort, Pat forced her eyes away from his tormented face. At least he had had enough experience to know that things like that did happen, that horrified outrage was no defense. His hands were gripping the arms of the chair so hard the knuckles showed like naked bone. They were big, hard hands, and the arms bared by his rolled-up shirt sleeves were the arms of an athlete. He must play tennis or handball, she thought to herself. If he had attacked the girl in her bed she would have had a poor chance of getting away from him.