“Agatha is right there,” I said. “Literally on the other side of the wall.”

He sighed.

“Would you want her making out with someone five feet away from you?”

He made a face, and I knew I’d successfully killed the mood. “Okay,” he said. “Fine. How about the walk?”

“I can’t leave Agatha,” I said. “Your mom went grocery shopping, and I said I’d stay with her.” Was that how it had happened, or had Laura told me I should stay with her? I swatted the question out of my mind. What difference did it make?

“Well, Aggie can come, too.” He opened my door and walked over to the chair where his expressionless sister sat looking out the window. “Want to go for a walk, Aggie? Huh?”

“Hey,” I said, sharper than I intended. A flare of protectiveness had ignited inside me. “She’s not a dog, either.”

“I didn’t mean it that way.” Barrett looked crestfallen. “I’m sorry, Agatha. Do you want to get outside for a bit?”

She didn’t reply.

“Is she mad?” he asked me.

“No,” I said.

“Are you sure?”

“Are you mad, Ags?” I asked, and she ignored me. “See? She’s not mad. But it’s okay, really,” I said to Barrett. “I’ll stay in with her. Even if she wanted to come, she couldn’t keep up.”

“Wait,” Barrett said. “I have an idea.”

JOHN HAD BROKEN a femur ten years earlier on a ski trip and had to spend four weeks in a wheelchair, which had since been stored in a random closet. (Whatever a “double black diamond” was, I never needed to go near one, since it apparently led to your bones cracking like mishandled candy canes.)

I was afraid Agatha would balk, but when Barrett wheeled the chair over to where we waited on the front steps, she sat down as cooperatively as if it had been her favorite chair by the window. Then she waited patiently while I applied sunscreen to her face.

Despite his protesting that we would be back at the house well before Laura returned, I made Barrett leave a note in the morning room. And then we were off.

I felt a strange tremor in my body as we followed a brick-lined path across the front lawn, the feeling a bird might get if its cage door was left open. At some point, I had adjusted to the pace of life at Copeland Hall. The security of the house and its established, ancient-feeling routines were oddly comforting.

We weren’t going to the outside world, I reminded myself. We were staying on the property. So I walked alongside Barrett and tried to enjoy the fresh air.