“Stop it,” Amanda demanded, her beautiful face made hard and almost ugly with anger. “You are making too big of a thing out of this. Jamie Long signed a contract promising never to tell anyone about anything. She would have to give the money back if she ever told.”

“Amanda, that girl could get twice as much from some tabloid for telling them that she is the biological mother of your baby.”

“Then we would have to sue her and the tabloid for libel.”

“And then there would be a trial with the whole world watching. The judge would order DNA tests on you and the baby and Jamie Long and Toby. Those tests would not only prove that Jamie Long is the biological mother of the child, but they would also show that the child is related to you, which offers only two possibilities as to its father-me or Sonny-which would certainly give rise to all sorts of unseemly speculation. That girl signed a contract with a legally married husband and wife, Amanda. She did not sign a contract with a woman and her dying son. Your actions have made that contract null and void. She could sue you not only for breech of contract but for the money she needs to raise the child.”

“You don’t know that any of that is going to happen,” Amanda insisted. “Jamie is a dear girl, and she loves me. We have prayed together. It would never occur to her to cause trouble.”

“You may be exactly right,” Gus said in his most reasonable tone. “But how will she feel if she learns that you have lied to her? That the high and holy Amanda Hartmann has knowingly entered into a fraudulent contract?”

“Well, then, let’s make a new contract and give her some more money to sign it.”

“And what will you do if she says no?”

“The girl loves me,” Amanda said emphatically, her chin set, her eyes wide. “She is not going to say no.”

“You don’t know that, Amanda. When she signed on for this gig, the idea of a baby was just an abstraction to her. It was just a way to make a lot of money. Now there’s a living child moving around inside of her and all these maternal hormones racing around her body. If it had just been Toby’s kid, it wouldn’t have been such a big deal if the girl decided to renege on the deal. But now the equation is different. It is not Toby’s child. It’s Sonny’s.”

“So, what are you saying, Gus?” Amanda asked, her eyes narrowing.

Gus paused a few seconds before answering. “That you don’t need to worry about anything,” he said, patting her hand. “I’ll see that nothing goes wrong. You will have your baby.”

“Thank you,” she said and kissed him once again, then held out her empty glass for a refill.

When Jamie crept back up to the tower, the candles had been extinguished in Sonny’s room, the light over his bed dimmed.

Mary Millicent’s room was dark. Jamie waited for her eyes to adjust then tiptoed over to the bed. “Are you asleep?” she asked.

“Not unless I’m dreaming.”

“I thought you might like to sing some Christmas carols,” Jamie said, switching on the bedside lamp. “I came earlier but your children were here. Did you have a nice evening with them?”

“Of course not. My children have ruined my life.”

“That’s a terrible thing to say about your own son and daughter,” Jamie said.

“I say terrible things about them because they are terrible people, and don’t you forget it, girl.”

Mary Millicent grabbed hold of Jamie’s arm. “Help me sit up,” she demanded, and Jamie obliged, propping up pillows behind the old woman’s frail body.

“Terrible people,” Mary Millicent repeated. “And if you don’t do exactly what they say, they’ll lock you up in a tower, too. Or they will have you killed, like they did with Sonny’s father. Amanda went crying to Gus that Sonny’s father wouldn’t let her have Sonny all the time and wouldn’t let her change his name to Hartmann, and then someone shot the man in the head,” Mary Millicent said, making an imaginary pistol with her hand and pointing it to her temple. “I wonder how long it will be until Amanda gets tired of her new husband and asks her brother to get rid of him. And don’t you look at me like that, young lady,” she said, shaking a finger at Jamie. “I may be as old as dirt and have a few screws loose, but I know what I know. Maybe it’s my fault Amanda and Gus turned out the way they did. I raised them like they were God’s anointed, like they could do no wrong. And now God is punishing me. But you know what? I wish that God would just strike us all dead. Me, Amanda, Gus, and Sonny, too, and put an end to all things Hartmann. God should just open up the earth and let this whole damned ranch and everyone who lives here drop right down into hell. Except for Sonny, of course. Sonny should go to heaven. Just Sonny. Yes, I’m going to pray for God to do that-to drop all of us except Sonny into hell, so if I were you I would be hightailing it out of here. And when that baby of yours is born, don’t you ever tell him how he came to be. Don’t tell him that his father was a dead boy being kept alive past his time. You just tell him his daddy was killed in a car wreck or in some war.”

Jamie took a step backward.

“Hey, where are you going, girl?” Mary Millicent demanded. “I’m not through talking yet. And I want to sing Christmas carols.”

She grabbed a plastic water pitcher and threw it at Jamie. “You come back here, girl. You come back here right this minute or I’ll tell the witch and Amanda that you’ve been coming up here to see me. I’ll tell them to kill your dog.”

Jamie latched the door to her apartment behind her and pulled the sofa in front of the door. And put the coffee table on top of the sofa.

Angrily she wiped her cheeks. No tears, she told herself. She had gotten herself into this mess. She had to see it through to the end or…

Or what?

She knelt and petted her dog, who was confused by her late-night activity. He became more confused as she began to pace. He sat there watching her go back and forth, like a spectator at a tennis match, occasionally offering a whimper to express his disapproval.

She needed to think.

Or maybe not so much to think as to organize all the disparate thoughts that were tumbling around in her brain. To sort things out. To work through her confusion.

Not that she believed everything that Mary Millicent said. After all, the woman was afflicted with senile dementia. Or Alzheimer’s. Paranoia. Or maybe she was just plain nuts.

But not all the time. Sometimes Mary Millicent seemed perfectly lucid. Which didn’t necessarily mean that she was telling the truth.

Was Sonny Hartmann really the father of the baby inside of her, she agonized. And was Gus Hartmann some sort of underworld figure who could arrange for people to be murdered?

Long after Amanda had excused herself and gone upstairs to bed, Gus sat staring at the glowing embers, sipping sherry and making plans. Just to be on the safe side, he’d have Montgomery destroy the girl’s copy of the contract. He didn’t want her showing it to anyone or it falling into the wrong hands.

After the baby was born, the girl would be followed when she drove away from the ranch in her grandmother’s car.

No one would ever know what happened to her. She would simply vanish from the earth. Probably no one would even file a missing person’s report.

When Freda said it was time, Gus followed his sister up the wooden stairs, this time for the deathwatch. It was dark outside, and the candles had been lit once again. Montgomery was already there with Freda. Kelly joined them for a while then walked over to Sonny’s bed and offered a military salute. When she turned to leave, her face was covered with tears.

One of the gardeners-a burly man named Enrique-brought Mary Millicent’s wheelchair down the stairs to Sonny’s room and then carried Mary Millicent herself, which made Gus feel acutely inadequate. With his stubby legs, it was all he could do to get himself up and down the steep stairs.