Possessions by Judith Michael

sweetly. “You must have known what kind of person he was.”
    â€œIs he dead?” asked Tobias. “I didn’t know we’d decided that.”
    â€œNo—!” Katherine burst out.
    â€œIt’s hard to know,” mused Derek. “With Craig.”
    â€œIt is hardly a decision we can make,” Victoria said. All through dinner she had been intent on the conversation, her eyes following the rest of them. The only time she spoke out, Katherine realized, was to stop an outburst that might have revealed something about Craig. “Port and cognac in the living room,” Victoria added, and stood up.
    Not everyone had finished coffee and dessert. Katherine understood that she was hurrying them through dinner. Because she wants me gone.
    It was simple; it was obvious. Why had it taken her so long to see it? Ross had asked Victoria to give a dinner and she had done it, but not because she wanted to. None of them wantedthis dinner; none of them wanted Katherine to be there. None of them wanted to talk about Craig.
    Or maybe they did, but they could not confront the evidence that he had been alive all these years. And since they could hardly evade it with Katherine there, she was an interloper. And so is Craig, she thought. Even though he’s not here.
    What did he do, that his family can’t rejoice that he’s alive?
    As clearly as if he sat beside her, she heard Craig say, Most families are rotten. He had said it often, when they were first married, adding that theirs would be different. Now he seemed so close she thought she could touch him. Rotten, his voice repeated.
    â€œPlease,” Katherine said loudly as the others pushed back their chairs. “Please wait.” They looked at her.
    â€œIn the living room,” Victoria ordered.
    â€œNo, please,” Katherine insisted; as long as they were together at the table, she might get them to listen to her. “I don’t understand you. I have so many questions about Craig’s life before I knew him, and I thought you would want to know about his life the past fifteen years. I thought we could share what we know because he never put his two lives together; he kept them separate—”
    â€œThat’s all you want?” Claude asked. “Knowing what you do about the Hayward family and the company—”
    â€œI don’t know anything about them! Don’t you understand? I don’t know the man I married; I barely know his family; I don’t know what to believe—I don’t even know if I understand myself. Don’t you see?” No one answered. “Well, then, there is something else. I thought you’d be so happy to know Craig is alive you’d do all you could to find him. You have so much wealth and power”—she ignored the triumphant look Melanie gave Ross—“I thought you might hire investigators, put advertisements in newspapers, call people you know in other cities where he might have gone . . . I thought you’d help me look for him. And I thought perhaps the reason he vanished before might be connected with why he’s gone now, and if we knew that we might find him together much faster than I could alone.”
    No one spoke. They looked out the window or at Katherine or at the white orchid reflected in the dark mahogany table. Laughter from the library reached them faintly, but the dining room was silent.
    Katherine stood up. She felt light-headed and dizzy, but, strangely, almost excited. She had to handle it alone, without Craig’s help. And if they became angry and turned their backs on her—she would handle that alone, too.
    â€œAnd I did think you might help us with a loan, just until Craig gets back, because we don’t have much money and I don’t know what we’re going to do. But I wanted a loan, not a gift, and one of the things I wanted to do with it was hire detectives to look for him. Because we have to