The Boy Who Could Draw Tomorrow by Quinn Sinclair Page A

to the bottom of all this, she'd know it. The thought filled her with disgust but she was even beginning to wonder if Hal had somehow bribed Sam's way into St. Martin's—although God only knew where he could have gotten the money. But then where was the money for any of their new lifestyle coming from?
    "You're tense, Pegs," he was saying. "You're making a mountain out of a molehill. I'm telling you, Sam's fine. He'll adjust. Just give it a little time." She heard him chuckle to himself as if privately amused. "I don't know what's gotten into you lately—but, lady, you've sure been acting strange."
    She teetered herself forward and held herself there so that the chair stayed poised on the front of the rockers.
    "Did you take a page out of the pad Sam's working on?"
    "Did I what?"
    "You heard me."
    He sat up again. She could see him staring at her, his eyes briefly darting to the seat of the chair. She let go of her legs and canted them to the floor.
    "Too bad," he said. "Best view I've had all day."
    "I asked you if you took a drawing out of Sam's pad."
    "Now why should I do that?" he said.
    She got up from the chair and moved across the floor, placing herself squarely in his line of vision.
    "What did you whisper to Sam when you carried him out of the dining room? I want you to tell me what you whispered to him."
    She could see him studying her, and she saw his hand swing up to the night light and his fingers feeling for the little burled knob that switched it on and off.
    "Jesus," he said. "You're nuts."
    And then she heard the tiny click as he rotated the knob and the circuit shut off.
    She kept hearing it over and over in the silence, that click. It was like the period at the end of a sentence. Or a small pistol's hammer abruptly thumbed back.

CHAPTER SEVEN
    Biting winds drove a steady drizzle of bone-chilling rain against hapless pedestrians; traffic snarled for miles in every direction; and it would have been worth Peggy's life to catch a cab. Rush hour was at its height, and since the subway was right outside Bloomingdale's anyway, she decided to make her way downtown underground.
    Her estrangement from Hal had intensified over the past several weeks, and the affable, affectionate and amusing man she'd known and loved for so long had all but disappeared. In his place was a driven and remote careerist who seemed to her to be totally at the mercy of the demands of his job, and utterly indifferent to all they had formerly shared together.
    As the Lexington Avenue train lurched to a halt at Thirty-third Street and Peggy struggled her way out of the car against the damp and urgent crowd that jostled and crushed her, she thought bitterly of the recent quarrels she and Hal had been having over St. Martin's. For reasons she couldn't put into words, but which she felt with the certainty of her entire being, Peggy was convinced that she should get Sam out of there as soon as she could make some alternate arrangement. She couldn't really stick him in a public school at this point—aside from the fact that she herself didn't really want that for him, Hal's burgeoning snobbery simply precluded such a move. It was crazy, really, the intensity of his investment in that school—crazy and frightening, because it just didn't make any sense.
    Almost in desperation, Peggy had agreed to have dinner tonight with Sarah Goldenson, Sam's old nursery school teacher. The woman had called her the other day—out of the blue, it had seemed to Peggy—to see how Sam was doing, and Peggy had decided right then and there to get together with her and pour out all of her misgivings and miseries about St. Martin's. Maybe the teacher who had been so good to Sam, and who so obviously adored him, could help her. For some reason, she was almost certain that Sarah Goldenson would not find her growing distaste for St. Martin's at all surprising or uncomprehensible.
    Peggy spotted Sarah Goldenson as soon as she entered the restaurant. She'd already taken a