The Boy Who Could Draw Tomorrow by Quinn Sinclair Page B

table, and her face brightened with a welcoming and somehow comforting smile as Peggy approached her.
    After they'd ordered drinks and dispensed with some routine and perfunctory chit-chat, Sarah Goldenson came abruptly to the point. She didn't mean to pry or cause offense, she assured Peggy, but Sam was such a special child, and she'd always been so fond of him, that she just felt she had to let Peggy know that however ridiculous it might seem, she'd been worried about Sam for months. She felt she had to share these feelings with Peggy.
    Peggy's vodka and tonic had arrived by this time, and she'd already drained it and signaled the waiter to bring another round. And even though she'd quit smoking years ago, and hadn't even thought about it in as long as she could remember, she now felt a craving for a cigarette that almost left her breathless.
    "... didn't get to meet her when she observed at the nursery school," Sarah Goldenson was saying, "but it seemed to me a Miss Putnam from St. Martin's exhibited a rather inexplicable—unsavory, if you will—interest in your Sam, especially since at that point he wasn't even an applicant."
    "I'm afraid I'm not following you," Peggy said weakly, as she reached gratefully for her second drink and decided to force herself to nurse it.
    "Well, as you probably know, it's common practice for these private schools to send someone around to various nursery schools to observe applicants in their nursery school environment. Since Town and Country sends so many kids on to private schools, we're subjected to a constant round of observers in the fall. Their comments and judgments become a part of each kid's application file. Anyway, one day last October when I was out sick with one thing or another, a Miss Putnam came to observe my class, which was perfectly normal, since a number of the boys had applied to St. Martin's. But about a week later, she called me on the phone and started asking a lot of questions about Sam, particularly about his drawing, which she must have seen him working on while she was there. I just assumed there must be some mistake—I told her Sam Cooper hadn't even applied to St. Martin's. She said she knew that—she'd just been so taken by his talent she wanted to know more about him. At the time I guess I didn't find that all that peculiar—he is strikingly gifted as an artist—but then, when I found out he'd been admitted to that school on such an irregular basis and I thought back on my conversation with Putnam, it seemed to take on a—oh, I don't know—almost sinister quality. And the more I've thought about it, the more concerned I've become. So here I am. If you think I'm out of line—even if you think I'm nuts—just say so, and we'll just go ahead with dinner as if this conversation never took place. But I have to tell you that I know in my gut I'm on to something!"
    Peggy was now in the grip of an anxiety so powerful she felt that it must surely be emanating from her body like some visible substance. But surely neither she nor Sarah Goldenson should allow themselves to disintegrate into infantile irrationality over this whole business. When you thought about it, their fears and suspicions not just about St. Martin's but about Sam's "gift" itself—for Peggy knew without having to be told that Sarah Goldenson felt as she did that there was a literally uncanny power to Sam's drawing—seemed both ludicrous and deranged. But no. It simply was no use to try to pretend that this was "all in her head." But what to do? Somehow she had to get Sam out of Putnam's clutches—he'd never set foot in that school again. And as for Hal's complicity in all this—if complicity there was—she'd get to the bottom of that, too. Her son's survival was at stake. She was convinced of that now. Nothing and no one could prevent her from doing everything in her power to safeguard him.
    ***
    The next morning she walked right in. With Sam's hand in hers, his grip tightening when they