she had marked a section of the text
He had never previously been a fraction as interested in Line 24 as he was this evening, and his interest made him uneasy. If he were ever to puzzle his way through what had happened to him on this momentous day, he would need to keep superstition at bay and think logically.
Nevertheless, when he stopped staring at the light on Line 24, he found himself gazing at the three silvery bells on his desk. And could not easily look away.
The last item in Mrs. McBee’s memo regarded the magazine that she had enclosed, the latest issue of Vanity Fair.
She wrote: This publication arrived in the mail on Saturday, with several others and was, as usual, put on the proper table in the library. This morning, shortly after the young master had left the library, I discovered the magazine open to the page I’ve marked. This discovery had much to do with my reconsideration of the advice I’d given you regarding the matter of Christmas gifts.
Between the second and third pages of an article about Fric’s mother, Fredericka Nielander, Mrs. McBee had placed a yellow Post-it. With a pen, she had marked a section of the text.
[284] Ethan read the piece from the beginning. Near the top of the second page, he found a reference to Aelfric. Freddie had told the interviewer that she and her son were “as thick as thieves,” and that wherever in the world her glamorous work might take her, they stayed in touch “with long gossipy chats, like two school chums, sharing dreams and more secrets than two spies aligned against the world.”
In fact, their entire telephone relationship was so secret that even Fric didn’t know about it.
Freddie described Fric as “an exuberant, self-assured boy, very athletic like his father, wonderful with horses, a superb rider.”
Horses?
Ethan would have bet a year’s pay that if Fric ever had dealings with horses, they had been the kind that never left droppings and ran always to calliope music.
By manufacturing this false Fric, Freddie seemed to suggest that the real qualities of her son either did not impress her or possibly even embarrassed her.
Fric was smart enough and sensitive enough to draw that very conclusion.
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