The Midnight Estate
by Charity Wilkie
When Silas first told his sister, Maeve, that he was moving abroad, she reacted with such fury and distress that for a split
second, he entertained the thought that he should just abandon his fiancée and stay in California after all.
“You told me you were going on another research trip.”
“Yes, it was for research originally, but—”
“You said you’d be gone for three months, then you were gone for six. And now you’ve finally come home, only to tell us you’re
leaving forever?”
“It’s just that I met Christine right after I arrived and . . .” Silas wasn’t sure how to explain what happened next. It was
a miracle of the highest order—a meeting of minds, the spark of a chemical reaction, one soul split in two long before time,
disparate halves suddenly reconnecting. Even in a year of shocking developments, he wasn’t at all sure anyone was ready for
him to start making such flowery pronouncements, so instead, he cleared his throat then mumbled, “The rest is history.”
Silas had delivered the news to his mother the night before. Linda had been shocked and sad but was also dignified and supportive.
This was the exact reaction he’d expected, so he had no reason to prepare for an altogether different response from his sister.
He was, belatedly, realizing he’d made a dreadful mistake in blindsiding Maeve. He might have written or sent a telegram.
He might even have booked a call and told her over the telephone—it was a complicated and expensive process to phone someone
internationally in 1955 but Silas had to make such calls for his work from time to time so he did know how to do it.
He just figured it would be kinder—more mature—to face his family while he delivered the news. He even thought they might
sense the monumental changes that had taken place in him while he was overseas. That they might understand if they could see
him.
“You’d get it if you met her,” Silas said, but what he wanted to say was if you saw us together. He was a completely different person when he was with Christine. Someone smarter and braver and kinder and infinitely more
likable, someone more like Maeve herself. He desperately wanted his sister to meet this version of him, and that’s why in
his letters over those past few months, he’d worked so hard to convince her that she should visit him. He sensed she was warming
up to the idea. She’d even arranged her passport. “I’ll buy you and Mom a ticket to fly over for the wedding and you can—”
“No.”
“But in your last letter you said that you wanted to see the—”
“Even if I wanted to take a vacation there one day, things have changed now that I know you’re abandoning me and Mom forever.”
He hadn’t considered it to be abandonment, but Silas did intend to forge a new life for himself with Christine, and Christine happened to live in another country.
He just had to make Maeve understand why that was the right decision for him.
It still felt strange to say the words, even though he’d said them to Christine dozens of times.
“I love her, and she loves me. We need to be together.”
Romantic love was not something Silas had ever anticipated experiencing. He had long believed he simply wasn’t capable of
feeling it, or indeed, any other massively heightened emotion. It wasn’t that he was oblivious to such things, just that something
about his nature made him more suited to observing other people than engaging with them.
Maeve, on the other hand, was a woman who adored being in all kinds of relationships—family, romantic, friendship, professional.
She bounced from one exciting activity to another, all the while experiencing a never-ending roller coaster of emotions, swinging
between extremes both high and low. Over the years, Silas had seen his sister weeping with joy over music she admired, or
a date that had gone well, or even one startling evening, the particularly excellent roast dinner their mother had prepared.
“We’re all here together and Silas is doing so well with his work and we just got that big donation to the church soup kitchen
so we can help more people and these potatoes are so delicious and I’m just so happy!” she’d sniffed as her mascara ran down
her cheeks and her chest heaved with sobs.
Other days, she was so bereft over some slight, real or imagined, she’d fail to drag herself out of bed.
She seemed to feel every emotion at the maximum intensity, but this was especially true for rejection.
Perhaps that was her greatest challenge, but Silas felt it was more than offset by the enormity of her empathy.
Maeve was generous to a fault and seemed to think nothing at all of giving from her own pocket, even beyond what she could afford.
That was just the nature of his beautiful little sister—she was immense in heart and in spirit.
But Silas had never experienced wild, chaotic emotions before. Even when life was hectic, his inner life remained steady and
calm. Truth be told, he wasn’t exactly sure how to handle wild swings of the heart.
That’s probably why he was woefully unprepared when he met a spirited young woman with a bouncy black ponytail, sitting beneath
a tree in the park, reading a book. He would never have introduced himself, but fortunately for Silas, Christine was every
bit as outgoing as he was reticent. She asked what book he was reading and he showed her it was The Old Man and the Sea, a book he’d read so many times, he knew some passages by heart. She was just a few pages into her first reading of Rebecca and she wasn’t sure what to make of it.
When Silas first opened his mouth to comment, he initially intended to simply tell her to stick with her novel, that she’d
come to love the twisted brilliance of du Maurier’s genius if she gave the story some time. But Christine had inadvertently
stumbled on the only way to make Silas chatty: conversation centered upon books. He would never be quite sure how it happened,
but the next thing Silas knew, several weeks had flown by and the two were spending every minute of every day together.
When the time came for him to leave Australia to return home to the United States, he just couldn’t see how he would survive if he were to separate from Christine for good.
The inclination to uproot his entire life to be with this woman was so uncharacteristic that Silas wondered at times if he wasn’t in love at all, but rather, having some kind of breakdown.
That seemed a much more likely eventuality than falling in love.
Either way, sitting there with Maeve in their humble childhood living room, his skin itched to return to Australia. To Christine.
And he would.
“You’re being so selfish,” Maeve said, her eyes shiny with tears. “You always have been, Silas, but this is bad—even for you.
We are all Mom has in the whole world. After everything she’s been through, and everything she’s done for us, how could you
move so far away from her?”
He tried hard to convince Maeve of the necessity of the move over the following weeks, but she simply would not budge. Their
family was everything to her, and she was furious with Silas for “breaking it up.”
“Maeve will come round eventually,” his mother assured him. “She’s going to miss you, that’s all. And she never stays angry
for very long, does she? Just give her some space for now.”
He took his mother’s advice and left with Maeve still furious at him. He assumed they’d reconcile over letters at some point
once she cooled down. He was wealthy now—properly wealthy, beyond their wildest childhood dreams. Silas could easily afford
for Maeve and even their mother to visit him and Christine as often as they felt inclined to do so.
His mom flew out for the wedding. Linda had never been on an airplane before so that exhausting journey was quite a shock
to her system. Still, she made the trip, but she made it alone. The expensive ticket Silas purchased for his sister went unused.
“I don’t understand it either, Silas,” Linda admitted.
“She just flatly refused to come. But try not to think about it, my love. This is your moment with Christine.” Then she rested her hand over his and glanced towards Christine, who was busy making refreshments in the expansive kitchen of the home Silas had purchased for his bride.
Linda’s eyes swam with tears, but her lips were curved in a smile as she glanced back to her son.
“I never thought I’d see you this happy.
You have to live your own life, son, and it’s plain as day that your life is here with her. ”
After the wedding, Linda stayed a month with Silas and Christine. Just as Silas had secretly hoped, his new wife and his mother
got along like a house on fire.
“I’ll talk to Maeve again,” Linda said tearfully as they parted at the airport. “Who knows? Maybe you’ll get a letter from
her asking if she can visit herself.”
But Maeve ignored the wedding photos Linda took home with her. She ignored each of the letters Silas sent over the four long
years that followed—each one more effusive than the last, begging her to reply and keep in touch. She even ignored the photo
Silas sent after the birth of his beloved son, Ernest.
In fact, the very first contact Silas had with Maeve in the years after he left was via a telegram that came late in 1960.
Mother sick with influenza STOP
Doctor says may not survive STOP
Silas immediately began to plan a trip home.
It was a startling thing to find himself standing outside of the home he had grown up in.
Of course he remembered his childhood, but his memories had taken on an oddly gilded sheen that reality just didn’t match.
He’d thought of his upbringing as somewhat normal, perhaps defined more by his father’s absence than any material lack .
. . but after five years’ absence, everything looked different.
Had his childhood home always been so small? Why had he never realized that they lived in a terrible house on the worst block?