The Midnight Estate #2
Your sister is so very proud, Silas. She can’t bear to have people pity her—always sees herself as the helper, never the one
who needs help. That’s why she never told Linda, God rest her soul.”
It turned out that Maeve volunteered at her church every minute she got and she was on just about every charity committee
in their town. Everyone told him they were praying for her. Silas was not a praying man, but he was glad someone was on the
job, just in case.
He did not feel comfortable sleeping in her room. The sheets and the blanket were all twisted, the drapes drawn. There were
used cloth handkerchiefs strewn all over the place and bottles of aspirin and half-drunk cups of water on the bedstand and
an insulin syringe, just lying right there, out in the open. Was that the syringe that made her sick?
He tried to tidy the room a little, but it was just too much, so he shut the door, almost writhing with self-loathing. He
should have been there for her. Maeve should never have been alone to deal with their mother’s death and funeral, especially not when she
was unwell herself.
She had converted the other bedroom—the one they used to share—into something of a library, and so Silas slept on the sofa, which was far too soft and too short, but it didn’t matter much for the first few nights.
He was so shocked and tired he dropped right into unconsciousness the minute he lay flat.
And after that, he considered his permanently aching back a kind of penance.
He was at the hospital when the doors opened to visitors at eight and he stayed until they closed again twelve hours later.
He sat by her bed and held her hand. He took a cloth and washed her face and hands, hoping the sensation of rough fabric and
cold water against her skin would act like the alarm clock that roused him from sleep before sunrise each morning. He brought
books from her home library and read to her until his voice was hoarse and his hands ached from holding a book in position
for so many hours.
But seven days passed, and Maeve’s eyelids didn’t so much as flutter. There was no change in her condition at all.
“We may have to start to face facts—” Dr Lomas said, but Silas, who was as mild-mannered as a man could be, snapped at him.
“The facts are that Maeve is unwell and that she needs more time. They are the only relevant facts.”
Dr Lomas looked at him closely.
“It’s your plan to stay, then.”
“For the foreseeable future, yes. Until she’s back on her feet.”
He missed Christine and Ernest so much he ached with the force of it. And Maeve had no shortage of friends breezing through
her hospital room every day, but they weren’t family. Silas would not let her down again.
“And you’ll be here every minute you can until then,” Dr Lomas surmised.
“Exactly.”
The doctor’s expression grew stern.
“Then you had better start making some smarter choices, Silas. You’ve been here a week and all the nurses have seen you eat in that time is some pudding you took from Mr Williams’s tray.”
In Silas’s defense, Mr Williams, the palliative care patient in the bed opposite Maeve’s, had insisted.
“I need to be here when she wakes up.”
Something flickered on Dr Lomas’s face, and then his expression softened.
“Then you’ll want to avoid collapsing with exhaustion or starvation, won’t you? You won’t be much help to her if you end up
a patient yourself. Go visit Carmen at the diner. Her husband, Rodrigo, makes the world’s best pancakes and it would be a
real shame if you didn’t try them at least once.”
Silas paused. He was doing a very basic form of math—contemplating the energy it would take to argue with Dr Lomas, comparing
it to the energy it would take to obey him.
After a moment, he rose to his feet and told the doctor he would be back in an hour.
Dr Lomas was not wrong about those pancakes. Either they were the fluffiest, sweetest pancakes on earth, or Silas was just
famished after a week of existing on the scant staples Maeve kept in her pantry, because that first day he demolished one
serving, then right away ordered a second.
After that, Silas took the doctor’s advice and adopted a new routine. He was still at the door to Maeve’s ward at 8:00 a.m.
He still read to her, pausing only to turn away to give her privacy when the nurses came to attend to her care. Around 10:30
a.m., he would close his book and slide it under his arm, he would kiss his sister on her forehead and then he’d walk to the
diner. He stayed just long enough for a few cups of coffee and a plate of those truly fantastic pancakes.
Although Silas stared at books all day long when he was reading at his sister’s bedside, it was only when he left her side that his mind relaxed enough to absorb what he was reading.
Books had been his solace and his comfort for so long that he didn’t know how to sit and wait without one in his lap, without his eyes skimming over words, without the comforting sensation of the spine cracking as he pulled it open for the first time, the feel of soft paper beneath his fingers as he turned the page.
When he was at his sister’s bedside, it was as though the stress and the worry were so complete that his mind was full, and
the words just went right from his eyes to his mouth. And Maeve didn’t seem to be reacting to a single thing he did, so maybe
she wasn’t hearing him anyway. But Silas kept on reading anyway because even when the words blew right past him, the very
act was still a comfort to him. Stories were, and maybe always had been, the only way he knew to exist in the world.
Silas had visited that very same diner as a teen, although it changed hands while he was overseas. What he’d always known
as Tom’s was now called Carmen’s, and truth be told, the decor was a little worse for wear. Maybe it always had been, but eating out was such a treat for him
and Maeve back in the day, he would likely never have noticed.
The checkerboard tiles were scuffed and faded to dirty grey. Sputnik lamps stretched across the long ceiling, but many of
the bulbs needed replacing, and what remained could have done with a decent dusting. The vinyl of the turquoise booths and
matching chairs along the bar was cracked in places, exposing the fabric webbing beneath.
As he ate his pancakes, Silas liked to imagine that the place had once been a cutting-edge example of 1930s accessible American glamour, but dozens or hundreds of patrons passing through that space every day over the ensuing decades had taken a toll.
Maybe every single customer had left a little mark on the place, and in doing so, had left a piece of themselves behind.
It had been at least fifteen years since he visited that diner and even then, he was a rare patron, but after a few days of
repeat visits, he quickly became a regular and Carmen and Helen knew without asking to put in his pancake order. Best of all,
once he opened whatever book he was reading, they left him alone unless he waved them over.
One morning, he was sitting in his booth reading when a young woman took a seat in the next booth. She looked vaguely familiar
to Silas, but even after a minute or two, he just couldn’t place her. Her eyes scanned the cafe and then settled on a young
man, visible through the serving window as he worked in the kitchen. Just then, she glanced across and looked directly at
Silas, and her eyes widened with recognition and surprise.
“Oh, hello.”
“Hello,” he said, then he paused. “I’m sorry, I know I know you but . . .”
“I used to live down the street from you. Maeve babysat me and my brother, Irving, while my mom worked at the nursing home.”
“Aha!” he said, nodding, but then he looked across to the young man in the kitchen and frowned. The boy was tall and portly,
with severe acne on his face and greasy red-brown hair. “I didn’t recognize your brother, I’m sorry.” Silas could summon only
a vague and distant memory of a charming, precocious little boy who found all sorts of ways to extend his bedtime when Maeve
babysat.
“He’s changed a lot recently,” she said, and there was something in her tone Silas couldn’t quite identify.
Heaviness. Sadness. Regret. Confusion. He tried the words on, but nothing quite captured it.
Silas did this sometimes—narrating his own world, as if he were writing his life down for a book.
“Our parents died in a car accident a few years back. It’s been rough on him. ”
“I’m so sorry to hear that,” Silas said. “Your father was . . . ?”
“Derek Underwood. He was a police officer. My mother was Gwen.”
That’s right. When Linda had been anxious after a spate of local break-ins, Derek came over on his own time and checked the
locks on her windows and doors.
“I never met your mother, but I remember your father was a very kind man.”
“He was,” she said, and that’s when Silas recognized the younger woman’s tone. It was heavy, that particular kind of exhaustion that came along with grief. “I’m Marie, by the way.”
“Nice to see you again, Marie.” Not that he’d ever really met her; he was at least a decade older than she was. He had vague
memories of Marie and Irving playing on the street, and when their mom and dad were both working late shifts, Maeve would
stay late. On those nights, it was Silas’s job to walk down the block to accompany her home. Linda never wanted her teenage
daughter walking the streets alone at night.
“How is Maeve these days?” Marie asked.
“She’s unwell, I’m afraid,” he said, sighing. “I live abroad now. I’m home because she’s in the hospital.”
“I’m sorry to hear that . . .”
But then Helen came to take her order and Marie asked for a coffee, and then Irving swung by and the siblings had a very brief conversation, just a few monosyllabic responses bandied back and forth.
Carmen came out from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron, and Marie looked at her watch and stood.
“I’m running late,” she said to Carmen. “I’m sorry. Helen was getting me a coffee but I can’t—”