The Midnight Estate #2
“Do you have a minute to sit with me?” Silas asked Carmen a few days later.
“Sure, honey,” she said, giving him a wide smile that faded only a little as she sat opposite him.
“Do you know my sister used to babysit Marie and Irving when they were little? We lived on the same street.”
“That’s nice,” Carmen said, but Silas could read in her gaze that she was confused about why he was telling her this. He didn’t
know either—he just felt an instinct to establish a longstanding relationship with Marie and her family before he leaped into
probing questions about her life.
“Listen, about Marie . . .” he said hesitantly. He finally found Maeve’s copy of Brave New World but it was still in his backpack where he’d placed it four days earlier. Marie hadn’t been at the diner, which meant he hadn’t
had the opportunity to give it to her.
Carmen winced.
“Oh, honey, no. She’s married. And—”
“No, no. So am I,” Silas said quickly, holding up his left hand to reveal his wedding band. “It’s not like that. I just can
see that she’s . . .”
“She’s scared, huh?” Carmen said softly. Silas nodded. “Her husband is a cop, like her daddy was. But her daddy was one of
the good ones, and her husband is not. He has a bit of a scheme going around here—likes to collect money from business owners
to keep them safe.”
Silas looked at her in surprise.
“Is it really so dangerous around here these days?”
“It is when he’s here,” Carmen muttered. “This is a nice town and people look out for one another. Rupert is a thug, plain and simple. But
he got a promotion after Derek died and he basically runs this part of town—who do you even complain to when it’s the deputy
police chief harassing you? The chief himself?
Maybe, except that he must know, maybe he’s even in on it.
I pay Rupert his money each month and stay out of his business but .
. .” She shrugged sadly and looked towards the kitchen.
Silas followed her gaze and saw Irving at the sink, chatting happily to Rodrigo as he washed dishes.
“I worry for those two. Irving was the smartest kid in his grade. He’s a charmer, you know?
The kind of kid who can talk to anyone. He should be at college now, not chopping vegetables for us and spending his nights hanging around with Rupert and his band of degenerates. ”
“Irving is involved in this protection racket?”
“The silly kid has been hanging around his brother-in-law outside of work. Play-acting as one of his goons, I’m assuming.
Didn’t you see his bruised cheek last week?”
Silas hadn’t noticed—then again, Irving tended to look unkempt at the best of times, and Silas only saw him from afar.
“Sad, isn’t it? Such a waste. I tried to talk to Marie, but you’ve probably seen how she avoids me now. And I’m guessing Rupert
rules her life with an iron fist, so she’s maybe pushing things enough just calling in to see her brother on her morning chores.
That poor kid has found her way into enough trouble, I don’t want to get her into more by forcing the issue.” Carmen placed
her hands flat on the table, then pushed herself into a standing position. She dropped her voice as she added, “But listen,
this is not your problem, and it’s not mine either. Sometimes you have to let people figure it out for themselves, you know?”
Silas thanked her for her time and he took her advice. After all, he barely knew Marie—her sad situation was truly not his problem.
But Marie didn’t come to the cafe the next day, or the day after that.
Silas started to wonder. During the very worst years, the years Frank made every living moment of Linda’s life hell, how many bystanders had noticed that haunted look in her eyes and decided it was a private matter between a husband and a wife and therefore not their problem?
“Hello, Rupert.” Marie’s teeth were chattering. She pressed the telephone handset into her jaw to steady herself and flashed
a forceful smile at Mr Peterson, her next-door neighbor, who stood beside her. “I’m so sorry to interrupt you at work. I tried
to call earlier—”
“I don’t sit around and wait for you to call, sweetheart. We can’t both laze around all day. I work hard to afford the fancy
home you enjoy.”
He sounded annoyed already, and Marie turned away from Mr Peterson’s watchful gaze and briefly closed her eyes.
“I accidentally locked myself out of the house,” she said, voice low. She was always so careful to ensure she had everything
she needed when she pulled that front door closed, but this week, everything felt different. She was out of sorts and that meant she was out of routine and out of habit.
There was heavy cloud above that day and she had been rushing, trying to get her errands done before the rain hit. She got
halfway down the block before she realized her handbag wasn’t over her shoulder where it should have been. That meant she
didn’t have her daily allowance to pay for what she needed from the butcher and the grocer and she didn’t have keys to get
back inside to get it.
Marie spent the next hour trying to break into the house so she could avoid asking Rupert for help, but every door and window was sealed shut.
And her plan had been to just wait for him to come home for lunch but it was raining now, absolutely bucketing down.
She’d been sheltering under the little awning over the back door but when Rupert called at 10:30 a.m. that day he’d told her he wouldn’t be home for lunch and so her choices had been to stay outside in the rain until he came home that evening or to swallow her pride and call him.
“You can’t even close up a house properly, can you? Useless.”
Oh, Rupert sounded furious. Marie tasted bile in her mouth.
“Yes, I know,” she whispered, and she glanced back at Mr Peterson, who still stood watching her with an innocent smile on
his face. Outside, the rain was pelting down and the wind was picking up now too.
“And now you want me to rescue you, don’t you? Poor Marie. Always needing rescuing. It’s pathetic.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m not saving you. Not this time.” Oh, he was in a mood, all right. Of all the days for her to make such a stupid mistake!
“Where are you?”
“Mr Peterson kindly invited me in to use his phone.”
“You’re inside his house?” There was an accusation in his tone. Marie looked again at Mr Peterson, a long-retired teacher,
probably more than forty years her senior. He was still smiling that sweet, reassuring smile, his gaze just a little unfocused,
as it often was. Mr Peterson was a sweet man who was possibly in the early stages of dementia. He was the last person on earth
Rupert should feel threatened by.
“Y-yes.”
“Thank Peterson and tell him I’ll be home soon. And then go outside and wait for me in the backyard.”
“It’s raining q-quite heavily here—”
“Stand in the middle of the backyard. Right beside the clothesline. Wait for me but make sure no one sees you.”
“B-but . . .”
“Are you questioning me?”
She wouldn’t, and nor would she disobey him. Marie thanked Rupert and hung up the phone. She turned to Mr Peterson.
“Thanks so much.”
“Coming home to let you back in, eh?” Mr Peterson said, his eyes crinkling as he smiled. “He’s one of the good ones, isn’t
he?”
“Oh, he is,” she said, forcing another smile. “Thank you.”
There were a million ways Marie could have responded to Rupert’s request. She could have told Mr Peterson what Rupert had
said. Begged him for help. She could have walked out of his house into the street and she could have kept on walking even
though she had no place to go. She could simply have gone to sit under the awning at the back of her house, to wait in a relatively
dry spot.
She did none of those things. Instead, Marie walked into her own backyard, and just as she’d been told to do, she waited for
Rupert by the clothesline, as the rain poured on and on. It was the only way she’d get back inside her house. It was the only
way to minimize his wrath and win back his affection.
It wasn’t as though Marie just accepted her lot without a fight in the beginning.
She had thought about leaving, especially in the days after Irving moved out, when she first began to have the sense that Rupert had wooed her with the promise of a loving, supportive marriage that he had never intended to provide.
Marie supposed that most people hid some small parts of themselves during courtship but Rupert had presented a front that was entirely false.
If that wasn’t reason to leave a man, what was?
The question was initially one of logistics. It was a fine thing to think she’d just leave; where would she even go? To Irving’s
crowded apartment, one he shared with three other young men? She had been in regular contact with a several friends when she
and Rupert first started dating, but that had all changed. Even when Marie walked about the town doing her daily errands,
she was alone, too scared to chance extended conversations or to build real friendships.
Confidence is an armour, a brittle shell that grows around a person to protect and shield the softest part of them. Even the
strongest armour gives way under enough pressure, erodes after enough attacks. And Rupert had spent two years chipping away
at the strength of Marie’s armour.
She did make one half-hearted attempt to leave some months after Irving moved out. By then, Marie was doubting herself—if
she couldn’t even figure out a way to get out, to find happiness again, maybe Rupert was right to question her intelligence.
Even so, some voice within her cried out that if this was what early marriage looked and felt like, things would only get worse, and she simply had to try.
She’d managed to save very little out of her daily allowance, but it was still something, tucked away in the back of the closet.
That morning, she waited until Rupert left for work and then she took the little wad of notes and she slipped it into the
side pocket of her handbag. She left without so much as packing a suitcase.