The Midnight Estate
by Charity Wilkie
The next few weeks were some of the worst Silas could remember—a hideous combination of necessary practicality and a crushing,
unrelenting grief. He had delayed processing the loss of his mother while he dealt with Maeve’s illness, but there was no
way to avoid it now. Maeve was gone, and Linda was gone, and every connection he had to his old life had been severed.
The kindly undertaker helped him plan the funeral but there was no one but Silas to work through Maeve’s Filofax, calling
friends and acquaintances he’d met and others he’d never heard of. He hated phone calls at the best of times—phone calls to
strangers even more so—and this meant three excruciating days of calls, one after the other, with breaks only for food and
sleep and bouts of weeping.
By the day of the service, Silas felt he was just about out of tears. He watched, dry-eyed but heartbroken, as Maeve’s casket
was lowered into the grave. Linda’s grave was right behind him, so fresh that the dirt on top was still mounded and had not
yet settled flat. He looked at a sea of grieving people—several hundred had attended the church service, and most had followed
to the grave site. So many faces from that crowd of strangers were vaguely familiar to him now because they had been passing
through her hospital over those weeks, sharing stories about her kindness and her light and her love.
Silas felt sure of very little by then but he was certain that when he passed, there would be no such outpouring of mass grief.
He didn’t consider himself to be kind or good or selfless, not like Maeve.
He was just a man who seemed to attract good fortune, who had shared the spoils of his good luck only minimally.
He had bought his mother a house and supported her for years, but even at that he didn’t think to help her out until Maeve told him he should.
He had showered Christine with expensive gifts and even an
enormous home when they were married, but that was only to impress her . . . only to soothe the ache of the chip on his shoulder
left over after the experiences of his own childhood.
What would his legacy be? Was it enough that people might remember his work one day?
After the funeral, his mind turned to loose ends. Almost everything from Maeve’s house would go into the very same charity
shop truck that had taken away his mother’s furniture just a week or two earlier. He kept just a handful of things . . . Maeve’s
glasses—the black cat-eye frames that she had worn for so many years—the simple string of pearls Linda gave her when she turned
twenty-one. He also took the very last photo he ever had taken with his mother and sister—a shot of the three of them together,
standing outside of the house the day before he flew out of the United States for the very first time in 1949. Silas had used
some of his newly found wealth to hire a photographer to come take the photo and to print and frame it as a gift for Linda.
Maeve was beaming in the photo, but she was also clinging to his arm. Linda was standing tall and proud and happy. There were
other photos—but none were so clear, and none captured such a perfect moment of hope and optimism and love. He couldn’t take
them all, and this was his favorite, so this was all he took.
In the end, every material possession left over after Maeve’s and Linda’s lives fit into one small box.
An agent toured both properties and decreed that there were jobs to be done before Maeve’s house could be listed—repainting,
new floors. But the lawyer who was handling both her estate and Linda’s had offered to help coordinate things if Silas could
just line up the contractors before he left. So Silas did that too. He called ahead and spoke to a car lot near the airport.
He would drive Maeve’s car to San Francisco and sell it there before he flew out.
Just about every little thing was sorted. He went to the travel agent to book the next ticket home, then he went to sit between
his mother’s and his sister’s graves.
“I don’t think I’ll come back,” he said. He drew his knees up to his chest and closed his eyes. “You two were my whole life
here. I hope you’ll understand if I don’t visit but I’ll miss you and I will love you forever, no matter where I am on this
earth.”
He sat there for a while, until his backside was numb and the cold from the earth had seeped up through his clothes to chill
his body. He stared at those miserable graves, side by side and so very sad and so lonely—not even a headstone in place yet.
He’d agonized over the wording for each stone before he ordered them, but it would take some time for them to be crafted.
The lawyer had promised to send a photo once it was done.
Silas pressed a soft kiss to his fingers, then touched his hand to the earth on each grave.
“Goodbye,” he whispered, and his voice cracked. “Goodbye, Mom. Goodbye, Maeve. I love you.” He took two steps, then turned
back and looked at the dirt one last time. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
If the story of Silas’s relationship with his mother and sister were in a novel, there probably would be closure—some satisfying conclusion to the dangling thread of his estrangement from Maeve.
He’d have arrived just a little quicker, in time for one last conversation, or in packing up her house he’d have found a letter from her telling him he was forgiven.
But this was real life and it rarely works so neatly. Instead, Silas had to walk away from their graves unredeemed, unforgiven.
The guilt would not be lifted. Instead, it would become part of who he was, and it would influence every single step he took
from that day forward.
Marie had weighed heavily on Silas’s mind over the week he spent packing up Maeve’s life. Every now and again thoughts of
her, concerns for her, would burst through the fog of his grief and capture his full attention. On those days he’d think seriously about checking
in on her, but there was much to do, and he could not afford distractions.
Besides, Silas was confident that he’d given Marie excellent advice. Her situation was dreadful but she had a brother right
there in town who was best placed to help her. He half expected he’d arrive at the cafe and Irving would quietly approach
him, clap him on the shoulder and thank Silas for bringing the situation to his attention.
“She got out,” fictional Irving would say confidentially. “I put her on a bus to some place far away and she’s settling there.
I’ll go in a few weeks’ time to support her. All thanks to you.”
Ten days after he encouraged Marie to ask her brother for help, Silas walked back into the cafe and took his usual booth.
He peered into the kitchen and made eye contact with Irving, who went right back to chopping vegetables, and to Silas’s great disappointment, did not immediately come out with a reassuring story about Marie’s well-being.
Instead, Helen approached his table. She didn’t know his name or where he was from or even why he was there, but she knew immediately what he wanted.
“Coffee and pancakes?”
“Yes. Please.”
It was about the right time and if Marie was indeed still in town, Silas expected he’d see her any minute. While he waited,
he opened the novel he had in his bag, and enjoyed a few minutes of quiet reading. The pancakes came and he made light work
of them with no sign of Marie. It was now well past the time she’d usually breeze through, and her schedule ran like clockwork
ordinarily. When Carmen brought the cheque, he cleared his throat.
“Was Marie early today?”
Carmen winced. “No, she hasn’t been in for a while. Not sure what happened there. I did ask Irving but . . .” She hesitated,
a worried look in her eyes. “Honestly, I can’t get involved. I wish I could—but I can’t.”
Silas started driving back to the hotel, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. He hardly knew Marie and she certainly
hadn’t reacted well to his last, unannounced visit to her house. Besides, surely if she needed help her own brother would come to her aid.
And Silas just wanted to go home. To Christine and to Ernest, to figure out the mess he’d left behind there and to be a better
husband and father. A better person, just like Maeve had been.
It was that thought which undid him.
Maeve would never have walked away from someone in a dire situation like Marie, not without checking that she really was okay.
That’s why Maeve’s funeral was packed with hundreds of mourners.
That’s why everyone who spoke of her got that soft, sad tone in their voice.
Because she was good and kind and proud and all of the things Silas wanted so badly to be.
He drove down Marie’s street and checked—only one car in the drive, that same Rambler that had been there last time he visited.
He didn’t park behind it, not this time. Instead, he drove a little ways along the street and parked outside of a stranger’s
house, then he walked back. He checked this way and that, making sure no one was watching, and when he was as confident as
he could reasonably be, he let himself into the backyard and knocked on the back door.
There was no answer at first, and Silas was more than a little relieved. He decided he’d knock one last time, and if she didn’t
answer, he’d take that as a sign that she’d left Rupert and was probably halfway to somewhere better by now.
But at the second knock, he saw movement inside, and there was Marie—or at least, just the top of her face, because she was
half-hiding behind a wall as she tried to figure out who was there. He waved, and expected she’d give a relieved smile and
come to the door, but she shook her head mutely instead. When Silas raised his hand to knock on the glass again, she held
up her hand.
“You have to leave,” she said urgently, her words sounding muffled through the glass.
“I just wanted to check on you,” he said. But then a thought struck him and he winced before asking, “Is he here?”