Chapter 99
Elizabeth has made this walk many times before, along the curving path, through the avenue of trees, and up to the Garden of Eternal Rest. She can feel Matthew Mackie’s hand in the small of her back, guiding her forward.
It is always quiet, but she can never remember it being this quiet.
Even the birds are silent. What do they know?
It looks like rain. The sun is doing what it can to pierce the cloud cover, but she still shivers.
There was police crime tape here until a matter of days ago.
A fragment has been left tied to a sapling, flapping its blue-and-white tail in the wind.
They pass Bernard’s bench. It looks absurdly empty.
Bernard would have wanted to know what the two of them were doing.
Elizabeth and the priest, walking slowly up the hill, faces set in stone.
Bernard would have looked up from his newspaper, wished them a good day, and kept them in sight for the rest of the walk.
But Bernard has gone, like so many before him.
Time’s up, that’s it. No return. An empty bench on a silent hill.
They reach the gates, and Matthew pushes them open. He ushers Elizabeth inside, hand still at her back, and she hears the hinges squeak shut behind them.
Matthew does not walk her all the way to the top right-hand corner of the Garden of Eternal Rest, to where the older graves hold their secrets.
Instead, he takes his hand from her back, steps off the path, and walks between two rows of newer headstones, cleaner and whiter.
The route he always takes. Elizabeth follows him this time, and they stop in front of a headstone. She looks at the inscription.
SISTER MARGARET ANNE
MARGARET FARRELL, 1948–1971
Elizabeth takes Matthew’s hand and interlaces her fingers with his.
“It’s a beautiful place, Elizabeth,” he says.
Elizabeth looks out beyond the wall to the rolling fields, the hills, the trees, the birds. It really is beautiful here. The peace is broken by a commotion farther down the hill, the sound of footsteps running. Elizabeth looks at her watch.
“That’ll be my rescue party,” she says. “I told them if I wasn’t out in two hours, they were to break down the door. Come in shooting.”
“Two hours? Were we really two hours?”
Elizabeth nods. “There was a lot to say, Matthew.”
He nods too.
“You’ll probably have to go through it again when this lot finally get up the hill.”
Elizabeth can see Chris Hudson now, fresh off the plane, she guessed, running as best he can. She gives him a friendly wave and sees the relief on his face—both that she is still alive and that he can now stop running.