The Midnight Estate #2
As a child, he’d never questioned the need to share a bedroom with Maeve. They were siblings and best friends; why would they
want any other arrangement?
When he first became successful, Maeve gently nudged Silas towards repaying some of their mother’s kindness. She suggested
he might help Linda repaint the house or buy a new sofa—something she’d been saving to do for years. That he needed a prompt
to even think of such a thing shamed Silas deeply. His mother had single-handedly kept the family together after his father
walked out just before Maeve’s birth. Instead of some paint or a new sofa, he purchased her a brand-new apartment, just one
bus stop from the grocer and the butcher, and he made sure she had a monthly stipend so she no longer had to work as a typist
for the principal of his old high school.
Linda had lived in that home ever since, but that’s not where Silas directed the taxi driver when he left the airport. Instead,
he went straight to his childhood family home, the place where Maeve still lived. She had been pleasantly surprised when Silas
bought their mother her new place, but insisted on staying behind. She said that into her twenties, she wanted independence
more than she wanted to live one stop from the grocer. For a little while she had various friends live with her, but as each
of these married and left, Maeve ended up living alone.
Now, home after so many years, Silas stood on Maeve’s covered stoop, procrastinating.
He was anxious to reconcile with his sister and desperate to learn of his mother’s condition.
Silas already knew that regardless of what had transpired since Maeve’s telegram, he’d spend their entire first conversation groveling.
He was still stung and confused by how she reacted when he moved away, but none of that mattered now—he was going to beg her forgiveness anyway, especially for leaving her all alone to deal with Linda’s sickness without help.
And since receiving her message, Silas had moved as quickly as he could, but the logistical gymnastics it took to schedule all of the connecting flights from his new home to his old had slowed him down.
Seven days had passed since the telegram arrived.
He always imagined that he would rush home in a crisis, but when the crisis finally came, the tyranny of distance easily defeated
his good intentions. Silas held his breath and rang the doorbell, but there was no movement inside, not even after he rang
it a second and then a third time.
“Are you looking for someone, young man?” Mrs Ristevra called from next door. Silas should have known she would be keeping
a watchful eye over his family home. Mrs Ristevra was always the first to unearth, and to share, neighborhood gossip. “Silas?
Is that you?”
“Yes, Mrs Ristevra,” he said. His throat was suddenly dry. “Is . . . my mother . . . ?”
“Oh, dear boy,” the older woman said, stricken. “I’m so sorry. She passed, son. Six days ago, I think. She was buried on Tuesday.”
Silas nodded slowly. He had prepared himself for that as much as he knew how to.
Linda had been an extraordinary parent, and a ray of sunshine just like Maeve—good and kind and vivacious and fun, despite the challenges her marriage to Silas’s father had presented.
She’d taken such delight in the photographs of Ernest over those past few years.
They’d exchanged letters frequently, and he called her on her birthday and at Christmas.
Linda had continued to lobby Maeve to let bygones be bygones and to make a trip to see Silas and his new family.
But now, Ernest would never meet his grandma, and his grandma would never meet Ernest, with his cheeky grin and his brilliant,
vibrant imagination. For a moment, this seemed like the worst thing in the world, until Mrs Ristevra cleared her throat and
added, “Silas dear, you should know . . . Maeve is also sick. Last I heard, she was in the hospital.”
On the other side of town, Marie was going about her morning ritual. She had carefully set her hair and taken great pains
to get her make-up just so. She was wearing her favorite yellow blouse, one with sweet little pearl buttons along the front,
and a flared green skirt adorned with big red flowers and a blue trim. She made sure to wash up the breakfast dishes and vacuum,
and by the time the telephone rang, she was waiting by the little table in the hall, ready to answer it on the first ring.
“Hello, love,” her husband, Rupert, greeted her. “How has your morning been?”
“Uneventful,” she told him. “And yours?”
The call took no more than a minute or two but the second Marie replaced the handset, she slipped her handbag over her shoulder, double-checked that she had her keys and her daily allowance, then opened the front door.
Outside, it was a cloudless day and the air was perfectly still.
It was always a relief to leave the house on cooler days.
Unless she really rushed, she wouldn’t sweat her make-up off and there was no wind to ruin her careful hairstyle.
“Good morning, Mrs Knightly,” the postman said as she passed him by the corner of the street.
She returned the greeting with a demure “How are you, Mr Nolan?” She was greeted by name at the butcher too, and then at the
grocer, and even by people on the street she recognized but couldn’t quite place. Everyone knew Rupert’s wife because everyone
knew Rupert in one capacity or another. Still, even though Marie understood herself to be something of a minor local celebrity,
she didn’t have time to stand around and chat. When Jim Hawthorne tried to strike up a conversation, she pointed vaguely at
her wristwatch, mumbled apologies and kept right on walking. When Nancy Middleton asked her how her day was going, Marie told
a white lie about sleeping in and “running dreadfully late” before rushing off.
When her crocheted grocery bag was laden with dinner supplies, Marie finally paused just long enough to check the time: 11:05
a.m.
She was fifteen minutes ahead of schedule, just as she’d hoped to be, and that meant she had time to call past the diner for
a coffee. Much to her disappointment, her brother, Irving, had recently started working there. She had wanted him to go to
college, but his grades slipped terribly after the accident. Irving was once the top of his class but in the end, he didn’t
even stick with school long enough to get his diploma.
Marie’s father used to say that all work was dignified work, but she couldn’t help but wonder how Derek Underwood would feel seeing his son hand-washing dishes in the kitchen of a diner at eleven o’clock on a Tuesday morning when he might have been studying science or law or medicine at college.
Marie mostly worried for Irving’s future because she knew how hard it was to make a living working in the diner.
How would he support a family when the time came?
He could barely support himself on the wages he was earning.
But her brother wasn’t even seventeen years old. Surely he was years away from considering such things and by then, he might
turn it all around. Somehow. And Irving wasn’t just smart; he was also kind and good. Marie tried to reassure herself—a kid
like Irving was going to be just fine no matter what happened, because he deserved to be fine.
“Coffee, Mrs Knightly? We have that blueberry pie again, the one you enjoyed so much last week?” Helen the waitress called
as she bustled past with her notepad, making a beeline towards a table of customers awaiting service.
“Thank you,” Marie replied as she took a seat in one of the vinyl booths along the front of the diner. “I’d appreciate that,
I’m famished.” But she glanced at her watch again and saw that it was already 11:08 a.m. She had to be on her way within twelve
minutes and the diner was busy—there was every chance that pie would take too long to arrive. “Actually, Helen, just the coffee.
I’m watching my waistline, you know how it is. And I’m in a bit of a hurry, would you mind . . . ?”
Marie was mainly at the diner to check in on her brother anyway, and besides, Rupert really didn’t like her eating sweets.
Helen poured the coffee as Marie watched Irving through the serving window, and gradually felt herself calm.
There had been so much to worry about since their parents died and it didn’t seem to matter how hard she tried to make things right; everything felt broken, as if a flaw in the very structure of the world had been exposed.
But as long as Irving was okay, she could cope. That’s why she tried to stop at the diner most days, even though Irving never
really seemed to want to talk to her much now, and even though it was very difficult to find the time. Marie felt a low level
of anxiety at every moment of every day. In fact, sometimes it seemed the only break she had from the worry was the time she
spent in that diner. The reprieve was always ever so brief.
By 11:17 a.m., she was growing antsy again. Technically she could afford to linger a few more minutes, and she’d intended
to do just that when she first sat down, but now it occurred to her that staying would mean she’d have to rush as she walked
home and was it really so cool out there that she wouldn’t sweat? She couldn’t risk leaving herself short on time and she
would be short on time if she had to fix her hair or her make-up before lunch. Her black coffee was still far too hot for her to
finish, so she decided to leave it and use the extra time for the walk.
Just as she pushed the cup away, she saw movement out of the corner of her eye. She startled guiltily as if she was committing
some kind of crime in leaving the coffee half-drunk, but when she looked up, it was just Carmen—the cafe’s owner. Irving’s
boss.
“Mrs Knightly,” Carmen said, easing herself down into the booth beside Marie, inadvertently trapping her in place. “Do you
have a moment to talk about your brother?”