The Midnight Estate #3
“I’m afraid I don’t,” Marie said, gathering her things. Her thoughts raced wildly, bouncing this way and that in her mind,
and her mouth had gone dry.
She was going to be late and Rupert was going to be so disappointed in her.
He might even realize that she’d been visiting the cafe not “every now and again,” as she’d assured him last time he asked, but almost every day.
And what was this little interruption about, anyway?
Maybe Irving wasn’t fine after all. Marie really needed to hear Carmen out but she couldn’t be late—not after what happened last time . . .
“It won’t even take a minute,” Carmen said softly. “It’s just . . . Honey, you know he’s a good worker. Smart. Loyal. He’s
here early, he only leaves when the work is done and every last bit of the work at that.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“You know I can’t offer him any more than this dead-end job and we all know he’s too smart for it. That boy should have been
valedictorian, Marie! But I’d swear to you, if it was just that, I’d hold my tongue and enjoy the unfair blessing, since I’m
the one who benefits the most, you know? And maybe he is the kind of kid who’d learn to be content with a small life like
the one we can offer him here. Mind you, I don’t think he is, but maybe I’m wrong about that.”
“Carmen—”
“There’s so much more at stake than just his clever mind going to waste.
You get that, right?” Marie held herself stiffly.
She did know exactly what Carmen was referring to, but she could never give that away.
“Now, I don’t know how to say this delicately so I’m just going to blurt it out.
I like the kid—I truly do. That’s why this is troubling me so much.
He’s spending more and more time with . .
. less savory people.” Carmen paused to clear her throat.
“Troublemakers. If you know what I mean.” Marie raised her chin stubbornly and prayed harder than she’d prayed in her life that her eyes wouldn’t fill with tears until she was safely home.
“I know this is complicated, given your . . . situation . . . and I do feel bad about that. I mean, I feel we all let you down too, but at the time we didn’t realize—”
Marie looked at her watch: 11:21 a.m.
She shot to her feet and Carmen startled but stood automatically too. After a pause, she looked closely at Marie, then shuffled
out of the booth.
“I’m sorry,” Marie said breathlessly. She gathered her groceries, heart pounding in her ears. She couldn’t so much as bring
herself to look at Carmen as she stumbled away from the table, but she did drop her voice to a whisper to say, “It is what
it is. I can’t do anything about how it all turned out. And I have to go—I have a—I have—I’ll miss—”
“Coffee’s on the house today, Mrs Knightly,” Carmen said, gaze softening. “We’ll pick this conversation up again some other
time.”
But as Marie all but sprinted along Main Street, her feet aching as she raced for home, she knew she wouldn’t pick up that
conversation with Carmen another day.
If anything, she’d go out of her way to avoid resuming that chat, even though it would keep her awake at night for the foreseeable
future.
Marie had already cooked a fresh meal for Rupert that morning—Swedish meatballs, a recipe from that cookbook he bought her
for Christmas. She pulled two pots from the cupboard and set them on the stove—one for the noodles, one for the meatballs
in their oddly pale gravy. It would have been easier to throw it all together but Rupert wouldn’t have liked that—the resulting
mixture would have looked like leftovers, and the whole point of fresh meals for lunch and dinner was that he didn’t like
leftovers.
She twisted the knobs to start the gas, but she didn’t hit the igniter button.
This was a habit she’d formed over those past few months and Marie just didn’t know what to make of it—worse still, she couldn’t seem to stop herself from doing it.
It was a ridiculously dangerous ritual, but it was also a type of mental vacation—brief seconds of fantasy, a hint of relief and escape.
She had thought it all through, right to the end.
She would let the gas run and she would shut the kitchen window and the doors and she would sit down on the vinyl floor with that photo of her with Irving and her parents at her high school graduation and—
But Marie didn’t have time for this fantasy. Not today. Maybe not any day. She kept promising herself she would stop but then
every time she touched the damned stove the gas called to her like a siren’s song.
Cursing her own weakness, Marie flung open the windows and waved her hand over the stove and she turned on the exhaust fan
and she tried so hard not to cry because tears would only mess up her make-up. When she was certain the gas was gone, she
hit the igniter as she turned each burner on again. She tossed a knob of butter in with the noodles and she knew it really
needed to be stirred to stop it sticking but she didn’t have time—she’d just have to chance it over a low flame.
Marie ran through the house towards the bathroom, her heels clattering against the linoleum floor. Her heart sank when she
saw herself in the mirror. Her light brown hair was fine and frizzy, but she set it every night and held the style in place
with a generous burst of hairspray in the morning. It usually worked, but today she had rushed away from Carmen and she was
frazzled and flustered, and now she had a halo of sticky, stiff frizz all around her face. Her hands shook as she tried to
push it down.
Marie liked to look her best for Rupert. Or Rupert liked her to look her best. She was increasingly confused about where the line was between her own desires and his. That, in itself, was confusing.
Marie had been the kind of child who knew where she was going in life from a very young age. Her mother used to say, “This
one knows her own mind.” Her grandmother used to tell people, “Marie is an old soul.” But lately, the headstrong, determined
child Marie had once been seemed like an old friend Adult Marie had lost touch with. She struggled to make sense of this.
What exactly was the pivot point? The months around her parents’ accident felt blurry, as if a thick pane of frosted glass
stood between her and her own memories.
All that she knew for sure was that she came out the end of all of that with Rupert by her side. He was her knight in shining
armor. He had saved her, and he was still saving her, because she could do just about nothing right without his help.
Marie did the best she could with her appearance and then rushed back through the house, but as she neared the kitchen, she
could smell the noodles were burning and just then, she heard the crunch of tires on the gravel drive. She looked at the clock
on the wall—red frame, white face, bold against the lime-and-forest-green wallpaper: 11:59 a.m.
Her heart started to race.
Marie tipped the noodles onto the plate but in her haste she burned her wrist on the side of the stainless steel pot.
It immediately began to throb but there was no time to cool it with water or to rub butter on it, as her mother always said she should do with a burn.
Instead, she picked the top layer of ruined noodles from Rupert’s plate and smoothed down what was left, then reached for the meatballs and gravy but—
Oh God no.
In her haste to fix herself up for lunch, she’d put the noodles on too high and the meatballs on too low. She dipped her finger
into the gravy and hesitated. It was warm. Maybe she’d get lucky and he wouldn’t complain.
She tipped it all onto Rupert’s plate, stopped at the fridge for her salad and hurried through to the dining room. Thank God
she always set the table before she left the house.
By the time Rupert came into the dining room, she was standing beside the table, a radiant smile on her face. He had collected
the mail on his way in, so she waited patiently while he flicked through the envelopes, then dropped the little stack onto
the credenza.
“Darling,” he greeted Marie at last, brushing his lips against her cheek for a kiss, but then he paused, his face close to
hers. Marie found her chest felt so tight, she couldn’t so much as breathe. “You don’t seem well put together today.”
He whispered the words, his tone heavy with something she might have heard as deep concern except that— No, it was deep concern.
Of course it was. Rupert loved her. Everyone said he lived and breathed for her.
“I was just . . . Silly me,” she said breathlessly, trying to give a careless little laugh on the words, as if that would
make her seem coy. “I was daydreaming and I burned myself a little bit. That’s all. That’s all it was.”
She lifted her wrist to show him the burn, because even though she knew he would be furious that she hurt herself, she couldn’t
think of any other way to explain why she was so flustered. He took her wrist in his hand and peered down at the bubble forming
on her skin.
“You really must take more care,” he said softly. “I couldn’t bear it if anything happened to you.”
He used the forefinger of his other hand to gently stroke around the angry burn. Marie couldn’t take her eyes off his face—his
lips thin, his gaze tight with frustration and disappointment. Finally, he released her and walked around her chair to his
meal. As he sat, she sat too, but she waited until he’d sliced a meatball in half with his fork and raised some to his mouth
before she took her first bite of her salad. In their first few months of marriage, Rupert taught her that there was a natural
order to things and that a wife should never begin eating before her husband does. It was about respect, and authority.
“This is cold,” Rupert said suddenly.
Marie looked at the plate.
“I—I could—”
“You know how busy I am, Marie. You know how important my job is.”
“I do! I just—”
“I need my food hot and ready when I walk in that door. Do you understand that?”
“I do. I’m sorry, Rupert.”