The Midnight Estate #2
As they approached the final immigration desk, Marie felt a sense of doom settle over her.
The make-up was long gone—that thick eyeliner had run down her cheeks as she vomited, and she had wiped the residue off with toilet tissue in the airplane’s tiny bathroom.
She was holding Maeve’s glasses as they moved down the line, but she couldn’t bear the thought of putting them back on her face, to see the world swimming again all around her again.
Not when she was feeling so weak. Not when the vague echoes of nausea still rolled through her.
She’d shed layers of clothing when the air sickness started and reluctantly donned as much as she could bear just as she stepped off the plane.
Still, the final layer—a neat navy jacket with a large button right at her throat, was slung over her arm.
It was so hot and stuffy in that airport she could not bear to put it on.
“Please,” Silas said, dropping his voice as he motioned towards the jacket. “Just for a few minutes.”
Marie stifled a groan but she could see there was only a handful of people ahead of them in the line now and she knew she
had no choice. She pulled the jacket on, smoothed a hand over her wildly messy hair and then forced herself to don the glasses.
Silas handed over his passport first and this time, even he seemed too tired to make small talk, particularly once the attendant
began sizing up Silas—holding up his photo and comparing, as if he had reason to be suspicious.
Marie crossed her arms over her chest to hide the violent way her hands shook as she waited her turn.
She began to daydream—or maybe it was an exhaustion-induced hallucination.
The immigration attendant threw her right onto the same plane and told the pilot to take her back to San Francisco right away.
Rupert was somehow waiting for her at the airport with handcuffs in hand and he drove her right out to the desert and—
“Miss?” the attendant said, reaching for her paperwork. Marie handed it over. He repeated the same process—holding it up,
intending to compare it.
But right at that moment, Marie felt the toast and the juice threatening to make an appearance. She gave a muffled sound of
panic and pressed her hand over her mouth. The attendant’s eyes went wide and he fumbled beneath the desk, thrusting a wastepaper
basket at her just in time.
When the waves of sickness receded, Marie looked up through bleary, stinging eyes. Silas gingerly took the wastepaper basket
from her and held it towards the attendant.
“What should we . . . er . . . do with . . . ?”
“I’ll call someone to clean that,” the attendant said, and he shoved the passport across the desk. “Looks like you’ve had
a rough trip so I won’t . . . er . . . keep you any longer. Welcome to Australia.”
Silas had originally planned to drive straight home. He did anticipate that unique exhaustion that came from such an extensive
trip, but he was desperate to see Christine and Ernest, and he had taken that road from Sydney, across the Blue Mountains
and the Central Western Plains, enough times by then that he knew it like the back of his hand. But when he envisioned that
weary final leg of the journey, he’d never in a million years have expected to have a pregnant companion to deal with before he could make the drive.
The simple act of navigating the immigration line had been one of the most stressful things he had ever done, and his head was spinning as he stepped out of Sydney airport.
He’d barely slept at all on the flight—he spent half the time trying to help Marie with her sickness, and the other half of the time panicking.
Silas had never broken the law before, and now, he’d committed what he assumed to be a serious crime. And even worse than that was the fact that he had promised Marie he would find her some place to live and a way to support herself, but his
mind remained uncharacteristically blank. It was one thing to tell her he’d help, one thing even to smuggle her out of the
US, but her situation was incredibly complicated.
And so was his. If it wasn’t, he would simply take her home with him to Forbes.
His relationship with Christine was already in trouble, and if he surfaced after six weeks away with Marie in tow—a beautiful,
much younger woman—Christine would surely think the worst of him. It should have been easy enough to protest that his relationship
with Marie was innocent because it was the God’s honest truth, but there was so much at stake and Silas could not afford a misunderstanding with his wife. Not on the back of the many misunderstandings that had led to her moving herself
out of his home.
Silas and Marie walked in silence to his blue Volkswagen Beetle. He stacked the suitcases on the luggage rack on the roof,
then placed the box of Linda and Maeve’s belongings on the back seat. Marie walked to the driver’s side of the car, then paused,
confused.
“It’s the opposite . . .” Silas said. She winced and walked around to the passenger’s side.
“That would take some getting used to.”
But she said it as if it was a hypothetical adjustment, not one she was absolutely going to have to make. Silas wondered if
she was as confused as to what to do next as he was.
Once they were in the car, and Silas had cajoled the sluggish engine into starting, he looked over at his young companion and suddenly felt the weight of all of the decisions he had not made looming over him.
There was no way he’d find her a home and a suitable job in a single afternoon, not even in a bustling, cosmopolitan city like Sydney.
“Let’s stop for the night. At a motel.”
Marie gave him a shocked glance, then her face fell. Fear and suspicion crept into her gaze.
“No, I didn’t mean—” Silas was momentarily flustered, then suddenly fierce. “Marie. Never. Do you understand me? I didn’t
bring you here to take advantage of you. You are here as my guest. You are here to be free. I would never—I would—” He broke off. It was only natural that she’d be nervous and suspicious. He took a deep
breath. “You’re safe with me. You always will be. I promise you that.”
Her gaze dropped to her lap. Silent, heavy tears rolled from her eyes, over the dark bags beneath them, across her pale cheeks.
He sensed she was beginning to spiral.
“Where will I go? How will I keep a roof over our heads? What if he finds—”
“Marie,” he interrupted her gently. She looked back at him—big brown eyes swimming in tears. He tried to flash her a reassuring
smile, even though his gut had twisted itself into knots. “Let’s sleep. Eat something. Things will seem easier in the fresh
light of a new day.”
As he waited outside of Marie’s motel room the next morning, it occurred to Silas that he had made very few impulsive acts in his entire life.
He was a measured man, someone who tended to proceed quite cautiously.
Even through the years when he traveled the world, he always spent months researching before he booked tickets.
Until the previous day, he’d never once landed in a place and not been certain of where he would sleep that night.
And this situation with Marie was exactly why: impulsive decisions had rarely led him anywhere good, and now he had a woman
in his care who could only represent intense complications to his already complicated life.
When Marie’s door opened, he was relieved to see her looking refreshed. She was still pale but the faint traces of her make-up,
those shadows left behind after the difficult plane trip, were gone. She must have washed her hair, because the temporary