The Midnight Estate #2
He told himself he would stay calm and wait patiently—but in the days that followed, she returned only to collect some personal
effects, some furniture, her clothing.
And he had finally started to worry that perhaps Christine was serious about this but then the telegram arrived from Maeve
and before Silas knew it, he was on a plane, rushing home.
Christine was the love of his life. He was happier in her company than he had ever been with anyone, anywhere. How could he
have messed things up so badly that she would leave him?
“So are you divorcing then? Can you do that here?” Marie asked him as he drove, and she sounded so young and innocent that
Silas himself felt older by the second.
“Yes, there’s divorce here in Australia, just as there is back home. I don’t know much about it and frankly I’m still determined
it won’t come to that,” he said heavily.
Silas was going to fix things with his wife; he just did not know how to do it.
And if he tried every tool in his arsenal and failed to win her back, and Christine insisted on a divorce, he would give her whatever she wanted; he would make sure that she was happy and looked after for the rest of her days.
He would learn to worship her from afar, if that’s what she needed. But what would become of Ernest?
Silas did not want his son to grow up in a broken family. The very thought of that outcome made him feel sick.
Silas and Marie were soon at Christine’s mother’s house—a much smaller and newer brick home, with a garden full of impractical
roses, evolved for a climate with vastly more rain. His mother-in-law, Meg, was constantly in the yard with a hose in dry
years, just trying to keep the plants alive, but she took such delight when they flowered. There was a metal slide set up
in the front yard. Outside of school hours this street was always full of children playing together, riding their bikes or
playing cricket on the road, scurrying to the grass when cars came past. Meg set the slide up for the neighborhood children
and Ernest was just old enough now to join in when they played on it sometimes. In the summer, and sometimes in the spring
and the autumn too, Silas had seen that slide get so hot it would scald the children’s bare legs.
“Now this feels like a normal house,” he heard Marie mutter under her breath as she looked at Meg’s home, and he shot her a sideways glance.
He had long been aware that the closer other people came to him, the less he understood them, but this afternoon with his young visitor had been so illuminating.
He felt the swell of almost brotherly affection for her, and hot on the heels of that, a wave of fury towards the husband she’d run away from.
That seemed to be the thing about bad men.
They gravitated to the very best women, as if they could make up for something pure lacking in themselves by taking it from their wives.
Silas and Marie walked side by side to the door. Anxiety coursed through him as he raised his hand to knock, but then there
were tiny footsteps in the hall, and muffled voices. He could hear Ernest trying unsuccessfully to open the door handle, and
then Christine was there. She pulled the door open and gasped in surprise. Her beautiful brown eyes flicked from Silas to
his young companion, and confusion twisted across her expression.
“This is—” he started to say, steeling himself to lie.
But just then Christine gasped, “Maeve!” and she gently nudged past Ernest and threw her arms around a very startled Marie.
“My God! I am so thrilled to meet you. The things I’ve heard about you over the years—I wondered if you’d ever make the trip! And
look at you, you are every bit as beautiful as your brother always said.”
She leaned away from Marie to stare at her, then pulled her close for another one of those smothering hugs. Silas was so jealous
of that hug. He knew exactly how addicting it felt to be engulfed in his wife’s arms.
“Yes, this is Maeve,” he said suddenly, and he reached out to squeeze Marie’s shoulder gently. “I finally convinced her to
visit and she has been dying to meet you and . . .” Silas crouched, folding himself down to his son’s level. Ernest had hidden
behind Christine’s legs as soon as he saw that Silas was with a stranger. “Aunty Maeve so desperately wanted to meet you too.
So here we are.”
“Well, this is just a delight,” Christine said, clasping her hands in front of her chest. “Silas, you’ll want to spend some time with Ernest of course, so perhaps I can pack a bag and he can go home with you tonight. But first, both of you, come in—come in!”
Silas held the door while Marie stepped inside the house, and although he knew she didn’t realize it yet, into his family.
“I hope you’re comfortable enough in the mansion?” Christine asked Marie later. “It’s a beautiful home but it can be awfully
lonely out there.”
They were seated on braided iron chairs in the shade of the gum tree in her mother Meg’s backyard. Meg had greeted Marie just
as warmly as Christine had, like a long-lost friend returned home, with hugs and seemingly genuine delight. Silas’s wife and
her mother looked so similar—with warm brown skin and wavy brown hair, casual flowing dresses and enormous wide smiles.
“Silas will be there, so I won’t be lonely,” Marie said. Silas and Ernest were chasing one another around the backyard. Ernest
was covered in sticky jam and scone crumbs, his face red with exertion, his eyes alight with joy. Silas looked like a completely
different man to the one that Marie had come to know over those past few weeks. It was as though he had suddenly come back
to life.
“How many years has it been since you lived with him?” Christine asked wryly, and to Marie’s great relief, she didn’t wait
for an answer. “You’ve probably forgotten how he gets when he’s working. You will be alone. He won’t mean to shut you out, but he will. I suppose it won’t be so bad for you since you’re only visiting. How
long are you staying?”
“She hasn’t decided yet,” Silas called from across the yard, and Marie was both horrified and relieved to realize he was eavesdropping even from afar.
How did he feel about his wife’s comments about him shutting her out?
“She’s going to stay a few weeks and see if she likes it here. She might stay longer.”
“She can answer for herself, Silas,” Christine said, before she turned her gaze back to Marie. “I’m so pleased you two are friendly
again. It broke his heart that you’d become estranged.” Estranged? Marie’s heart sank. Silas had spent the better part of
a month sitting by the real Maeve’s bedside and his grief had been so palpable after she passed. “He wrote me and told me
you’d been sick too. Are you feeling well again?”
“Christine,” Silas called, suddenly scrambling to his feet and waving towards his wife. Christine went over to him, confused,
and the two had a hasty, intense conversation in the middle of the backyard—Silas’s mouth close to her ear, her jaw dropping
in shock. After a moment, they walked in silence back to Marie.
“I told her about your husband,” Silas explained. “I know it’s still a little tender and I didn’t want her to accidentally
say something that left you upset.”
“Thank you,” Marie whispered.
“How long were you married?” Christine asked gently as she took her seat again.
“Less than a week,” Silas murmured. “Aaron was a policeman. It was quite a shock, wasn’t it, Maeve? No one could have expected
a terrible car accident like that just a few days after the wedding.”
“And you were there for the wedding, Silas?” Christine asked. Marie looked from her to Silas, utterly baffled by the turn
the conversation had taken.
“Yes, since I was in town and it would have been such a journey to get back . . .”
“We decided to marry then and there,” Marie finished for him when he trailed off to silence. Her mouth had gone dry.
“Then the accident happened,” Silas sighed. “Such a tragedy.”
“I’m so sorry, Maeve,” Christine murmured. “My God. You poor thing. Of course you’ve come home with Silas for a while. You’ll need some
time to find your feet, I imagine.”
“It was very sudden. I’m still in shock, I think. But Silas has been a godsend.” All of this, at least, was entirely true.
“Of course he has,” Christine said, reaching across to squeeze Marie’s forearm. “And I’m here to help too, I promise you.
Anything you need. We’ll be the best of friends soon enough.”
Later, as they drove home, Silas apologized.
“We should have talked about it before we went there—got our stories straight. We’re not much in the way of criminal masterminds,
are we?”
It was not sitting well at all with Marie that they were lying to Christine.
“Wouldn’t it be better to tell her the truth, Silas? She seems very kind. Very wise. And won’t you have to tell her the truth one day anyway, especially if you reconcile?”
“I have to smooth things over with her first. I can’t risk this being one more thing we have to figure out. The story about your recently
deceased husband isn’t perfect,” he added, almost to himself. “But I think, if we stick to it, it will work.”
Silas didn’t mean to abandon his guest, but he’d been away from his work for almost two months.
It sucked him back in like a vortex and before he knew it a week had passed with him stopping only to visit Ernest and Christine a few times.
Things with Christine were strained but also tender.
His wife was kind and gentle to a fault, and he knew she was treading lightly, conscious that he’d lost his mother.
Little did she know his loss was so much greater than that, and he wanted nothing more than to sit with her and tell her about
those awful weeks as he waited, hoping Maeve would recover, longing for forgiveness and absolution that would never come.
But while Silas didn’t regret helping Marie to escape, he had trapped himself in obligation to her as much as he had trapped