The Midnight Estate #8
But then he walked to the window to look out over the garden. He’d kept the gardener away all through autumn and that meant
Silas had been maintaining the whole yard himself. He’d been surprised to find that he loved that work—the meditative nature
of it, the way his mind was free to ponder his stories while his hands were busy in the dirt. Even so, he was deeply relieved
that the mound of fresh dirt over the grave was sinking into place and grass was finally beginning to grow over it. Soon,
no one would be any the wiser about the contents of that grave.
But as he considered this, it suddenly struck Silas that there was a kind of man who didn’t respect the wishes of a woman, who wouldn’t take no for an answer, who just pursued and pursued until he wore that woman down and got what he wanted.
Christine knew what she wanted for herself and she had expressed her wishes clearly. Silas had to respect that, and he would.
With that thought came the realization that he’d lost his mother and his sister and his wife all within a period of months.
Christine had been correct when she said that Silas had a full inner life. He was comfortable with his own company for the
most part, not a person inclined to feel loneliness. But that day, his aloneness hit him like a ton of bricks. He saw a future stretching out before him where Marie would one day move on and she’d take her
baby with her and Christine would divorce him and maybe even remarry. Ernest was now too afraid to even sleep overnight at
the mansion, and Silas couldn’t move, not even for his son. That secret in the backyard was too much of a risk—he would have to stay at the mansion to ensure it stayed buried.
If Silas kept going the way he had been, working round the clock even when his son came to visit, the distance between him
and Ernie would grow and grow until Silas lost his son altogether.
Silas made a promise to himself that day. Every single week, even when he was engrossed in an exciting draft or a deadline
was drawing near, he would spend the weekend with his son. He couldn’t make Ernest love the mansion, but he could make sure
Ernest knew that he was loved.
Just a few months after Cynthia was born, Marie asked Silas if she could help him out around the office again. And by then,
Silas’s office had fallen back into a state of pure chaos, so he was glad to agree.
He was monitoring the news back home via a complicated process that involved several US national and Californian newspapers being flown into Sydney and shipped out to him in Forbes.
The various newsagents involved in this process thought nothing of an American man keeping tabs on the happenings in his home country and his home town and they were very happy to make a few extra pounds off his homesickness.
But several daily papers arriving in batches once or twice a week meant he was forever running a little late with his reading and there were piles of them all over his office, secondary to the piles of books, and the piles of coffee mugs, and the piles of dirty plates.
“Have you read anything interesting in these?” Marie asked him as she ferried armfuls of discarded broadsheet and tabloid
papers from his office. Silas did not want the paper to go to waste so he was setting himself up a large compost pile to use
in the gardens.
He knew exactly what she was really asking—had her disappearance been in the news? Was anyone looking for Rupert? And the
truth was it had and they were. The sudden disappearance of a deputy chief of police just weeks after his young wife vanished
had been big news in Porterville and had even been mentioned in the national papers. But it had come to light after Rupert
vanished that his first wife had also disappeared in suspicious circumstances and that afterwards, Rupert simply left Santa
Rosa to start afresh with a job in Porterville—a transfer courtesy of the old boys’ network. No serious questions were asked
about his first wife’s disappearance because the police had closed ranks around their own.
Silas didn’t think that information would help Marie in any way and so he told her no, he’d found no coverage. It was not news to Marie that her husband had been murderous, and by then, she had clawed her way to a fragile new normal and he did not want to set her back at all.
But he kept reading and searching, and he had found a safe hiding place both for those clippings and for all of the things
that could unravel their whole story. This was part of how he kept his vow to her.
I will do everything in my power to get you to safety and to keep you safe.
He’d almost failed to fulfill that promise once, and he wasn’t going to let that happen again. If the authorities started
to suspect her location or if there was any hint in those newspapers that she was suspected when it came to Rupert’s disappearance,
Silas would spirit her away again. Somehow.
Once upon a time Silas pretended he was Cynthia’s father and he had assumed that would be the end of his faux-parental duties,
but as the years rolled on, their company of four in that mansion became a unique little family. Marie did most of the mothering,
except when little Cynthia got her loud voice on and decided that she wanted Ernest or Silas to do something in particular—in
which case they were generally powerless to resist.
And Silas, determined to build a better relationship with his son, didn’t mind having an extra set of little feet running
around the park with him on Saturdays. Didn’t at all mind when Cynthia would climb up onto his lap and beg him for just one story, Uncle, even though “one story” inevitably meant three or five or eight.
He really didn’t mind even one little bit when she’d give him those big, sad puppy eyes and ask him to play a game with her.
Having a younger sibling around kept Ernest young too, extending his childhood in such a wonderful way.
It was not uncommon at all for Silas to spend entire Saturdays playing make-believe with the children in the backyard.
“You spoil her,” Marie would mutter, and Silas would roll his eyes and mutter right back, “Right. Because you’re such a tough
disciplinarian when it comes to Ernest.” He was still pretty sure Marie spent more money decorating Ernest’s bedroom the year
after Cynthia’s birth than she did on herself. She’d been determined to make him feel at home again in the mansion, and although
she never entirely succeeded, she did manage to create a beautiful bedroom for the boy that he enjoyed. During the day, anyway.
It felt like no time had passed at all before little Cynthia was not so little and she was ready to start at school. She would
be at the same school as Ernest, three grades below him. Marie dropped her off at the school gate and came home to the mansion
and locked herself in her office.
“You’ve been crying,” Silas said to her when she finally emerged.
“Don’t be silly,” she muttered. “Coffee?”
That night, Ernest and Christine came for dinner. The five of them sat around the farmhouse table, over steaming plates of
Cynthia’s favorite food—lamb chops and mashed potato. Her hair still in matching plaits on either side of her head, she held
court for her little family, regaling them with tales of her first day at “big school,” even as she grew so tired that just
about every sentence was punctuated with a yawn.
“. . . and did you know that my best friend is Josh and he lives just down the road here and we can catch a bus together to
get to school?”
“Josh you just met today?” Christine asked, hiding a smile.
“That’s right. And Josh has a mum but he doesn’t have an uncle dad. He just has a dad. Isn’t that funny?” she said, and the adults at the table exchanged confused glances. Cynthia gave a sad sigh and she shook her head. “Poor Josh.”
“Everyone has a dad,” Ernest said, and Silas saw Marie wince.
“Most people have a dad,” Silas corrected.
“No, I don’t want a dad,” Cynthia said impatiently, as if they just weren’t quite getting it. “I have an uncle dad and that’s much better.”
It took a minute for Silas to make sense of what the little girl was saying and once he did, his gaze shot to Marie. Her eyes
were suspiciously shiny, but she gave him a sad smile, and then she reached for Christine’s empty plate.
“Let’s clear this table and have some dessert,” she said, effectively distracting the children and ending the conversation.
A few minutes later, Cynthia fell into an exhausted sleep, her face landing right in her plate of chocolate cake. Christine
and Ernest saw themselves out while Silas carried the little girl up to her bed. Marie climbed the stairs beside him and once
she’d tucked her daughter in, they paused there, staring down at her.
“She thinks you’re her father,” Marie murmured. “Or at least, she doesn’t understand that an uncle and a father are not one
and the same.”
“She’s just making sense of the world and of how our family fits into it.”
“Our family,” Marie repeated softly.
“We are a family now,” Silas said.
He would always miss his real sister, just as he supposed that Marie probably missed her real brother, but he couldn’t help
but feel that fate had given back to him even as it took from him.
Silas tried not to judge other people’s parenting choices—God knew he’d made enough mistakes of his own.
But he worried sometimes about the way Marie pushed Cynthia.
No matter how hard the little girl worked, or how good her grades were or how many awards she won, Marie could never relax.
Silas had seen similar in some of Ernest’s friends’ parents, who seemed to view their children’s achievements as a reflection of their parenting.
It was different with Marie. She pushed Cynthia not out of pride but out of fear.
“She has to do well at school or she’ll never get to university and then she’ll never make anything of herself and young people
without the ability to support themselves are so vulnerable,” Marie said to him one day, and he frowned at her.