A Place of Hiding

Margaret Chamberlain was hard pressed to recall a time when she’d been as furious or as driven to do something about her fury. She thought she may have been so caught up in rage the day her suspicions about Guy’s philandering had ceased to be suspicions at all and had become instead a full-blown reality that had felt like a fist driven into her stomach. But that day had been long ago and so much had happened in the intervening years—three more marriages and three more children, to be specific—that that time had faded into a tarnished memory which she generally didn’t run a silver cloth over because, just like a piece of old and unfashionable silver, she had no use for it any longer. Nonetheless, she reckoned that what was consuming her was akin to that earlier provocation. And how ironic was it that both then and now the seed for what consumed her came from the same source?

When she felt like this, she generally had a difficult time deciding in what area she wished to strike out first. She knew that Ruth had to be dealt with, the provisions of Guy’s will being so utterly bizarre that there could be only one explanation for them and Margaret was willing to bet her life that that explanation was spelled R-u-t-h. Beyond Ruth, however, there were the two beneficiaries of half of what was pretending to be Guy’s entire estate. There was no way on heaven, on earth, or in hell that Margaret Chamberlain intended to stand by and watch two nobodies—

unrelated to Guy by even the tiniest speck of blood—walk away with more money than the bastard’s own son.

Adrian was less than helpful with information. He’d retreated to his room and when she’d cornered him there, demanding to know more who, where, and why than Ruth had been willing to impart, he’d said only,

“They’re kids. Someone to look at Dad the way he thought the fruit of his loins were supposed to look at him. We wouldn’t cooperate. They were happy to. That’s Dad for you, isn’t it? Always rewarding devotion.”

“Where are they? Where can I find them?”

“He’s in the Bouet,” he replied. “I don’t know where. It’s like council housing. He could be anywhere.”

“What about the other?”

That was easier by far. The Moullins lived in La Corbière, southwest of the airport, in a parish called Forest. They lived in the looniest house on the island. People called it the Shell House and once you were in the vicinity of La Corbière, you couldn’t miss it.

“Fine. Let’s go,” Margaret told her son.

At which point Adrian made it perfectly clear that he wasn’t going anywhere. “What d’you think you’re going to achieve?”

“I’m going to let them know who they’re dealing with. I’m going to make it clear that if they expect to rob you of what is rightfully yours—”

“Don’t bother.” He was smoking incessantly, pacing the room, back and forth across the Persian carpet as if determined to create a trough in it.

“It’s what Dad wanted. It’s his final...you know...The big slap goodbye.”

“Stop wallowing in all this, Adrian.” She couldn’t help herself. It was too much to have to consider the fact that her son might be perfectly willing to accept a humiliating defeat just because his father had decided he was to do so. “There’s more involved in this than your father’s wishes. There’re your rights as his flesh and blood. If it comes down to it, there’re your sisters’ rights as well, and you can’t tell me JoAnna Brouard will sit by and do nothing once she learns how your father dealt with her girls. This is something that has the potential to mire itself in court for years if we don’t do something. So we tackle these two beneficiaries first. And then we tackle Ruth.”

He walked to the chest of drawers, varying his route for once and thank God. He crushed out his cigarette in an ashtray that was providing the bedroom with ninety percent of its malodorous air. He immediately lit another. “I’m not going anywhere,” he said to her. “I’m out of it, Mother.”

Margaret refused to believe that, at least not as a permanent condition. She told herself he was just depressed. He was humiliated. He was mourning. Not Guy, of course. But Carmel whom he’d lost to Guy, God curse his soul for betraying his own and only son in that inimitable fashion of his, the consummate Judas. But this was the very same Carmel who would come scampering back begging to be forgiven once Adrian took his proper place at the head of his father’s fortune. Margaret had little doubt about that.

Adrian made no enquiry as Margaret said, “Very well,” and searched through his things. He made no protest as she rooted his car keys out from the jacket he’d left lying on the seat of a chair. She added, “All right. Be out of it for now,” and she left him.