A Place of Hiding

Deborah watched this scene between brother and sister, and her own heart lightened. She knew who was responsible for Cherokee River’s release, and she blessed him. Simon had come to her aid more than once in her life, but never more rewardingly than at this moment. He’d actually listened to her interpretation of the facts. But not only that. He’d finally heard her speaking.

Ruth Brouard completed her meditation, feeling more at peace than she’d felt in months. Since Guy’s death, she’d skipped her daily thirty minutes of quiet contemplation, and she’d seen the result in a mind that careened from one subject to another and in a body that panicked against each new onslaught of pain. Thus she’d been running off to meet advocates, bankers, and brokers when she wasn’t combing through her brother’s papers for some indication of how and why he’d altered his will. When she wasn’t doing that, she’d been off to the doctor to try to alter her medication so as to manage her pain more efficiently. Yet all along, the answers and the solutions she required had been contained in simply going within. This session proved she was still capable of sustained contemplation. Alone in her room with a single candle burning on the table next to her, she’d sat and concentrated on the flow of her breath. She’d willed away the anxiety that had been plaguing her. For half an hour she’d managed to let go of grief.

Daylight had faded to darkness, she saw as she rose from her chair. Utter stillness pervaded the house. The companionable noises she’d known so long, living with her brother, left with his death a vacuum in which she felt like a creature thrust unexpectedly into space.

This was how it would be till her own death. She could only wish that it might come soon. She’d held herself together quite well while she’d shared the house with guests, making Guy’s funeral arrangements and carrying them out. But the cost to her had been a high one, and the payment declared itself in pain and fatigue. The solitude she had now provided her with the opportunity to recover from what she’d been through. It also provided her with a chance to let go.

No one to pretend health for any longer, she thought. Guy was dead and Valerie already knew despite Ruth’s never having told her. But that was all right, because Valerie had held her tongue from the first. Ruth didn’t acknowledge it, so Valerie didn’t mention it. One couldn’t ask for more from a woman who spent so much time in one’s own home. From her chest of drawers, Ruth took up the bottle and shook two of the pills into her palm. She downed them with water from the carafe by her bed. They would make her drowsy, but there was no one in the house for whom she had to be sprightly now. She could nod over her dinner if she desired. She could nod over a television programme. She could, if she wished, nod off right here in her bedroom and stay nodded off till dawn. A few more pills would accomplish that. It was a tempting thought. Below her, however, she heard a car crunch in the gravel as it moved along the drive. She went to the window in time to see the rear end of a vehicle disappear round the side of the house. She frowned at this. She expected no one. She went to her brother’s study, to the window. Across the yard, she could see, someone had pulled a large vehicle into one of the old stables. The brake lights were still on, as if the driver was considering what to do next.

She watched and waited, but nothing changed. It seemed that whoever was inside the car was waiting for her to make the next move. She did so.

She left Guy’s study and went to the stairs. She was stiff from sitting for her lengthy meditation, so she took them slowly. She could smell her dinner, which Valerie had left on the hob in the kitchen. She headed there, not because she was hungry but because it seemed the reasonable thing to do.

Like Guy’s study, the kitchen was at the back of the house. She could use the dishing up of her meal as an excuse to see who’d come to LeReposoir.

She had her answer when she finally negotiated the last of the stairs. She followed the corridor to the back, where a door was ajar and a shaft of light created a diagonal slice on the carpet. There she pushed against the panels and saw her nephew standing at the hob, energetically stirring whatever it was that Valerie had left simmering on its back burner. She said, “Adrian! I thought...”

He swung round.

Ruth said, “I thought...You’re here. But when your mother said she was leaving...”

“You thought I’d be going as well. That makes sense. Wherever she goes, I generally follow. But not this time, Aunt Ruth.” He held out a long wooden spoon for her to taste what appeared to be beef bourguignon. He said, “Are you ready for this? D’you want to eat in the dining room or in here?”

“Thank you, but I’m not very hungry.” What she was was lightheaded, perhaps the result of pain medication on an empty stomach.