A Place of Hiding

“Thank you, Margaret. It’s good of you to offer, but I must handle it myself. I must...and I will. Soon. When...when it feels right to do so.”


“Yes,” Margaret murmured. “Of course.” She watched her sister-inlaw scoot her needle in and out of the canvas and fix it into place, indicating the conclusion of her work for the moment. She tried to sound like the incarnation of empathy, but inside she was champing at the bit to know exactly how her former husband had distributed his immense fortune. Specifically, she wanted to learn the manner in which he’d remembered Adrian. Because although while living he’d refused their son the money he needed for his new business, Guy’s death surely had to benefit Adrian in ways that his life had not. And that would bring Carmel Fitzgerald and Adrian back together again, wouldn’t it? Which would see Adrian married at last: a normal man leading a normal life with no more peculiar little incidents to worry about. Ruth had gone to a small drop-front desk, where she’d picked up a delicate shadowbox frame. In this was encased one half of a locket, which she gazed at longingly. It was, Margaret saw, that tedious parting gift from Maman, handed over at the boat dock. Je vais conserver l’autre moitié, meschéris. Nous le reconstituerons lorsque nous nous retrouverons. Yes, yes, Margaret wanted to say. I know you bloody miss her, but we’ve business to conduct.

“Sooner is better than later, though, dearest,” Margaret said gently.

“You ought to speak to him. It’s rather important.”

Ruth set the frame down but continued to look at it. “It won’t change things, speaking to anyone,” she said.

“But it will clarify them.”

“If clarity’s needed.”

“You do need to know how he wanted...well, what his wishes were. You do need to know that. With an estate as large as his is going to be, forewarned is forearmed, Ruth. I’ve no doubt his advocate would agree with me. Has he contacted you, by the way? The advocate? After all, he must know...”

“Oh yes. He knows.”

Well, then? Margaret thought. But she said soothingly, “I see. Yes. Well, all in good time, my dear. When you feel you’re ready.”

Which would be soon, Margaret hoped. She didn’t want to have to stay on this infernal island any longer than was absolutely necessary. Ruth Brouard knew this about her sisterin-law. Margaret’s presence at LeReposoir had nothing to do with her failed marriage to Guy, with any sorrow or regret she might feel about the manner in which she and Guy had parted, or even with respect she might have thought appropriate to show at his terrible passing. Indeed, the fact that she’d so far not shown the least bit of curiosity about who had murdered Ruth’s brother indicated where her true passion lay. In her mind, Guy had pots of money and she meant to have her ladle-full. If not for herself, then for Adrian. Vengeful bitch was what Guy had called her. She’s got a collection of doctors willing to testify that he’s too unstable to be anywhere but with his bloody mother, Ruth. But she’s the one ruining the pathetic boy. The last time I saw him, he was covered with hives. Hives. At his age. God, she’s quite mad.

So it had gone year after year, with holiday visits cut short or canceled till the only opportunity Guy had to meet his son was in his ex-wife’s watchful presence. She bloody stands guard, Guy had seethed. Probably because she knows if she didn’t, I’d tell him to cut the apron strings...with a hatchet if necessary. There’s nothing wrong with that boy that a few years in a decent school wouldn’t sort out. And I’m not talking one of those cold-baths-in-the-morning and straps-on-the-backsides places, either. I’m talking about a modern school where he’d learn self-sufficiency which he isn’t about to learn as long as she keeps him attached to her side like a barnacle.

But Guy had never won the day over that. The result was poor Adrian as he was now, thirty-seven years old with no single talent or quality upon which he could draw to define himself. Unless an uninterrupted line of failures at everything from team sports to male-female relationships could be deemed a talent. Those failures could be laid directly at the feet of Adrian’s relationship with his mother. One didn’t need a degree in psychology to arrive at that conclusion. But Margaret would never see it that way, lest she have to take some form of responsibility for her son’s enduring problems. And that, by God, she would never do. That was Margaret to the core. She was a don’t-blame -me, pullyourself-up-by-your-bootstraps sort of woman. If you couldn’t pull yourself up by the bootstraps you were given, then you damn well ought to cut the bootstraps off.