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“Use that one.”
“Oh, that’s for Mr. Hayden, ma’am.”
“We can get him one when he gets back,” Erin said. “Please, sit down. What’s your first name, anyway?”
“Helen, ma’am.”
“Helen it is, then.” Wincing, Erin leaned forward to extend her hand. Mrs. Ramsden’s — Helen’s — was dry and cool. “I’m Erin. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
“Likewise, ma’am. Let me just pour the tea.”
“Sure. If you’d reach me that satchel, too, I’d truly appreciate it. I’d get it myself, but —” She laughed without mirth at her predicament.
“Why don’t I see about fresh ice?”
“It’s fine. Really. Just hand me the satchel. And please, have a seat. I mean it.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The “ma’am” was going to have to go, too, Erin thought. Baby steps. At least they were moving in the right direction. The satchel, on the other hand, was a mess: her sketchbook smeared with mud, her pens and pencils jumbled at the bottom. And the photograph, of course, the glass broken, as Merrow had said. It was unbearable to look upon it, impossible not to. She had to force herself to set it aside and dig out her meds, nearly two dozen jumbo-sized plastic bottles. She counted them, to be sure. She’d been doctor shopping, hoarding, afraid of not being able to get what she needed — wanted, her therapist would have said — in this benighted country. Effexor for the depression. Trazodone and Ambien to help her sleep. Her medicine chest, Charles called it. Her personal pharmacy.
Sometimes she hated Charles.
She shook out a Klonopin — she had half a dozen prescriptions for anxiety, Ativan, Xanax, you name it — and dry-swallowed the pill; then, impulsively, she shook out another one.
Mrs. Ramsden was right about one thing, though: the journey had been too much. The girl at the hotel. That small figure watching from the roadside. We see what we want to see, as her therapist had said, adding, Be careful or you’ll learn to love your chains.
She did not want this. She wanted to be free.
She would never be free.
Mrs. Ramsden — Helen — sat down at last. Sugar and milk, a shy smile across the table. She ignored the vials of medication. She cleared her throat. “You’ll want to know about the household, of course,” she said. “Mr. Harris handles most matters, but he generally gives me free rein in domestic affairs. In addition to myself, there are seven maids. They keep up the larger portion of the house. I’ll introduce you to them soon. I had hoped to do so today, but you’ll want to rest your ankle. I maintain the residential section myself, so you can expect to see me daily.”
“I hope we see a lot of each other. I imagine I’ll be lonely all by myself out here.”
Mrs. Ramsden hesitated. “I’m sure you’ll have plenty of company as soon as you recover from your fall.”
Which was hard to imagine. She and Charles hadn’t entertained in nearly a year now. Even the usual visits after … after Lissa … had been difficult affairs for all involved. While everyone had been generous and kind — their sympathies had certainly been genuine — the unacknowledged specter of Charles and Syrah Nagle had haunted every interaction, dividing her even from her closest friends in the end. You could not easily speak of it, yet you could hardly ignore it. So after the initial flurry of visits — the inundation of more food than she and Charles could ever eat, the follow-up phone calls, the two or three lunch invitations that she had declined — their social life had dwindled to nothing.
“Now, as to the matter of cooking —”
“We’ll cook for ourselves, Mrs. Ramsden.”
“I always cooked for Mr. Hollow.”
“Charles and I have always cooked for ourselves,” Erin said. But this too was a fraught subject, wasn’t it? Her parents had both been functioning alcoholics. The car wreck that had killed them — Erin had been a sophomore in college by then, and the drinking had escalated as soon as she moved out — had been no chance accident. By the time she was twelve, Erin was taking care of her own meals. Even in the early days of their marriage, she and Charles, both of them busy with careers, had more often eaten meals alone than together. Only after Lissa made her debut had Erin made a concerted effort to be home for dinner. Nor did she drink, at least in those days. She would not repeat the mistakes of her parents — or so she had vowed.
Now it didn’t matter, of course.
Now nothing mattered.
She glanced at Lissa’s photograph, helpless to stop herself, but if Mrs. Ramsden noticed, she didn’t say a word. She merely said, “You’re in no shape to cook, are you? And I would wager that your husband is indifferent in the kitchen at best. Husbands usually are. You could use some meat on your bones, if you don’t mind me saying so.”
“Mrs. Ramsden —”
“I serve promptly at five. I will brook no protests, Mrs. Hayden.”
“Can we at least revisit it after I’m on my feet again?” Erin asked, amused that Mrs. Ramsden, for all her deference, had already maneuvered her into asking permission. She had a feeling that she wouldn’t be doing much cooking. Which was just as well, she supposed. It wasn’t like either one of them had spent much time in the kitchen in the last year.
Mrs. Ramsden let the question pass. She smiled. “You’re an artist.”
“I sketch,” Erin said. It was a new endeavor, but it came easily to her. She’d loved drawing as a child. “I’m teaching myself.”
“May I see?”
Erin hesitated.
“I don’t mean to pry.”
“No, it’s fine.” Erin pushed the sketchbook across the table to her.
As Mrs. Ramsden flipped the pages, Erin turned her cup in its saucer, staring at the crest she’d seen at the top of so many letters from the Hollow estate over the last few months: a capital H entwined in green and gold foliage. It put her in mind of the first edition of In the Night Wood, passed from hand to hand down the generations of her family, the baroque initial letter of each fresh chapter. Someday, she supposed, she would have passed it on to Lissa.
“They’re very well done,” Mrs. Ramsden said, turning a page. “You have an eye.” She looked up. “It’s all the same girl, isn’t it?”
Erin bit her lip. Nodded.
“The girl in the photograph there?”
She couldn’t bring herself to answer.
7 (#ulink_9b094bcc-9880-5d5f-9e69-056024311d37)
“Erin?”
Alone in the breakfast room — Mrs. Ramsden had gone about her duties, whatever they were — Erin closed the sketchbook and looked up. The Klonopin had kicked in. She stood outside her emotions, aware of them but detached, an observer of her own inner life. The meds insulated her from her grief and anger, nothing more.
“Dr. Colbeck is here,” Charles said from the door.
Indeed he was. He towered over Charles, a gaunt, ginger giant: ginger hair, ginger beard, all knobby elbows and knees. Six-three or -four, at least, and vastly underfed. Ichabod Crane, she thought. Ichabod Crane was to be her doctor.
“Dr. Colbeck.”
The ginger stranger actually bowed slightly. He put a black medical bag on the table and took in the rows of pill bottles arrayed in front of Erin without expression.
“You’ll excuse me if I don’t get up.”
To his credit, Colbeck ignored this witticism. He smiled. “Please, call me John,” he said. Then: “So you’re the Americans who’ve inherited Hollow House. You’ve been much anticipated hereabouts.”
“Warmly, I hope,” Charles ventured.
“Of course. You’ll find the natives friendly enough, I think.”
“Did you grow up here?” Charles asked.
“Born and bred. My training eroded my accent somewhat; for good or ill I am uncertain.”
“Then you knew our benefactor?” Erin asked.
“Only in a professional sense. I took on Dr. Marshall’s practice ten years ago, when he retired. Mr. Hollow needed little care. He came of hardy stock. He lived to ninety-seven, and I doubt he was ill a day of it until the final crisis overtook him. He was a reclusive man. Cillian Harris attended to most of his affairs.”
“You’ll find us more approachable, I hope,” Charles said.
“I’m sure I will.” Colbeck cleared his throat. “Let’s have a look at that ankle.”
He knelt and took the ankle in question into his big hands. Erin winced, the pain brief but not insignificant. Then Colbeck was saying, “You appear to have a sprain, Mrs. Hayden, and a minor one at that. You should be up and around in a day or two. In the meantime” — he opened his bag, which, despite the rank of shiny instruments on view, disgorged nothing more sinister than an ankle brace — “in the meantime,” he said, “you seem to be doing the right things. Rest and elevation and ice, though no more than twenty minutes at a stretch. Compression” — he held up the brace — “helps as well, and you’ll need some support when you get back on your feet. Easy enough, yes? I can fetch some crutches from the car, if you like.”
“Why don’t you —” Charles started to say, but Erin overrode him.
“I think I’ll be fine.”
“I think so, too. The brace should be sufficient. Weight is the key. What your ankle wants is weight. Twenty-four hours, and then you’ll start trying to get up and around, won’t you. You can alternate paracetamol and ibuprofen for pain every two hours or so. Three or four days and you’ll be good as new.”
He leaned over to close his bag, and that was when his gaze fell on the photograph. “Oh my, she’s a lovely young girl. Your daughter, I presume.”
“Yes,” Charles said. “Our daughter. Lissa. Back home.”
The words hung in the air like undetonated bombs. Erin could not speak, but if Colbeck noticed anything, he didn’t acknowledge it. He just snapped the bag closed and stood, saying, “Nobody mentioned anything about a daughter.”
8 (#ulink_49b8ac44-786e-52f0-b4b5-0ced3e08da53)
Charles saw Colbeck out.
In the front yard, the doctor said, “What happened to your daughter, Mr. Hayden?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Your daughter. She must be, what, five, six at the most? One doesn’t usually leave a child that age behind when one plans an indefinite stay abroad.” He turned to look at Charles, his eyes knowing.
Charles stared back, something tightening in his chest. “I’m not sure it’s anything for you to concern yourself with, Doctor.” Just at the edge of rudeness, maybe a hair across.
If Colbeck noticed, he didn’t seem to care. He said, “You may have noticed that your wife had twenty-two vials of medication on that table, Mr. Hayden. I counted. You may also have noticed how remote Yarrow is. Unless you intend to drive to a surgery in Ripon every time you have a head cold, I’m likely to be your physician. It is in fact my business to know.”
Colbeck held Charles’s gaze. Charles looked away, surveying the green mass of the Eorl Wood. “She died,” he said.
“And your wife?”
“She hasn’t adjusted well. She blames me. There was an accident.”
“An accident?”
“And that really isn’t your business, Dr. Colbeck.”
Colbeck didn’t push it, though Charles, still staring at the wood, could sense his scrutiny. After a time, he said, “How long ago did this happen?”
“Almost a year ago. I could name the time to the day and hour if you must know. In your capacity as my physician.”
Colbeck didn’t take the bait. He sighed. After a time, he said, “I can offer you little in the way of comfort. I’m very sorry for your loss. I’m very, very sorry. Words are inadequate. But your stay here won’t heal matters between you and your wife. It may not heal at all, and if it does, it will leave a scar, quite a bad one. Sometimes marriages survive the loss of a child, more often not. In cases where one spouse blames the other …” Colbeck shrugged. “In the meantime, it might help to talk about it.”
“Erin was seeing a counselor at home.”
“And you?”
“No.”
“Perhaps you should consider it.”
“Perhaps.”
“I can give you the names of some good people. You’ll have to drive into Ripon for that, but I think the trip might be worth it.”
“That would be fine.”
“But you won’t go.”
“No.”
“Your wife —”
“I doubt it.”
“Well, I’ll ring you with the names all the same,” Colbeck said.
Charles turned to face him. “I should check on Erin now.”
Colbeck nodded. “Ice, twenty minutes on, twenty minutes off, Mr. Hayden. Try to get her up and moving tomorrow. It will be tender for a while.”
“Yes.”
“Good afternoon, then.”
“Thank you for coming out.”
“You’re quite welcome.” Colbeck paused. “At the risk of overstepping my bounds, Mr. Hayden, may I offer you two further pieces of advice before I go?”
“Why not?”
“In the matter of your wife, I counsel patience. These things take time. Fits and starts. Two steps forward, one step back is the rule. But even such halting progress gets you there in the end.”
