Total pages in book: 164
Estimated words: 156728 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 784(@200wpm)___ 627(@250wpm)___ 522(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 156728 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 784(@200wpm)___ 627(@250wpm)___ 522(@300wpm)
Daisy’s throat tightened. After all this time, her mother would finally have the proper resting place she deserved. “Right under the pink cherry blossom tree.”
“I’ll be there.”
Once Maryanne left, she started on the dishes. Maggie yawned, and Daisy shooed her away. “I’ll take care of this. You go to bed.”
Maggie squeezed Daisy’s shoulder on her way out of the kitchen. “That was a good thing you did.”
Daisy nodded but didn’t trust herself to speak. Her heart was full, despite being bruised. And for the first time since the feast, she felt like she could breathe easily again.
“Air that doesn’t smell of hunger,” she whispered to herself, smiling, as she slowly washed the dishes.
She dried the Dutch oven and returned it to the shelf, wiped down the counter, and folded the tea towel into a neat square beside their new blue toaster. The envelope sat against the backsplash like an afterthought, catching Daisy’s eye as she shut off the overhead lights.
She picked it up and slid her thumb beneath the sealed flap, already pulling open the cabinet that hid the bin. Her fleeting thought about the aggressiveness with which junk mail arrived cut off as she unfolded the paper inside, and the world tilted off its axis.
“Oh, my god.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Daybreak
The staff opened the pool on the first of June, as they did every year, draining the winter’s stagnant weight and refilling it with water so clear it mirrored the sky.
Jack stood on the back veranda, as two groundsmen folded back the heavy canvas cover and a third skimmed the surface, sweeping away the debris. The morning air carried the faint mineral scent of limestone and chlorine, as salt air blew onto the terrace from the sea.
Steam rose from the blue water as the morning chill lingered past its welcome. Spring seemed reluctant to leave, forcing summer to arrive slanted and tentative, almost apologetic in exhausted shades of gold.
“Water’s a comfortable thirty-two degrees, sir.”
“Thank you, Tom. Looks like a fine day for a swim.”
The gardener worked at the ledge where a low bed of flowers bloomed. The hedgerows had thickened into walls of glossy green. If he squinted his eyes and looked far enough, he’d see a speck of black in the distance, where The Preserve rested like a hibernating bear.
They were all islands.
People assumed loneliness was a condition of the poor, a consequence of too little, but loneliness lived just as comfortably in excess. He recognized its shape in every empty room of Thornfield Manor. The way his footsteps echoed off marble floors. The way one dinner plate filled a table built for twelve. No matter Jack’s circumstances, the silence at the center of his life remained constant.
He bore it, not with bravery or grace but with the dull, mechanical acceptance of a man who expected nothing more. Jack made peace with his solitary life in slow, grinding increments, the way a man makes peace with a terminal diagnosis.
Cursed to always be a distant observer. A protector that no one watched long enough to recognize. His path had been carved by his own design, of course, so he accepted it with unquivering resignation.
Daisy would live her life and he would ensure the cold never touched her again. A silent guardian who watched from the shadows, but never dared to interfere.
She would settle into a home filled with love and laughter. Her children would never know hunger the way they did. They would never know the brave things their mother did for their security, and that was the modest beauty of it. They never had to.
The world was full of whispered secrets. The more comfortable a person became, the easier the seedy truth became to ignore.
He wanted her to forget. Every struggle. Every tear. Every scream. He wished her a life of ease and pleasure, knowing all too well the pain of memories that overstayed their welcome.
His memory was long and filled with sharp, jagged edges he wouldn’t wish on anyone. Like a guest that lingered too long after a party ended, he viewed the world with sobering hindsight.
The silence in the absence of music. The unquenchable thirst for distraction after the champagne had run dry. It was a perpetual, haunting hangover that never faded, but it was also the only way he knew how to live.
So he accepted it.
“Pool’s ready for you, sir.”
Jack set down his tea and stripped out of his silk robe. “Thank you, boys. There are fresh scones in the dining room. Myrtle made them this morning. Help yourselves.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Setting a towel on the settee, he dove into the water.
The cold seized him like a fist, but his body quickly adapted. He swam beneath the surface, eyes open, watching the pale blue world distort above. Sunlight fractured and sound vanished.
There was a time when silence nearly destroyed him. The quiet before a heavy footfall. The click of a door. The chime of a bell. Silence threw every other sound into such sharp contrast, the smallest rustling could crash like a wave and leave a person drowning in fear.