Compared to that, odd occurrences like the ones this morning were more than manageable. Vera finished the rooms without further incident and moved on to her midday lunch shift in the pub.
By the time she even had a moment to think, the last guests had gone and she’d cleared all the tables. It was four p.m. She weaved through the empty tables, working from the back toward the front window, pushing in chairs and wiping down tabletops. She noticed a few spots of heavy crumbs on the floor and turned to get the broom from behind the bar but was startled to realize she wasn’t alone. Where moments before had sat an empty chair, now it was occupied by someone wearing a hooded robe, their back to her.
After the initial jolt, she continued toward the bar.
“So sorry,” she said, “dinner service doesn’t begin until five. Tea’s available in about a three-minute walk in any direction if you—” She stopped as the man tilted his head up, revealing his face.
Though he was in a cloak and not smartly dressed anymore, it was unmistakably the man from this morning. The corner of her mouth tugged upward. She hadn’t pegged him as the druid, new-age type. Vera was pleasantly surprised to have gotten him wrong.
“Oh. Hello again,” she said.
He smiled, and it was just like that morning. He looked sad. “May I have a word, Vera?”
She stiffened. He’d called her by name this morning, too.
“Erm, all right,” she said. “Is … is there something I can help you with?”
“A great many, many things, I should think.” He gestured at the chair across from him. “Please, sit.”
Very hesitantly, almost in slow motion, she sat across from him and positioned her chair farther from the table, creating extra space between them.
“Vera,” he said, “you aren’t who you think you are.”
Her eyebrows shot up as the hairs on the back of her arms sounded the beginnings of an alarm.
“Sir,” she said, forcing the politeness, “you’ve never met me. You don’t know me. As I said, the pub’s closed.”
She stood quickly and was ready to tell him off further when he fixed her with a piercing gaze. It stopped her.
“I know a great deal more than you do,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper.
Chills rose on both arms now. Vera had dealt with drunks and creeps of all ilk but never anyone whose focus centered on her. As every ounce of her gut screamed at her to leave, she stood rooted on the spot, trying to figure out what to say to someone who had so entirely disarmed her.
His eyes flashed away from Vera’s toward the doorway behind her. She heard a clatter and the crash of porcelain before she turned to see. Allison was standing there with silverware and broken plates splayed about her feet. Vera’s instinct was to rush to help her mother clean up the pieces, but she was transfixed by the horrified recognition on Allison’s face.
“Good gracious. It …” Allison’s voice wavered, thick with emotion. “Is it—it can’t be time already?”
Vera’s eyes ping-ponged back and forth between them. There was pity on the man’s face. He nodded at Allison, a minute gesture.
Her mum looked as shattered as the dishes on the floor.
“What’s wrong? What’s happening?” Vera asked. She heard the panic rising in her voice, and she hated it. She dropped her hands on the table to steady herself.
Allison stood there, shaking her head in tiny, frantic movements. Something was deeply wrong. In all of Vera’s life, she’d never seen her mum like this.
The man lay his hand on top of Vera’s fingers. She wasn’t sure why she didn’t pull away.
“Why don’t you sit back down?” he asked quietly, gently. “Allison, you should join us, too. And maybe a medicinal drink would be wise?”
Vera pulled her hand away from him as she sank back into the chair. Allison crossed the pub like a ghost. The joy that usually lit her face, crinkling around her eyes in deep lines from years of laughter, was gone. Allison grabbed three glasses and a bottle of whiskey from behind the bar and set them on the table.
She gave each of them a robust pour. Vera hadn’t noticed how much grey streaked through her mother’s hair before now.
Allison took a drink and stared at the man, so Vera turned to him too.
“There’s no way to say this without sounding completely mad, so I’m going to say it bluntly,” he said when Vera met his eyes.
“Vera, dear, I think you know that Allison and Martin are not your birth parents?”
