Oh yes, she knew what was coming.
‘Whereisshe? I swear to you, Nick, I took my eyes off her for a second while I was seeing to Maura O’Shea’s leg. I’d beentrailing up and down the whole village looking for her when Alex rang. Where is she?’
‘Here,’ he said, in a surprisingly calm voice. ‘Don’t fret yourself, Patricia. She’s safe. She made it to the house.’
‘Anything could have happened to her. The little devil. You let her run wild, Nick. You always have. You and Sally both. No discipline, that’s your problem. No discipline at all.’
Nick drew in a breath and the air went decidedly chilly, and not through anything paranormal. Not this time.
‘Patricia, this isn’t the time.’
Alex had never heard him use that tone with anyone before. She’d thought his relationship with Sally’s mother was fine but this…this was weird.
‘No, this isexactlywhat I’m talking about. You hole yourself away up here, because of all the nonsense Sally put in your head, and in that child’s head. No wonder she hares off up here at the slightest provocation. She’s frantic to be with you, Nick. You’re all she has left. But neither of you should be here. You should have left when my Sally died. You should never have come back here. Everyone knows that, everyone says it. The whole place is cursed. Every dog in the street knows that. Those bastard de Wildes have brought us nothing but misery. Even now.’
Alex backed up, horrified to be overhearing any of this.
‘Patricia—’ Nick said again, trying to placate her with his tone before she said something more, but it was too late now.
‘Yes, the de Wildes. It’s always the de Wildes, isn’t it? First that Theo, with Sally mooning over him when she had a perfectly good man in you. And you, staying with him after Sally died. Even though it washisfault. And nowher.’
Patricia turned on Alex, glaring at her. She didn’t even look like the same woman. Not anymore. The kindly doctor was gone and Alex didn’t know what was in her place.
‘Don’t think I don’t see you there, Alexandra de Wilde. This is allyourfault. You swan back in here, stirring it all up again, waking up what should be left to lie. You and your whole cursed family.’
CHAPTER 35
NICK
It wasn’t the first time Maeve had taken off. It wouldn’t be the last either, Nick was sure.
‘She’s a runner, that one,’ Patricia had said as soon as the child could walk.
Maeve ran every opportunity she got and she never looked back. Nick had never been sure if it was because she knew someone would come after her or if it didn’t occur to her that she might actually get lost. Not at three, not at five, not now at six. She knew the woods, and the house, she knew the village like the back of her hand and all the paths in between, across the fields and through the woods. Her little feet always led her back here, to Wildewood Hall.
And once they lost Sally, Maeve had wanted to be nowhere else.
‘With her da,’ the villagers had said, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. And it ought to have been. She had lost her mother so she wanted to be with her father. As if she was afraid of losing him too. But Nick feared it was something else. She didn’t want to be with him so much as here, in the Hall. Where the spirit of her lost mother still lingered. Where she had friends.
And he had to be here too. Because who else was going to guard the place, to keep the spirits from doing untold harm? Patricia might think that everything Sally believed was arrant nonsense but that didn’t change anything.
And now Patricia was blaming Alex? No. No, that wasn’t fair. If all this was anyone’s fault, it was his.
He should have been firmer with Maeve. He should have abandoned the Hall and the woods like Patricia said, or found some way to juggle this better.
If there was such a way.
But it was far too late now.
‘Enough, Patricia,’ he said, his voice far darker in tone, the voice he used for the woods, not for his mother-in-law, intentionally drawing her fire on him. ‘This isn’t Alex’s fault. I know you’re angry. I know you’re scared. But Maeve’s here. She’s fine.’
Patricia snorted. She definitely was not herself today. Nick shot her a glare but she ignored him. ‘I can’t watch her all the time. I’ve got a practice to run, and there’s no one else to do it.’
‘I told you I’d pay for a childminder,’ Nick began. It was an old argument, one he really didn’t want to rehash again, especially not now.
‘And who is that going to be? Some idiot like one of the Murphy girls? Faces never out of their phones. Our Maeve would run rings around them and you know it.’
It was not the time to point out that Maeve was already running rings around Patricia or they wouldn’t be here.
