Chapter 40 - The Solitary Matriarch
That evening, I hosted a quiet dinner. There were no seventy guests, no society snobs sipping champagne while recording my every breath on smartphones, and no trick birthday cakes loaded with pyrotechnics.
There was only Mrs. Gable, Arthur, and Sheriff Marcus.
We dined on roast chicken, fresh bread, and garden vegetables at the small table in the breakfast nook. We laughed about old times, remembered the ridge before the superhighways and the internet, and spoke of the children who would soon fill the halls of the manor with music and laughter.
When the guests departed around nine o'clock, the sheriff tipped his hat to me just as he had weeks before. "Sleep peacefully tonight, Miss Evelyn. The whole valley is watching over you."
"Thank you, Marcus," I said, locking the heavy oak door behind him.
I walked through the quiet rooms, running my fingers over the polished banisters. The ghosts were gone. Thomas was at peace; Donald Mercer’s ashes had blown away; Tyler’s cruel laughter was locked behind federal iron bars.
I climbed the grand staircase to my bedroom on the second floor, feeling a profound, deep serenity that I had not experienced in decades. I slipped into my nightgown, sat at my dressing table, and brushed my silver hair.
I looked into the mirror. The wrinkles around my eyes were deep, carved by eighty years of joy, tragedy, perseverance, and triumph. I was no longer a victim of a grandson’s prank, nor the unwitting guardian of an arsonist’s son. I was simply myself: Evelyn, master of her own fate.
I climbed into bed, pulled the thick down quilt up to my chin, and closed my eyes, listening to the gentle sigh of the wind through the tall pines outside my window.
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For the first time in months, sleep came effortlessly, deep and dreamless.
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