she asked. “I imagine you don’t want to go home.”
Susan shook her head. Home? To the apartment she had shared with Mark for so many years, where every object was a reminder of him? No, she couldn’t go there. Not now. Maybe not ever.
“I have a spare room,” Eleanor said suddenly. “It’s small, but it’s clean. You can stay with me tonight, and tomorrow you can figure out what to do next.”
Susan wanted to refuse—she already owed this woman so much—but she had no strength left to argue. She just nodded and let Eleanor lead her out of the station, into a taxi, and to an old brick apartment building on the edge of the city.
Eleanor’s apartment was small but cozy. There were plants everywhere: on the windowsills, on shelves, even a pot of geraniums on the refrigerator. It smelled of the same herbs as Eleanor herself: mint, chamomile, and something else faintly familiar. Old photos in wooden frames hung on the walls, embroidered doilies lay on a dresser, and a cuckoo clock ticked quietly in the corner.
“Make yourself at home,” Eleanor said, gesturing to a sofa covered with a plaid blanket. “I’ll put on some tea and find us something to eat. You haven’t had a real meal all day.”
Susan sat on the sofa and looked around. It was so different from the apartment she shared with Mark—modern, with sleek furniture and the minimalist design he loved. This place was old-fashioned and simple, but it felt genuinely warm. Like her grandmother’s house in the country, where Susan used to spend her summer vacations.
Eleanor returned with a tray: tea in a plump teapot, a plate of homemade pastries, and honey in a glass jar. She sat opposite Susan in an old armchair with worn arms and began to pour the tea.
“Eat,” she said. “They’re apple turnovers, I baked them yesterday. And don’t think about anything for now. You can think tomorrow. Tonight, you rest.”
Susan took a turnover and bit into it. It was delicious: the pastry was flaky, the filling warm and sweet. She suddenly realized she was starving and ate one, then another, then a third. Eleanor watched her with a quiet smile and kept refilling her teacup.
“There you go,” she said softly. “That’s right. The body knows what it needs.”
When Susan was finally full, she leaned back against the sofa and looked at her host.
“Eleanor,” she said, “tell me about yourself. You said you were a nurse.”
The woman nodded, and a special light came into her eyes, the kind people get when they remember something important.
“Forty years in surgery. Started as a young girl, right out of nursing school. An operating room nurse, you know what that’s like? You stand next to a surgeon for hours, handing him instruments, anticipating his every move. You learn to read people by their eyes, their hands, their breathing. In the OR, there’s no room for error. One wrong move, and the person on that table could die.” She paused, gazing into the past. “I saw a lot in those years. Good and bad. I saw people die and I saw them born. I saw how love can save someone when medicine fails, and how hate can kill more surely than any disease. I learned to notice things other people miss. Not because I’m special, just because of the job.”
“And your family?” Susan asked gently. “Do you have anyone?”
Eleanor shook her head.
“I had a husband once. A good man, a doctor. We worked together. He passed away fifteen years ago—his heart. We never had children. So I live alone, with my plants and my cat. Well, I had a cat, Patches. She died last year. She was old, lived to be eighteen.” There was no self-pity in her voice, only a quiet sadness and acceptance.
“Where were you going on the bus today?” Susan asked.
“To visit a friend in the country. It’s her birthday tomorrow, seventy-five. I wanted to get there early to help her get ready. But, well, you see how things turned out.”
Susan felt a pang of guilt.
“I’m so sorry. Because of me, you didn’t get there, and all this with the police…”
“Nonsense,” Eleanor waved her hand. “I called Nina, explained everything. She understood. I’ll go tomorrow, I’ll still make it. And today? Today I was exactly where I needed to be. With you.”
They sat in silence. It was getting dark outside, and a streetlight cast yellow patterns on the wall. The cuckoo clock chimed eight times.
“Eleanor,” Susan began quietly, almost in a whisper. “Why do you think he did it? We were married for twenty years. Twenty years. Did he hate me all that time? Was he just pretending? Or…” She couldn’t finish. Tears welled up in her eyes again, and she covered her face with her hands.
Eleanor moved to the sofa beside her and put an arm around her shoulders.
“I don’t think he hated you, dear. He probably even loved you, in his own way, the only way he knew how. But there are some people who have something broken inside them. Something important that lets them tell the difference between what’s theirs and what’s not, between love and possession. For people like that, a person isn’t a person—they’re a thing. And a thing can be used, thrown away when it’s no longer convenient. It can even be destroyed if it’s in the way of something else they want.”
Susan looked up, her face wet with tears.
“But the cabin… It’s just a house. A little wooden house on a piece of land. Is that worth a human life? Twenty-five lives?”
Comments are closed.