Hilltop House

Maeve, Eleven

Finally--finally--she found her opportunity. It happened haphazardly, when she wasn't expecting it, which was usually about the way such things tended to occur. It was Wednesday, only a few nights since the old man's body had been found outside her house, and she was helping a similar old man (likely on the verge of dying, himself, though at least not in someone's backyard) make his way to the dining hall for dinner. He'd been complaining about something and she'd been responding as mildly and mindlessly as she could get away with, when suddenly, Maeve caught sight of Martha Heyward's floaty head of hair as they passed the recreation room.

The recreation room sounded more exciting than it was. Theoretically, it was a place for the old people to play games and craft and socialize, but most of what happened was people sat around and stared at things, lost in their own prisons of forgetfulness. While Maeve often tried to avoid the room for its depressing discordance--preferred to keep busy washing linens and transporting people--she made a sharp right turn into it when she saw Martha. Mr. Schuyler, her charge, didn't even seem to notice at first that they'd veered off the trek to the dining hall. Maeve rolled him to a group of other residents and parked him, then moved a little slowly, a little hesitantly, toward a window, where the old woman sat on a couch. She wasn't in a wheelchair today; she had a walker in front of her. But she was alone, no Pam in sight.

Martha was staring at nothing in particular, and even when Maeve sat down calmly next to her, hardly shifting the cushion, the old woman didn't seem to notice. Maeve hadn't been so close to her before, but now that she was, it was clear that while there was a strong resemblance to her mother, this person was not Luce. Still, Maeve couldn't ignore the uncanny sense that she was sitting next to someone who was, somehow, intensely familiar to her.

"Hi," she began, quietly, scanning the room for any other employee who may be wondering why she'd forgotten Mr. Schuyler. "My name is Maeve."

Nothing from the old woman. Not even a blink.

Maeve swallowed. "Martha, I want to ask you about . . . about your house. I heard there was a fire."

Several seconds passed with no change, and then, unexpectedly, one of the old woman's hands raised up off her lap and curled its fingers over Maeve's. Martha turned, slowly, and grinned, her wrinkled face a mask of something almost sinister. "No, dear. That was your house, not mine."

Maeve pulled her hand out of Martha's grasp. "Y-you're mistaken. My house is just fine."

Something entirely aware crept into Martha's eyes, dispelling any senility she'd appeared to possess. "Are you sure about that? Your past will always find you, Maeve."

Maeve leapt up from the couch, as much from the look Martha had given her as from the woman's words. Her heart pounded in her ears; she backed away several paces, her eyes on the old lady, and suddenly bumped into someone.

"Isn't Mr. Schuyler supposed to be eating? St. David's hall is down there, right now." It was Pam, or whatever her name was, and she looked irked. "You'd better go on, then."

Maeve was fine with the rebuke; she wanted nothing more than to get away from Martha Heyward, who was staring into space again, the way she'd been when Maeve had first approached. Taking hold of Mr. Schuyler's wheelchair, Maeve hurried him out of the recreation room, not looking back for anything. Whatever had just happened there made so little sense that Maeve was tempted to try to convince herself it hadn't happened at all.

She was always good at trying to pretend things hadn't happened, but she was seldom successful.

The rest of her shift passed uneventfully. Maeve breathed a little easier when she returned to the St. David hall and carried out her time there. At least there was no chance of seeing Martha again. Clearly, the old woman was suffering from some sort of dementia, as so many of them were; the cognizance she'd thought she'd seen in Martha's eyes hadn't really been there. Maeve's own paranoia had probably contributed to her interpretation of their conversation. She'd lived half of her life in confusion and fear; everything caused her worry.