The Custodian of Paradise Read Online Free Page A

worse.”
    “They’re not like the houses in Quinton. A lot older. But there’s a place out there where you can stay,” he said.
    “What do you mean?” I said, half-expecting him to tell me that there was someone living in Loreburn who would take me in, a family like his, perhaps. Despite his and Irene’s assertions that Loreburn was deserted.
    “There’s a place,” he said. “A house. Part of one. Some rooms that I fixed up. A few years ago. After they stopped using Loreburn as a fishing station in the summer. A kitchen. A place to sleep.”
    What was he telling me, that he and his family had some sort of second home in Loreburn? A summer place where they went when they felt the need to get away from Quinton, which was itself as remote a getaway as could be imagined?
    “Has anyone been in touch with you about me?” I said. “Please tell me if so. Has anyone written to you? Given you money and instructions to take care of me?”
    “Sounds like you ran off from someone or something.” An observation. No invitation in it for me to explain myself.
    “This place. It’s some sort of hunting camp?” I said.
    He shook his head. “Nothing but rabbits on Loreburn.”
    “Then what sort of place? Why did you fix up those rooms?” I couldn’t help it that my tone was accusatory, suspicious.
    “For myself,” he said. “Irene and the youngsters don’t go there. Nothing for them to do out there.”
    “And what is there for you to do out there?” I said.
    “It’s just a place that I fixed up for myself,” he said. “It’s good enough for winter. You can stay there while you write your book.”
    “You
have
heard from someone, haven’t you?”
    “No.”
    “Well then, will you promise me that if someone does contact you—”
    “I won’t tell no one where you are.”
    “What about Irene?”
    “I can’t speak for her.”
    “You understand,” I said, “that I need to be—alone to write my book. Completely alone.”
    He neither spoke nor nodded, just looked out across the water as if surveying it for obstacles.
    “Do you stay out there when the weather’s bad, when you can’t make it back to Quinton, is that it?” I said.
    “I don’t fish nowhere near Loreburn,” he said. “There’s no fish there any more.”
    How forthright he was in telling me, proving to me, that my guess was wrong. Yet he offered not one word more of explanation.
    “If I stay there,” I said, “where will you go? During the times when you used to go to Loreburn? I don’t want to put you out.”
    “The house is fixed up already. You might as well save yourself the trouble of fixing up some place of your own.”
    “It’s really very generous of you. It is. I mean that. But I have no idea how long it will take me to write this book. It might be years. You never know with books.” And indeed, I had no idea how long “it” would take.
    He nodded and looked up as if in consultation with the sky.
    I could well imagine Irene contacting someone about the presence on Loreburn of a woman who would surely perish there unless someone intervened. But Patrick must not have been concerned about Irene or else he would not be going to all this trouble. He must have somehow, in a matter of minutes, reassured her.
    I knew I would stay in his “rooms” and not do something absurd like forswear them in favour of restoring a house of my own. But I felt, aside from trepidatious, faintly cheated from having been reprieved of the challenges I had set myself and for months had been anticipating and mentally preparing for, even looking forward to. I felt like assuring him that contrary to my appearance, my manner and my gender, and my conspicuous disability, I would have been able to do what needed to be done.
    “There’s not much there,” he said, as if I had been thinking out loud and he was reassuring me that he had by no means spared me everything. “I can bring you a few things next time I come out. Pots and pans.”
    “I think