The Caretakers Read Online Free

suffocate if you keep that up?”
    Evelyn made as to draw breath, but Miss Erish raised a finger: not yet .
    â€œYou will not,” said Miss Erish. “No matter how you may wish it—no matter how strong your will, your flesh will betray it.”
    Evelyn let her breath out and heaved another in.
    â€œAnd yet. Your will, it might be stronger than that ,” Miss Erish reproved.
    Evelyn dared say nothing.
    â€œThe river gave me up, too. Eventually. It drew me, still and furious, through villages and the great golden cities, across a broad delta beneath palms, and through reeds, and on the tide to the sea with the fisher-boats. I was a great beauty then. More beautiful than you. Can you imagine?”
    Evelyn simply nodded. Miss Erish arched her back as though preening. Her eyes never left Evelyn.
    â€œThere was drinking last evening,” she said. “You didn’t attend, did you? I know that Mr. Hunter would have preferred you had. He thinks about you a great deal. He is in love with you. There. It is out.”
    Miss Erish finally turned to look at the screen of her tablet.
    â€œDid you encourage him?” she asked softly.
    â€œOnce,” said Evelyn.
    â€œOnly once?”
    â€œPerhaps more.”
    â€œAh. Well. No matter.” Miss Erish turned her tablet’s face down, so the light squeezed into a thin glow around its edge and Miss Erish was in shadow. “Mr. Allen has seen to him.”
    Evelyn wasn’t precisely sure what she had meant by seen to him . It could mean a great many things, owing to the absence of both Leslie Hunter and Bill Allen from this hotel suite into which Miss Erish had let herself. Evelyn wasn’t sure—but she thought she knew.
    Miss Erish’s joints popped and groaned as she settled forward in her chair.
    â€œUp on the roof,” said Miss Erish, “there is a patio and a swimming pool, adjacent to the health club. It is closed now owing to the weather and so private. The pool has a tarpaulin covering it. That is where he took Mr. Hunter.”
    And that is where he saw to him .
    Evelyn sat perfectly still, or rather her body did. The terror had been creeping up on her for some time, maybe since she left the airport for the hotel, through the night alone in this very room …
    No, it had begun sooner than that. Maybe in another bed, long ago, another cold, empty-bellied night—so awful that Evelyn could barely recall it except in the abstract … in the same abstract manner that she could recall her own gratitude now to her rescuer.
    â€œThere is no water in the pool this time of year,” said Miss Erish. “The flesh will not let the will have its way alone.”
    â€œDid he…”
    Evelyn felt the air in her lungs thickening like water now.
    â€œHe promised he would,” she said, “and Mr. Allen has never let me down. I have at least that one friend.”
    At that, Evelyn found her voice. “I love you. I am your friend.” But she didn’t, and she wasn’t, not at that moment. Miss Erish shook her head slowly.
    â€œI really didn’t escape that river until long after it stopped flowing,” she said, “in the wide sea. There was no land in sight when I rose from it—no fisher, nor ibis nor gull nor albatross. You have heard me tell this before, haven’t you? I forget myself.”
    Evelyn had drawn her knees up to her chin. The windows in this room were double-paned and thick, but she could hear wind outside. It made her think about the empty swimming pool overhead, the tarpaulin straining at its moorings, snow sheeting across it and slipping underneath, gathering over Leslie’s cooling tear ducts.
    â€œI’ve been trying to reach Miss Retson on her phone,” said Miss Erish. “She’s turned it off.”
    â€œNo,” said Evelyn. She explained about the battery in Andrea’s phone. Miss Erish looked skeptical.
    â€œYou have a