“Things are just… really intense at work at the moment. And I seem to be letting old things get to me too”. A half truth, she offered non-specifically.

Clay took his eyes off the road just long enough to cast a look over his sister. She had lost too much weight recently and the shadows under her eyes were worrying him. He had lost enough family members to be genuinely petrified of something happening to Spencer. He wanted to see her happy but that hadn’t happened in a very long time.

“You should think about coming and staying with Ada and me” he offered. “You know we’d love to have you, and the kids would be over the moon”.

Spencer smiled at the thought of her nephew and niece.

“Just for a little while” Clay added, in his most tempting voice. Then he decided to go all out for begging… “Pweetty pwease”.

Spencer laughed and slapped him on the arm.

“Maybe. For a little while.” She sighed. “I’m just a lot busy at work now so I couldn’t run away now Clay, no matter how much I wanted to.”

It was an unfortunate truth. And she was going to get busier as of Monday.

Clay nodded, and wisely let the topic drop. They spent the rest of the journey half in companionable silence and half in idle chit chat. Spencer caught up on the gossip in her brothers life and he found out none of hers. A typical drive for the two of them. As they got closer to their destination they both got quieter, and the air in the car thickened.

They pulled off the main road on to a small side avenue lined with trees, and turned off that soon after, into a driveway. They passed through a red brick gate, the iron wrought bars of the door pulled back, and drove up a neat gravel until they parked in front of a large, stately building made of the same brick as the walls surrounding the estate.

Spencer sighed again, wondering if she made any other noise lately, stepped out of the car and stared morosely at the building. Clay locked up and checked his watch.

“Dad should be here already. I offered to pick him up, but he said he’d meet us here.”