When the final bell rang, Finn bolted from his seat and ran for the door of the classroom as quickly as he could without looking like a total jackass. He didn’t hear Mrs. Morris tell him to slow down, and he moved too quickly through the halls of the school for either the teachers or the hall monitors to tell him to stop running. Through the swinging front doors he flew, taking the steps three at a time till he hit the pavement, still running.
He had to get to the high school. He had to see the girl. If he didn’t, he would die. It was that simple. She’d been all he was able to think of all afternoon, and he was now sure that he was in love with her. And he didn’t even know her name.
Finn, out of breath, found the girl standing under the same elm tree where she’d sat having lunch an eternity of hours ago. Though out of breath, he still managed to come to a relatively inconspicuous stop not far from where the girl stood. In his mind, he pictured himself as a cartoon figure caught doing whatever he was not supposed to be doing, and whistling innocently with his head in the air. What? Who, me? Not a thing, officer. I just happened to be barrelling down this street at a hundred and fifty miles an hour. Girl? What girl? I’m not following a GIRL!
Finn prayed she hadn’t noticed him, and his prayers were answered again: she clearly hadn’t noticed him. She hadn’t looked up from the sheet of paper she was staring at.
A group of noisily shouting children from the primary school ran past on the other side of the street. Startled by the sound, the girl looked up and saw Finn staring at her.
Here it comes, Finn thought. This is where she looks at me with disgust and says, “Eeew, what do you want, you creepy little kid? Get lost! Stop staring at me, or my boyfriend will put your head through a wall!”
Instead, the girl smiled, and said, “Hi there.” She stood expectantly until Finn realized she was waiting for him to say “hi” back to her.
“Hi,” Finn said. “You new in town?” Feeling stupid, he added, “You must be new in town. I’ve never seen you before.” Then he felt even more stupid, because it made him sound like he knew every girl in town, which he didn’t. Moron, Finn raged to himself. You’re such a goddamn MORON.
“Yeah,” she said. Finn thought she had a beautiful voice. Her cadence was unlike any other he’d heard. He thought this was what Rachel van Helsing might sound like—sophisticated, vaguely foreign. Totally sexy. “I’m new,” she added. “Really new. I just arrived last night. It’s my first day in town.” She walked over to where Finn was standing and put out her hand. “My name is Morgan. Morgan Parr.”
“Wow,” he said. “Parr, just like the town. You sure moved to the right place! Ha ha!”
“Well, I’m staying with my grandmother. Up on the hill. My family sort of named the town, or something, so maybe it’s not so weird?” The girl sounded embarrassed, instead of snooty, maybe even apologetic. Finn was immediately mortified by what he’d said.
“Sorry, I didn’t know. I mean . . . I’m sorry I laughed. I’m not sorry that your last name is Parr. Like I said, everyone in town knows everyone else here, so when someone new comes to town—which they never do— everyone notices. Especially if they’re kids. Which they never are. So . . . welcome, I guess. Where you from?” Stupid, stupid, stupid. You sound like a babbling idiot.
“Toronto,” Morgan said. “My dad . . . well, my dad died a while back, and this is where my mom and dad were from. So we came back. Well, my mother and my uncle came back. I’ve never been here before.” She paused. “You never told me your name.”
“Finnegan,” he said, and then added before she could, “like the dog puppet on Mr. Dressup, on TV.”
“We didn’t have a TV at home,” she said wistfully. “My parents didn’t think it was good for me. I never saw that show. Nice name, though.”
“I hate it.”
“Why? It’s beautiful. It sounds Irish or something.”
“You’re just being nice,” he said. “It sounds like the name of a dog on a television show. Nobody is named ‘Finnegan.’”
“Well, it doesn’t sound like the name of a dog on television to me,” she said. “Besides, try living with a name like ‘Morgan.’ My dad called me ‘Sprite,’ but that just sounded like a soft drink to most people, so we just kept it between us. No one else is allowed to call me anything but ‘Morgan.’” She looked at her watch. “Gee, I have to get home. My grandmother seems to be pretty tough about being on time.” She looked at him quizzically. “Hey, Finn, do you live far from here? Do you want to walk for a bit? I don’t know anyone in town. I could use the company.”
“Sure,” Finn said. Then, daringly, “Can I carry your books for you?”
She laughed. “No, I’m OK with the books. They’re not heavy. But thanks, anyway. I’ll be happy for the company.”
They walked through the streets of Parr’s Landing, with Finn guiding Morgan. Her directional recall, honed by years of living in a busy city led her to suspect that Finn was taking her the long way home, but she didn’t mind. She was less worried about her grandmother’s schedule than she’d let on, since there was an hour and a half yet till dinner and she had no desire to see Adeline before then. Finn seemed interested in her life, and what she had to say. He pointed out local landmarks—the Church of St. Barthélemy and the Martyrs, the Parr’s Landing Library, Harper’s where he got his comic books. Finn never stopped talking. After months in close quarters with only her mother, and occasionally Uncle Jeremy for company, she was happy for the proximity of another young person, especially as she’d been more or less ignored by everyone in her class that day. It was as though she had been marked not only as an outsider, but also as an off-limits outsider. There had been no overt hostility that she could detect, but no warmth, either.
She wondered if this had been some of her grandmother’s doing, though how—or why, for that matter—was a mystery. It would be one thing for Adeline to be able to order her mother and uncle around, but if her scope of influence included not just the administrators of her school, but even her fellow students, her grandmother was in a league of her own.
Finn, on the other hand, seemed eager for her company. Morgan hadn’t had a great deal of experience with boys, but as a lifelong pretty girl, she had been the recipient of crushes before, and was adept at recognizing them. Unlike other girls, however, she didn’t cherish crushes, or collect them as tributes. What she felt for the boys who brought their adoration to her was compassion and empathy. Even at fifteen, she knew that the boys who were drawn to her were putting themselves out on a limb. And here was Finnegan Miller of Parr’s Landing, Ontario walking her home. She had seen Mr. Dressup—of course she had, everyone had—though she would never have admitted this to a boy who was that sensitive about sharing a name with a dog puppet.
He was cute, Morgan thought. It was too bad he was so young. He was going to be a very handsome boy when he was a little older. “So, how old are you, Finn?” Morgan asked as casually as possible. Her fingers trailed along a hedge as she passed, and she didn’t look at him when she asked the question.
“Twelve,” Finn replied. He looked down and kicked a pebble off the sidewalk with the tip of his sneaker. “You?”
“I’m fifteen,” Morgan said lightly. “Just turned.” In spite of her casual tone, she realized how stating her age, and their age difference, had set the parameters of their friendship in a way that disappointed Finn. Morgan hoped that they could still be friends, because so far he’d been the one friendly face in Parr’s Landing, and she could use a friend right about now.
“So, Finn, what’s there to do around here? What do you like to do when you’re not acting as a tour guide for strange girls?” She reached out and punched his shoulder lightly as a way of letting him know that there was no mockery in the question.
“Not much,” Finn said. Morgan sensed a lightening. “We have a movie theatre and two hockey rinks. Well, one hockey rink that’s open, and the old one on Northbridge Road. Nobody uses that one anymore, but nobody’s torn it down, either. Hockey’s pretty important in Parr’s Landing.”
“Do you play? You know, hockey?”
“No, I’m not very good at sports.” He waited for a negative reaction to this admission of failure at one of the entry-level male social rituals in Parr’s Landing, but Morgan seemed nonplussed by it. Maybe not all boys played hockey where she came from. Emboldened by her neutrality on the subject, he went on. “There are a couple of churches besides St. Barthélemy and the Martyrs. In the summer time, people go swimming in Bradley Lake, but it’s too cold now.”
“Is that the lake we passed on the way to school today?”
“It’s the only lake in town, so yeah, probably.”
“Right, over by the cliffs. I can see the cliffs from my house. Well, it’s not my house—the place where we’re staying for a while.”
“I know your house. Everyone in town knows your house. ‘Parr House,’ it’s called. It’s the only house in town with a name. It’s really big. What’s it like living there?”
“I don’t know what it’s like living there. I’ve just moved there. It’s big, that’s for sure. But I miss my house in Toronto, and I miss my friends.”
“How many rooms are there?” he asked eagerly, ignoring her reference to her life before her arrival here. “In Parr House, I mean. How many rooms? Thirty? Forty?”
“I don’t know,” she said. She laughed. “Where did you get a number like forty?”
“That’s the number of rooms in Collinwood. You know, the haunted house on Dark Shadows? That TV show with the vampire, Barnabas Collins?”
Morgan laughed. “We didn’t have a TV at home, remember? I told you.” He looked crestfallen, so she added, “I have heard of it, though. Some of the girls at school used to run home every afternoon to watch it right after school when it was still on.”
“We used to get it here on Saturday mornings,” Finn said. “We don’t get much out here, but we used to get that.”
“You like this stuff, don’t you?” Morgan said, amused. “Spooky stuff? Castles and vampires and stuff like that?”
“Yeah,” Finn said defensively. “I do. Is that wrong?”
“No, it’s not wrong.” Morgan said. “Of course it’s not wrong. Why would it be?”
“My parents think it’s weird,” he said, sounding embarrassed, though whether he was embarrassed by his defensiveness or by the fact that he liked horror stuff was unclear. “I don’t know why I like it, I just do. When I grow up I’m going to get out of this crappy little town and move to Hollywood and make movies. Horror movies. I’m going to be an actor, or a director or something. There’s this comic book I read all the time called Tomb of Dracula,” he said excitedly. “I get it at Harper’s Drugs on Main Street. They don’t get a lot of comics but they do get that one. Have you ever heard of it?”
“No, I haven’t,” Morgan said, keeping her amusement to herself, because she could see that his comic books meant a lot to him. She didn’t want to hurt him by seeming to mock something he obviously cared about. “But maybe you could show me sometime. And maybe another time you could come and see the inside of my grandmother’s house, if you like.”
They had come to the place where the gravel driveway met the edge of the portico steps a short distance away. “We’re here, Finn. Thanks for walking me home.”
“No problem,” Finn said. “Man, it’s huge, isn’t it? I’d get lost in there, for sure.”
“Yeah, it’s pretty huge. Like I said, you’ll have to come in sometime and look around.”
“Can I come in today?” Nothing ventured, Finn thought. The worst she can do is say no. “Or . . . I don’t know. Would that be OK?”
“It’s only my second day living here, Finn,” Morgan said. “My grandmother is a little weird, especially when it comes to my mom and me and people in town. I don’t think she’d like it. I don’t know why, and I don’t really know what it’s about, but I promise—soon.”
“She’s stuck-up,” Finn blurted out. “Everybody in town knows it. She thinks she’s better than everyone else because she’s so rich and the Parrs run everything in the Landing—” He stopped himself in mid-sentence, flushing dark red from the base of his throat to his hairline. If he’d been a cartoon character, he’d have slapped his own head and bellowed stoopid stoopid STOOPID! But all he could do was privately lament that the earth didn’t swallow him up immediately and take him down to the very bowels of Parr’s Landing. He knew he was going to be a virgin till his dying day. “I mean—God, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean that.”
But Morgan surprised him by laughing delightedly. “Yeah, she is, a bit.” She began to laugh again, picturing Adeline’s face at the breakfast table that morning, her mouth as tight as if she’d been sipping raw lemon juice from her delicate porcelain cup instead of coffee. She steadied herself. “You sound like my uncle Jeremy. He thinks she’s stuck-up, too.” She began to laugh again in spite of herself.
“I’m really sorry,” Finn said. He was still mortified, though awareness was dawning in him that this girl didn’t seem to imagine him quite the disaster he himself saw in his mental mirror. “I didn’t mean—”
“Hey, don’t apologize, Finn,” Morgan said kindly. “It’s OK. Really. I appreciate you being so nice and friendly. Like I said, I don’t know anyone here, and nobody spoke to me today in school. It’s like I have leprosy or something.”
She reached out and took his hand. Finn, who had never held a girl’s hand, or indeed ever had any female other than his mother or his grandmother touch him anywhere, including his hand, found it unutterably sweet, soft, and warm. He felt momentarily bedazzled, as though the late-afternoon sunlight had preternaturally brightened.
“You don’t have leprosy,” Finn said softly. He pulled his hand away awkwardly.
Morgan smiled and readjusted the strap of her tote bag on her shoulder. “Goodbye, Finn. Thanks for walking me home.” She looked at him questioningly. Will I see you tomorrow?”
“Sure!” he said. “I mean—if you want? Do you . . . uh, do you want me to walk you home again tomorrow?
“That’d be nice.” She raised one hand and half-waved. “See you later, Finn.”
Morgan walked the rest of the way to the house, opened the front door, and went inside. Finn caught a brief glimpse of the black-and-white marble foyer of the entry hall, then the door closed. He stood for a moment staring at the closed door, thinking of Morgan, memorizing her face.
Then, his chest full of stars, Finn turned and walked down the gravel drive to where the hill sloped downwards to the soft dirt road strewn with fallen yellow leaves leading to the town, and home. He half-walked, half-ran, half-skipped towards home. His hand thrilled where her fingers had been, and he whistled (something he never had done before) as he moved through the autumn-darkening streets of Parr’s Landing.
Christina knocked on the door to Morgan’s room, then pushed it open. Her daughter was sitting at the spindly, delicate writing desk in the corner reading from what looked to Christina like the same Ontario history book she herself had in her own days at Matthew Browning.
“Hi, Mom,” Morgan said. “What time’s dinner? I’m hungry.”
“I think, in twenty minutes,” Christina said. “I passed Beatrice on the way up here and she said that it was almost dinner time.” She didn’t add that Beatrice had warned her to be on time “because Mrs. Parr likes things just so, and she’s peculiar about people being at the table on time, just so’s you know.”
“What are you reading?” Christina asked nonchalantly. “Looks familiar.”
Morgan held up the book, A History of Ontario by Margaret Avison. It was the same one, all right. Good Christ, Christina thought. My daughter is back in my hometown, attending my high school, and being taught from the same outdated textbooks as I was. It’s 1972, for God’s sake. Nothing changes here, nothing.
“It’s really boring,” she said. “It’s from 1951.” Morgan closed the book and put it down in front of her. “It’s like we’re back in the olden days here. Even the high school looks like something from TV. It’s so old fashioned.”
“How was your first day at school?”
Morgan shrugged. “It was OK, I guess. Nobody was mean, but nobody talked to me, either. There was a nice lady in the front office, and the principal was OK, too.” She paused, unsure of how to say what she was about to say next. “Mom?”
“Yes, honey? What is it?”
“Mom, did grandmother tell everyone that I’m illegitimate? Because it was weird, but the principal kept talking about ‘lifestyle choices’ that you and Dad made back when I was born, and it was like everyone else was walking on eggshells with me because my last name is Parr. You were married when I was born, right?”
Christina felt a wave of murderous fury towards Adeline pass through her, though she kept her face entirely neutral at that moment for Morgan’s sake. She forced her voice to a calm register that was entirely at odds with how she felt, and swore again that if it was the last thing she did, she would get away from this town—and Adeline— at the first available opportunity. “Did someone actually say something, sweetheart?”
“No,” Morgan said thoughtfully. “Not in so many words. But everyone’s treating me like I’m some sort of case who needs all this special care and protection. Why are they doing that?”
Christina felt as though shards of glass were exploding inside her, but she forced herself to smile. She sat down on the edge of the bed and reached for her daughter’s hand. Morgan looked desperately young to Christina just then, and her heart broke.
“Morgan, first of all—yes, your father and I were married when we had you. We weren’t married when you were conceived. We told you all about that. But you weren’t a ‘mistake’ by any stretch of the imagination, either. Your father and I loved each other very much. He wanted to marry me very much, and I wanted to marry him very much. We were married as soon as we arrived in Toronto, before I was even showing with you. You have nothing—nothing, do you hear me—to be ashamed of. I don’t believe your grandmother told people that you were illegitimate,” she lied, “but I do think that small-town people have a hard time, sometimes, understanding things that go differently than they think things ought to. They may be confused about things. I know this town very well, and there’s a really good reason why I haven’t been back in fifteen years, aside from the fact that your dad never wanted to. Would you like me to speak to your teachers about it, sweetheart? Are you worried about getting flack from the kids?”
That’ll be next, Christina thought, with a familiar sickening lurch in her stomach. That’ll be next. Just like it was for Jack and me—the townie whore getting above herself with the Crown Prince of Parr’s Landing. What does that make Morgan? A princess? A bastard? Or both?
“No,” Morgan replied quickly. “I’m not worried. And you don’t need to talk to the teachers. It’ll be OK. I just wanted to . . . well, I just wanted to tell you about school. That’s all. It’s all fine. I’m sorry I even brought it up. You and Dad did tell me all this stuff before, I know. I just needed to hear it again.” She looked down. When she looked up again, Morgan’s eyes were slick with tears. “Mom?”
“Yes, baby?”
“Mom, I miss Daddy something fierce.” Morgan’s shoulders began to shake. “I miss him so much . . .”
Christina’s own eyes flooded. She stood up and took Morgan in her arms and rocked her as she had when she was a baby and they wept together, holding each other.
“I miss him, too, sweetheart. I miss him more than I ever thought could be possible to miss someone. Your daddy was everything to me, and he loved both of us more than anything else in the world. And I love you more than anything else in the world. Nothing is more important to me than you, Morgan. Nothing. You know that, right?”
Morgan sniffled. “Yes,” she said in a thick voice. “Yes, I believe you. I love you, too, Mommy.” Her face was buried in the hollow of her mother’s shoulder. When Christina reached up to caress Morgan’s hair, the wool of Morgan’s sweater was soaked with her tears, which seemed grafted to the soft skin of her clavicle.
There was a knock on the door of the bedroom. Oh God, please, not her. Not Adeline. Not right now. Just a few more minutes, please. The knock came again, more gently this time, and Jeremy’s voice carried through the thick mahogany door.
“Chris? Morgan? May I come in?”
Christina and Morgan parted reluctantly. Christina squeezed Morgan’s hand once more, then smoothed her hair and said, “Come in, Jeremy.”
“Come on in, Uncle Jeremy,” Morgan called out, as though determined to show her mother that she was in control again and that her mother wasn’t to worry about her any more than she already did.
“Oh . . . I’m sorry,” Jeremy said when he saw their faces. “I’m so sorry, you guys. I didn’t mean to interrupt. It’s just that dinner is about to be served and Adeline is already down there. Just . . . well, do you want me to tell her you’re not coming, or that you’re sick or something?” He looked beseechingly from Christina to Morgan, then back to Christina again.
Morgan said in a clear voice, “No, Uncle Jeremy. We’re all right. We’re coming right down. I’m just going to put some water on my face. I’ll only be a second.”
She stood up and walked into the bathroom. Through the closed door, Christina and Jeremy heard the tap being turned on, then the sound of water hitting the porcelain sink.
“Is she all right?” Jeremy whispered. “Did she have a bad day at school? Goddamn it, I knew we should have taken her ourselves. This is all too much for her and too fast. I should never have let Adeline steamroll over us like that this morning.”
“She’s all right.” Christina sighed, massaging her eyes with her fingertips. “She just had a moment.”
Jeremy looked worried. “You, too, huh? Oh, Chris, I’m so sorry. Again. I keep saying that, but I really am. I feel like crap for you, really I do.”
“How do I look?” she said briskly, pushing his sympathy away, knowing that she couldn’t bear to feel anything at this exact moment if she was going to survive their dinner with Adeline. “I put mascara on this morning, but I think it’s all rubbed off by now.” She crossed to the mirror over Morgan’s vanity. She squinted, touching her eyelashes gingerly. “Not very bright in here, is it? I’m sure your mother looks immaculate, like she just fell out of Miss Chatelaine. Well, an old issue of Miss Chatelaine. A very old issue.”
Jeremy laughed. “You look fine. Maybe some cold water when Morgan’s finished? Are you sure you want to go downstairs, you two? I’m serious, I can just tell her that you’re not feeling well after the long drive. I’m sure she’d send Beatrice up with a tray.”
“Listen to us.” Christina laughed mirthlessly. “‘I’m sure she’d send Beatrice up with a tray.’ The fact that it would even be a question answers it. She might or she might not. No, better that we go downstairs and deal with her face to face. I’m sure Morgan will be all right. She doesn’t have the same problems with that old bitch that we do. And somehow I have to normalize life for her, and it has to start right now. God knows what Adeline has told people about us. Morgan said that everyone was treating her with kid gloves today. She doesn’t think it was for any good reason. She asked me if I thought her grandmother had told people she was illegitimate. I have no trouble seeing the hand of Adeline in that, and if she did, I’ll never forgive her.”
Jeremy looked at this watch. “It’s six thirty-five,” he said. “We’d better get down there.”
The bathroom door opened and Morgan stepped out. Her face was clean and her hair was combed. Christina noticed that Morgan had darkened her lips with a trace of the black raspberry Bonne Bell Lip Smacker she’d gotten for her last birthday from Christina after much pleading to be allowed to wear makeup. Morgan hadn’t worn lip gloss at all since Jack died, or indeed cared much about her appearance at all besides basic grooming and cleanliness, as though with her father gone, there was no one for whom to look particularly pretty. Jack had always told Morgan she was beautiful, so her disinterest in how she presented herself was an additional constant reminder to Christina of their bereavement. But now, Morgan looked at her mother with a lovingly critical eye and said, “Mom, you’d better clean up, too. You know how she is. Your mascara’s running. You look like a raccoon.”
“You’re late,” Adeline said, raising her eyebrows. “All of you. It’s six forty-five. I told you I expected you downstairs, on time, at six-thirty for dinner.” She sat at one end of the dining table framed in candlelight from the silver candelabra that were placed on the sideboard and on the table itself. She wore a well-tailored black dress and a necklace of simple but consequential pearls. Not for the first time, Christina marvelled at how her mother-in-law managed, at whatever hour of the day or night, to look exactly like a lacquered mannequin that had just been placed in a dress shop window.
“I’m sorry, Grandmother,” Morgan said, before either Christina or Jeremy could say anything. “It was my fault. I lost track of the time. It won’t happen again.” Christina looked gratefully at her daughter, knowing that Morgan had deliberately spoken first, intuiting correctly that if anyone would escape the wrath of Adeline Parr over the grave offence of being late for dinner, it was her granddaughter.
For her part, Adeline’s smile was frosty, but there was an unmistakable sense of a storm having passed without actually touching down. “Punctuality is a very important virtue, Morgan,” she said. “It bespeaks a great deal about a person’s character. It’s very likely that you didn’t have much of a need for it in your old life, but when you are under my roof, you’ll learn to comport yourself responsibly as befitting a proper young lady. Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes, Grandmother.”
“Please sit down, dear.” She glanced at Christina and Jeremy and nodded curtly. “You two may sit, as well.”
“Thank you, Mother,” Jeremy said dryly. “It’s wonderful that we can all sit down as a family and enjoy each other’s company like this.”
Jeremy sat down and unfolded his napkin, placing it in his lap. Morgan and Christina followed his lead and did the same. When they were seated, Beatrice began to serve. Dinner that night was to be poached fish and asparagus. It wasn’t until the silver lid of the monogrammed sterling silver chafing dishes were removed that Christina realized how hungry she was. The asparagus was fresh, a delicate green beneath a sliver of melting butter. She wondered where on earth Adeline Parr was able to get fresh asparagus in Parr’s Landing in October.
“That smells wonderful, Beatrice,” Christina ventured. “Is it haddock?”
“It’s perch,” Adeline snapped. “Haddock indeed. Does it look like haddock to you, Christina? Does it? Does it smell like haddock to you? Have you ever poached a fish in your life? For the Lord’s own sake.”
“Adeline, I just wondered—”
Jeremy laughed out loud, drawing Adeline’s fire away from Christina and onto himself. “How many fish have you poached in your life, Mother? Ever since I can remember, Beatrice has done the cooking around here. Like Christina, I didn’t know it was perch or haddock, either. I guess the best way to tell what sort of fish is being served for dinner at Parr House is to ask the cook. By the way, Beatrice,” he said, deftly shifting the attention again, this time towards the housekeeper, “my sister-in-law is right. It does smell delicious. I have to tell you, all those years away in Toronto, the thing I missed most about Parr’s Landing was your cooking.”
“Oh, Mr. Jeremy,” Beatrice said. “You were always the charmer. Have some of the veg. It’s a lovely bit of asparagus.”
Adeline cleared her throat and shook her head almost imperceptibly at the housekeeper. Beatrice lowered her eyes and pressed her lips together. She went on with the dinner service in silence.
“And how was your first day at Matthew Browning, Morgan? Did you have a useful and productive day?”
“It was very nice, Grandmother,” Morgan said. “Thank you.”
“Did you learn anything today that you’d like to share with us?”
“Not really, Grandmother,” she said. “But I liked the school very much.”
“Did you meet your principal? What was his name, Mr. Murphy?”
“Yes, Grandmother,” Morgan said. “He was very nice to me. He made me feel very welcome.”
“Did you make any new friends, honey?” Jeremy said gently, reaching for Morgan’s hand. “How did you like the kids? Did they treat you well?
Morgan turned to her uncle, grateful for the warmth of the question after Adeline’s staccato interrogation. “Not at school, Uncle Jeremy. I mean,” she said, glancing at her mother, “they were very nice at school. But I met this kid after school. Well . . . he met me, really. I think he was waiting for me after school and we started to talk.”
“He was waiting for you? How did he know who you were?”
“I don’t know, Uncle Jeremy,” she said. “But it doesn’t matter. He knew I was new in town and he walked me home. He’s younger than me. Twelve, I think.”
“A boy?” Adeline said. “You let a strange boy walk you home?”
“He wasn’t strange, Grandmother. He was really nice.”
“What was his name, Morgan?” Christina said. “I wonder if Jeremy and I know any of his family from when we lived here?”
“It doesn’t matter what his name is,” Adeline said sharply. “Morgan, you are never, ever to let young men you don’t even know walk you home. It’s not done. There’s been enough gossip about this family over the years. I won’t have more of it now, in the new generation. Do I make myself clear?”
“We didn’t do anything, Grandmother,” Morgan said. “We just walked. He was nice. No one else would talk to me, but he did. He walked me all the way home.”
“What was his name, honey?” Christina asked again.
“Finn, Mommy. He said it was short for Finnegan.”
“It doesn’t matter what his name is,” Adeline said. “I won’t have— ”
“You won’t have what, Mother?” Jeremy said. “There’s nothing wrong with Morgan making friends with a local boy. Good Lord, it’s 1972, not 1872.”
All of the colour had left Morgan’s face, rendering it as pale as rice paper. The dark circles beneath her eyes that had been fading of late suddenly developed like bruises in a black-and-white photograph. “Mommy, may I be excused?” she said faintly. “I’m not feeling well.”
“We have not finished dinner, young lady, and I—”
“Yes, sweetheart, you may,” Christina said, cutting Adeline off. She shot her mother-in-law a look of such lethal ferocity that it stopped the older woman in mid-flow. “Why don’t you go and lie down? I’ll come up and see you in a bit. I think your grandmother and Uncle Jeremy and I need to have a grown-up talk.”
Before Adeline could say anything, Morgan pushed her chair back and ran out of the dining room, looking at none of them. They heard the sound of her feet taking the stairs two at a time, then the sound of the bedroom door slamming on the next floor.
“Adeline,” Christina said, struggling to maintain her composure.
“Are you trying to push your granddaughter away? Are you trying to drive her away from you? Because I’ll tell you what, before she came down here, she was crying for her dead father. Would it have been too much to ask for you to leave her alone? If you want to beat me up for my relationship with Jack, by all means, do your worst. But could you do it when Morgan isn’t around? And while you’re at it, could you leave her alone and let her settle in here? She’s fifteen years old! She’s completely innocent of whatever crime you think Jack and I committed, and except for the three of us here, she’s completely alone.”
Adeline narrowed her eyes. “I can see that she didn’t have very much supervision in your home, Christina. But this is not your home.”
She raised her glass of ice water and took a delicate sip. When she put it down again, her dark red lipstick had smudged the rim of the glass, like the mouth of a paper cut. “This is my home,” she said. “And Jeremy’s home. It would also have been my son’s home if you hadn’t taken him away from me and killed him. And here in my home, there are rules. I will not have her running around like a common trollop, cavorting with local boys before she has a chance to even establish a reputation for herself as a Parr.”
“Mother, stop it,” Jeremy pleaded. “Just stop. For the love of Christ.”
“Adeline, she just wants to make friends,” Christina said. “Don’t you understand that? It’s innocent. She’s a young girl and she’s all alone.”
“‘Friends!’” Adeline hissed. “‘Friends like you were with Jack? Friends like Jeremy and that miner’s son, that dirty McKitrick boy? Is that the sort of friends you were referring to? We’ve had enough of the Parrs making friends with the locals in this town!”
Jeremy stood up so abruptly that he knocked his chair back. He picked up his dinner plate and hurled it as hard as it could against the opposite wall. It smashed into shards, leaving a trail of butter and hollandaise that slowly dripped down the wall. He stood there pale and shaking, his hands balled into fists, looking as if he was expending every ounce of restraint he possessed to keep himself from leaping across the table and stabbing his mother to death with one of her own sterling silver dinner knives.
Adeline sat still, entirely unruffled, her back rigid, not touching the back of her own chair. “That Meissen plate was from your great grandmother Parr’s wedding china,” she said calmly. “It was a service for forty people. The rim of the plate is—was—eighteen-karat gold. I’ll wager the plate you just destroyed with your childish outburst was worth more than the sum either of you have in your bank accounts at the moment.”
“You’re insane,” Christina said to Adeline. “You’re completely insane. No wonder Jack wanted to leave. It wasn’t the town, it was you.”
“We’re leaving,” Jeremy said to Christina. “Get Morgan. We’re going. Now. We’re not spending another minute in this fucking house.”
Adeline said again, “Am I right? How much do you have in your respective bank accounts? Assuming,” she added with a small smile, “that either of you even have bank accounts? Enlighten me, Jeremy, my independently wealthy son. Where will you go?”
“Christina, ! Come on!”
“You would never have come back here, Jeremy, if you had somewhere else to go. Nor you, Christina. You are literally penniless, aren’t you? And you’ve come back here, to me, because there was nowhere else.”
“You bitch,” Jeremy said. “You absolute bloody—”
“If I were you, son, I’d be more careful with my epithets,” Adeline said mildly. “It’s only my love for you as a mother that’s keeping me from using a few of the choice ones that describe men like you.”
“You hate me, don’t you?” Jeremy said, marvelling. “You actually hate me. You wish it had been me who died instead of Jack.”
“No, my dear, I love you,” she replied. “And I do confess that, sometimes, I wish it had been you who died instead of Jack. But the feeling passes.”
Jeremy stumbled blindly out of the dining room. Christina rose from her chair and threw her napkin on the table. She followed Jeremy out into the front hall, leaving Adeline alone. From inside the dining room, Christina heard the tinkling sound of the bell Adeline used to summon Beatrice, and the sound of the door that connected the kitchen and the dining room swing open and shut.
“Jeremy, where are you going?” Christina said.
“Out,” Jeremy said harshly. “Away from here. Home to Toronto. Somewhere . . . I don’t know.”
“You’re too upset to drive. Stay here, calm down. It’s too dangerous.”
“I can’t,” he mumbled. He reached for the pea coat he’d left on the chair next to the sideboard in the hallway. “I need to think. I need to get away. I need a drink. Come with me.”
“I can’t leave Morgan,” Christina said. “I have to stay here with her. Adeline’s right, you know. We have nowhere else to go, at least until one of us has some money. She has us right where she wants us. We have to make it work. Or rather, I have to make it work. Won’t you stay with me so we can talk about this?”
“No, not now,” he said. “I’ll be back in a bit. I need to clear my head. Don’t worry, she’s vented now, she’ll be fine for a while. Even monsters need to rest between monstrosities.” He put his coat on and felt in his pockets for the car keys. “I’ll be back,” he repeated. “Don’t worry.”
“Just . . . well, just drive carefully.” The unspoken thought that passed between them was, Please don’t leave me alone the way Jack did. I can’t go through that again. Neither Morgan nor I could survive it happening twice.
Jeremy hugged her. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”
He held Christina tightly for a moment, then opened the front door and walked to his car. As he turned the key in the ignition, he saw her framed in the doorway of the house, silhouetted in the lights of the hallway. Then he turned the car around and headed towards town.
The clatter of gravel against the undercarriage of the car sounded like shots.
Through the windshield of the Chevelle, Jeremy saw the stars in the night sky over Parr’s Landing as though they were underwater, for he was weeping at this final and unalterable proof that his mother not only regretted his existence, as he’d known since he was fifteen, but actively wished him dead, at least if it would bring his brother back from the grave.