Adeline Parr had not gone down to breakfast. She suspected that the rest of the family would enjoy her absence, but this one time she didn’t care. She looked at her Piaget. It was ten o’clock in the morning. Breakfast would be long finished. Morgan would be at school. Christina and Jeremy would be . . . who knew where they’d be? Likely out somewhere, making spectacles of themselves in town. Both had shown a marked preference for being absent from Parr House during the day. Since Adeline could barely stand the sight of either of them for reasons unique to her view of each of them, their absence suited her perfectly.
She’d had Beatrice bring her coffee in her bedroom. Adeline sat in a yellow brocade chair by the window smoking a steady line of du Maurier cigarettes from a sterling silver monogrammed cigarette case that had been a gift from her late husband. Blue smoke shimmered like a low hanging cloud over the room, caressing the glass of the closed window like the fingers of ghosts.
Her eyes were red and sore, partly because of the smoke, but also because, even though she prided herself on not being the sort of woman who cried as a reaction to shock or even immediate grief, her own body didn’t always remember to obey her. When she stubbornly refused to cry, her body reacted on her behalf, without her permission. Adeline’s tears were like the tears of some men, the ones who’d grown up and forgotten the mechanics, the technique, of weeping. Adeline’s tears seemed to bleed from pinpricks in her eyes instead of flowing naturally, let alone with healing.
She had locked herself in her study after dinner the previous evening. She’d heard Morgan leave the house and she’d heard Christina and Jeremy laughing in the dining room, probably laughing at her. After a time, she’d heard them leave the dining room and go upstairs. The sound of the television came from one of the upper bedrooms. Adeline assumed they were watching it together.
Shortly after nine, she’d heard the front door open again, stealthier than it had the last time. Morgan had obviously returned from wherever she’d been gadding. Adeline made a mental note to deal with Morgan later. One slut in the family was more than enough. She wasn’t having a repeat performance of Christina’s harlotry in the current generation, not in a year of Sundays. When the house was entirely quiet, when they were all in their beds, only then did she unlock the door to her study and glide noiselessly up the stairs to her bedroom, locking that door in its turn, and remaining in the room all night and into the morning.
Had anyone pointed it out to her, it wouldn’t have occurred to Adeline Parr to find anything unusual in the fact that she had been able to monitor the entire evening’s comings and goings from the leather chair behind the desk without ever leaving her study. Like a bejewelled, lacquered, well-tailored spider, Adeline Parr felt every tug on every strand of her web, which included not only Parr House, but the town of Parr’s Landing itself. Nothing and no one arrived or departed without her knowing about it.
Except this time. Except for the arrival of Phenius’s adopted Indian boy, Billy Lightning. News of his arrival in Parr’s Landing had eluded her, as had news of Phenius’s death. She felt the impact of this the way she might have felt the impact of an explosion on the other side of town— the ground had shaken, the air had shimmered and eddied for a moment, and while there was an intellectual awareness of devastation, the damage itself had not yet been internalized or quantified.
Phenius. Phenius.
When she closed her eyes against the haze of smoke in her bedroom, it wasn’t the entirety of him she remembered—she didn’t see him completely, not from head to toe—but rather a pastiche of memories that somehow added up to Phenius: the back of his tanned neck, his legs protruding from the rumpled khaki shorts he’d worn every day on the dig in 1952. The pattern of his chest hair, the way the blond blended with the silver almost imperceptibly. The surprising hardness of his arms— surprising in a man of his age, entirely unlike the soft, plump arms of her husband, who had been the same age when he’d married her as Phenius Osborne had been when he’d taken her in his arms for the first time. The wiriness of his body, the feeling of his cock brushing up against the inside of her thighs. The feeling of his calloused hands warming her body, the secret thrill of being touched in places she’d never been touched in her life, certainly not by her husband, and by no one since he’d died.
Phenius had taught her what it felt like to be a woman instead of the inviolate queen of Parr’s Landing.
As to her guilt—not only her guilt over her own adultery, but also over making an adulterer out of Phenius Osborne—she could barely access a memory of her feelings of guilt over what they’d shared that summer. But she knew it was there, hovering like the twinge of a broken bone that still occasionally aches when the weather is damp. She’d never spoken of it to anyone, of course. Nor, to the best of her knowledge, had Phenius, who had still been married when they last saw each other.
Adeline stood up and walked over to her dressing table. There was a small mother-of-pearl box sitting between the cloudy amber bottles of Joy and Arpège perfumes and her monogrammed silver vanity brushes and mirror. Adeline opened the box and withdrew the bronze key that lay against the faded green velvet lining.
As she did so, she turned her husband’s photograph face down on the lace runner. Then, almost as an afterthought, she opened the middle drawer of the dressing and tossed the picture inside, slamming the drawer shut with the back of her hand. She didn’t want to think about Augustus Parr at all right now, or even look at his face.
She held the key to her lips for a moment, deep in thought.
Then she crossed the floor and opened the door to her bedroom. Hearing no one on the landing, or downstairs, she stepped out into the hallway and took the staircase downstairs to the foyer. In a hallway off the main rooms, she opened the door to a flight of stone stairs that led into one of the basement wings of Parr House where there was no electricity. Adjacent to the basement door, a flashlight hung on a chain.
Adeline removed the flashlight and switched it on. She played the beam of light across the walls, but it was an instinctive response. She
could walk through Parr House blindfolded at midnight and never miss a step. Adeline knew the house the way another woman might know a lover’s body. Leisurely, as though savouring the pressing darkness, she walked to the end of the hallway. She reached for the doorknob, opened the door, and stepped into the room.
Against the far wall were grouped a collection of boxes and storage trunks in various sizes. She shone the light through the curtains of dust that seemed to sway as she stepped towards them.
When she found the box she was looking for, she knelt down and unlocked it. Inside were a packet of letters, some photographs, and a bound sheaf of papers in an envelope with a Toronto postmark. These she tucked under her arm.
Adeline retraced her way down the stone corridor to the stairway leading up to the main floor and the privacy of her study, again locking the door behind her, even though she had encountered no one on her way there, nor heard any sounds coming from anywhere in Parr House.
Sitting at her vast mahogany desk, she perused the contents of the package thoughtfully for a time. Then she reached for the telephone and dialled the number of the Golden Nugget Motel.
When Darcy Marin, whose family had owned the motel for fifty years or more, picked up the telephone, Adeline identified herself, then asked to be connected to Billy Lightning’s room. As always, she was obeyed immediately, and the phone on Billy’s desk in the motel room rang, startling him from the notes he was writing about the discovery of the bloody hockey bag, and the ones he’d been reading about the history of murder and madness associated with the land Adeline Parr considered sanctified by the martyrdom of the priests of St. Barthélemy three hundred years before.
To say that he was surprised to receive a telephone call from Adeline Parr inviting him to lunch would have been an understatement of some magnitude. Billy had a dim memory of having met Adeline in 1952. He had a clearer memory of Phenius Osborne’s frustration at the hoops she’d made him jump through in order to secure the permits that Phenius needed for his archaeological dig.
Adeline had cited the “holiness” of the land around Spirit Rock, as though the fact that the Jesuits had been martyred there three hundred years before, while trying to convert the Ojibwa of the area to Christianity before being wiped off the face of the earth by an angry rival tribe, had somehow rendered holy the land that used to be her family’s gold mine.
Even as a teenager, Billy had found the hypocrisy galling, as had his father—the fact that Adeline Parr claimed to be concerned about the sacrilege of an archaeological dig to locate the ruins of the St. Barthélemy settlement, but had not had any such qualms about her husband’s family raping and exploiting that very same land for profit in the nineteenth century, and amassing the very fortune that allowed her to put roadblocks in his father’s way. It was as though the notion that the land might be sovereign unto itself had never occurred to any of the people who had occupied it—not the French who came to Christianize Billy’s ancestors, not the English who’d taken it from the French, and not the oligarchs and land barons who had purchased it and made it their own.
And now Adeline Parr wanted to have lunch with him?
“May I ask what this is about, Mrs. Parr?” he’d asked politely. “It’s not ‘about’ anything, Dr. Lightning,” had come the reply,
metallic-sounding in the telephone receiver. “I knew your father slightly when he was here twenty years ago. While I was surprised to hear that you had returned to Parr’s Landing, it occurred to me that you might not know anyone in town. I understand you’re now a professor in your own right, like your father. I’d be delighted to entertain so distinguished a visitor in my home. We rarely have the benefit of such company in Parr’s Landing. And I think your father would have approved.”
“ Would have?” Billy said warily. “You heard about my father’s death?”
“Only that he had passed away, Dr. Lightning. My daughter-in-law mentioned it at dinner last night. I understand you met her in town. She told me nothing of the circumstances. I’m so very sorry.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Parr.”
“Shall I expect you at noon, Dr. Lightning? I can assure you that Beatrice, my cook, has a skill in the kitchen that you’ll find unparalleled anywhere else in town, let alone the available dining establishments.” There was silence on the other end of the line as Adeline Parr waited. When Billy hesitated, she snapped, “Well? Are you coming or not?”
His own curiosity overrode his qualms—qualms whose source he couldn’t identify, but which he chalked up to residual distaste for the high-handed way the Parrs had treated his father in 1952. Besides, he’d never been inside a robber baron’s house before. And Christina might be there. He would dearly love to see her face again.
“Yes, Mrs. Parr,” Billy said. “I’d be delighted. I’ll see you at twelve noon.”
“Splendid.” Adeline’s voice was crisp, once again the voice of a woman used to being obeyed. “Do you know the address?”
Billy smiled into the telephone receiver. “I do indeed, Mrs. Parr. I know the house. It’s the only one in this broken-down Ontario mining town that looks like a Norman chateau.”
Two hours before Adeline Parr called Billy Lightning, Jeremy Parr drove his niece to school.
Without his mother at the breakfast table to countermand him, Jeremy had asked Beatrice to tell her husband that he didn’t need to take Miss Morgan to school that morning because he and Christina had some errands to do in town, and they’d drop Miss Morgan off at Matthew Browning before they did them.
“That’s fine, Jeremy,” Beatrice had said. “I’ll tell him. The weather feels a bit raw today. Nice sunrise, you know, but it’s gone all damp and bitter. I’m sure Jim will be happy to hear it.” Beatrice lowered her voice and glanced at the ceiling, almost by reflex. “Did you ask your mother?”
“No, Beatrice. I haven’t seen her this morning. Have you?”
“I took some coffee up to her earlier. She said she didn’t want any breakfast.” Beatrice clicked her tongue on the roof of her mouth. “I hope she’s not coming down with something.”
Christina shot Jeremy a warning glance from across the table, and he bit down on the sarcastic retort about to spring forth. Christina was right—it wasn’t fair to involve Beatrice in his ongoing war with his mother, especially since she would still be there with Adeline in that house long after he and Christina had gone back to Toronto, or wherever they wound up going.
“I’m sure she’s fine, Beatrice,” Jeremy said sweetly. “I’ll mention it to her when I’m back later.”
Both Beatrice and Christina had smiled gratefully at that, and the tone at the breakfast table grew light and carefree. By unspoken agreement, none of the three were going to comment on how much they were enjoying Adeline’s absence, as much for Beatrice’s sake as anything else. Morgan chattered about school and about her friend Finnegan, who’d lost his dog. Christina seemed lost in her own thoughts, though they seemed to Jeremy to be happy enough thoughts.
As for Jeremy, while he listened to his niece with apparent interest, and contributed his own comments here and there as was appropriate, his mind was running on an entirely different, and entirely private, track.
It had been two days since his disastrous encounter with Elliot McKitrick at O’Toole’s. Jeremy had convinced himself over the years that he was no longer in love with his friend and he still believed it, even after the other night. But he was disturbed by Elliot’s coldness, even near dislike. Jeremy told himself that they needed to clear the air because they were living in the same town and things could get unpleasant very quickly if they didn’t.
But in his more honest moments, moments that had been increasingly consuming him in the last forty-eight hours, Jeremy realized that they needed to make up because Jeremy felt Elliot’s disdain like an acid burn on his heart.
If they weren’t to be friends ever again (something he’d never worried about when he was living in Toronto and visiting Parr’s Landing only in his dreams—or nightmares) he could live with that, but only with Elliot’s absolution of Jeremy for being the one who escaped, or whatever else had kept Elliot’s anger towards him simmering all these years. They needed to have it out, whatever that was going to take. And it had to happen today.
“All right, Morgan,” Jeremy said cheerfully. “Let’s get you off to Parr’s Landing’s illustrious institute of higher learning. We’re burning daylight.”
“It’s a stupid school,” Morgan said, just as cheerfully. “It’s like someone put me in a time machine and sent me back to the olden days. But it’s OK, I guess.” She took one more bite of her toast, and then pushed her chair back. “I’ll go get my books. I’ll be down in five minutes.”
When Morgan had left the room, Jeremy turned to Christina. “So, do you want to come for a drive? I need to do some things in town.”
“What things? Oh, never mind. I bet I know.” Christina sighed. She had always been able to read her brother-in-law like a book. “Just be careful, Jeremy,” she said. “I’m worried about you. I know you want to . . . I don’t know, make friends with him again or something. But you didn’t see his face when I told him you’d mentioned meeting him at O’Toole’s. It was like he didn’t know who you were. Something isn’t right there.”
Jeremy said stubbornly, “I know. But I still need to . . .”
“‘To make it right.’ Yeah? To talk? You’re just like a girl, Jeremy, I swear.”
“Thanks a lot,” he grumbled. “What a great vote of confidence, Chris.”
“Don’t pout.” Christina laughed gently. “You know what I mean. You know what I’m talking about. It’s part of what makes you . . . well, you. It’s why I love you. It’s why we all love you.”
Morgan appeared in the doorway of the dining room. “I’m ready to go,” she announced. She was wearing her dark green jacket and holding her books in her arms.
Jeremy turned his head so Morgan couldn’t see and mouthed thank you to Christina. She smiled back at him and winked.
In the car, as Jeremy drove the Chevelle through the falling leaves on the winding roads into town, Morgan said, “Mom, could we stop by my friend Finn’s house on the way to school? I want to see if they found his dog yet or not. He was feeling really bad about it last night.”
Christina frowned into the rear-view mirror. “I think he’ll be at school, too, won’t he, honey?”
“Please, Mom,” Morgan pleaded. “Just for a minute? It’s on the way.”
“I don’t think we have time, Morgan,” Christina said firmly. “But I’ll tell you what. If you want, you can stop off and see him after school. If he’s not there, you can call him and I’ll drive you over tonight after dinner. What do you think?”
“You never let me do anything,” Morgan said sullenly, staring out the window. “I hate this town.”
Christina and Jeremy exchanged a knowing look. This time it was Christina who mouthed the word. Hormones.
“That’s enough, Morgan,” she said automatically. Softening, she added, “I’m sure your friend’s dog is home by now. You can go see him after school. I’m glad you’re making new friends. He sounds like a very nice boy. Why don’t you invite him over?”
“Are you kidding me, Mom? After that scene with Grandmother about ‘townies’ and ‘sluts’? No way. He asked me if he could come and see the house, but I told him that it wasn’t a great idea, at least not now.”
“Tell you what,” Jeremy interjected. “I’ll talk to your grandmother about it. I’m sure we can make it OK somehow. Like your mom says, he sounds like a nice boy.”
“He is,” Morgan said sadly. “And I’m worried about his dog. He really loves her.”
Christina looked at her watch, but there really wasn’t any way to allow for a stop before school without making Morgan late. And her mother-in-law would hear about that, she had no doubt whatsoever.
“We’re almost there, sweetheart,” Christina said. “Do you want us to pick you up after school?”
“No, thanks, Mom. I’ll walk. And I think I will stop by Finn’s house on the way home, unless I see him at lunchtime. He usually meets me. I hope he has good news.”
“I hope so, too, sweetie.”
Just before they pulled up to the front of the school, Morgan asked Jeremy to stop and let her out so she could walk the rest of the way. “Just like all the other kids do,” she said, almost apologetically. “Is that OK?”
“Sure it is, honey,” Jeremy said. He stopped the car and Morgan stepped out. She gave them a little wave, then hurried up the street to Matthew Browning without turning back. When she was out of sight, Jeremy asked Christina where she wanted to go.
“Why don’t you drop me at the library? It’s decent enough, as I recall. You can go and see Super Cop and I’ll amuse myself in the stacks.”
“I don’t know how long it’s going to take, though. Will you be all right?”
“Oh, please,” Christina said. “I’ll read for a bit. If you’re back in an hour or so, we can go have lunch or something, or head back to the house. If you’re not, I’ll walk home. It’s a nice morning. I could use the exercise. Who knows, maybe by the time I get home, Adeline will have taken a fall off the roof of Parr House and she will have left us all her money, and we can get the hell out of here once and for all.”
“Dreamer,” Jeremy said. “But I admire the scope of your ambition. Tragic death and inheritance. We’ll make a real Parr out of you yet.”
After Jeremy had dropped Christina off in front of the Parr’s Landing library, he drove along Dagenais Street in search of a pay phone to call the police station.
Jeremy doubted Elliot would be amenable to anything as normalizing as a cup of coffee, much less lunch at the Pear Tree but—nothing ventured. Who knew? Besides, it wasn’t like Jeremy had anything else on the agenda.
The man who answered the phone at the police station identified himself as Sergeant Thomson.
“Good morning,” Jeremy said politely. “May I speak with Constable McKitrick?”
“May I ask who this is, sir?”
Jeremy took a deep breath. He leaned back against the wall of the phone booth. “This is Jeremy Parr. I was . . . I am a friend of Constable McKitrick’s. From school. I’ve just come back to town. From Toronto,” he added, feeling like the biggest babbling jackass that ever troubled daylight. At the same time, he noted how artlessly he’d slipped back into the entitlement of his family name. Not My name is Jeremy Parr, but This is Jeremy Parr, conveying the automatic expectation that the person on the other end of the line should recognize his name and be able to identify him. He suddenly missed the anonymity of the city even more.
There was a pause on the other end. “Of course, Mr. Parr. Welcome home. We’d heard that you were back in town.”
The policeman’s voice was as polite as ever, and if Jeremy had expected to hear some note of derision or condescension in it, he was relieved not to have heard any such thing. Even though he knew rationally that Elliot would never have willingly talked about what had happened between them—and its terrible consequences—Jeremy’s dominant memory was of the scandal, and he assumed everyone else in town shared the same memory. Paranoia, obviously, but not necessarily unfounded paranoia. To his mother, it was as though it all happened yesterday, as she had reminded Jeremy every minute since his return to the Landing.
“Thank you, sergeant,” Jeremy said. He waited a beat, then asked again, “Is Constable McKitrick in the office?”
“No, I’m sorry,” Thomson said. “He’s not. He’s not on duty for a few hours yet. I don’t expect him till early afternoon.”
Jeremy frowned and looked at his watch. It was almost eleven. He didn’t cotton to waiting around town for two or three hours till Elliot came on shift. “Thank you, sergeant,” he said again.
“Any message?”
“No, sergeant.” He was suddenly struck by how ridiculous he sounded. Who calls a police station and asks for a particular cop, but doesn’t leave a message? Are you trying to sound weird? “Actually, yes,” Jeremy said firmly. “Would you tell him I called? And that I’ll try him again?”
“I will indeed, Mr. Parr. And again, welcome back to town.”
“Thank you, sergeant,” Jeremy said for a third time, then hung up.
What to do, he pondered. Then he picked up the telephone directory hanging from the ledge next to the phone in the booth and looked up the phone number and address of McKitrick, E. The phone number was there, right beside the address on Martina Street.
His mouth was suddenly very dry, and his heart sounded like the echo of a trip-hammer in his ears. No guts, no glory, he thought, even though he’d always hated that phrase, associating as he always had, with clubs he would never, ever be part of. But it still rang true.
The worst case scenario would be that Elliot refused to see him, or threw him out, or decked Jeremy for daring to show up at his house, especially if he was with a woman. On the bright side, maybe in the privacy of his own house, Elliot might be able to talk about his feelings. Christina is right. I am just like a girl.
Jeremy pushed open the door of the phone booth and walked over to where his car was parked. No guts, no glory, indeed. He slipped behind the wheel and turned the key.
Anne Miller had decided against taking Finn to the hospital even though when he’d regained consciousness he’d been hysterical. He’d only been out for a few minutes, but to his frantic mother it seemed as though he’d been in a coma for six months. She’d shaken him and patted his face, trying to wake him.
When he’d woken, in between great arcs of crying, Finn had tried to tell Anne and Hank something about Sadie catching fire. It made no sense to Anne, but the fact that he’d come home distraught and nearly delirious without his beloved Labrador was a fact that asserted itself in the midst of his agitation. Also, he was covered in ash, an incontrovertible fact that chilled Ann Miller to her heart’s core.
“Finn, slow down,” she begged. “Tell us again. What happened?
Where’s Sadie?”
“I threw the buh-buh-ball,” he wept. “And she . . . she burned up. My dog burned up into smoke.”
“Finn, that’s not possible,” Hank had said, slipping automatically into the reasoned tone of fathers, a tone that usually had the power to right the world’s wrongs and bend reality with the sheer power of its unquestioned authority. “Did someone shoot Sadie? Was it maybe a gun you heard? Did you see smoke?”
“I threw the ball and she burned up! She burned up! SADIE BURNED UP!” Hank went to slap Finn’s face—not out of anger, but merely a lifetime of watching movies where hysterical people are slapped across the fact to calm them. Before he could, however, Anne stepped between Hank and their son, holding Finn tightly to her breast. Over the top of Finn’s head, Anne shot her husband a look that clearly telegraphed, Oh, for heaven’s sake, Hank. Finn buried his face in her bathrobe and sobbed till his entire body shook, but even Hank could see that his mother’s embrace had a calming effect on him.
“Shhhhhh,” said Anne. “Shhhhh, Finn. It’s all right. Take your time.
It’s all right. We’ll figure out what happened to Sadie. Shhhh . . .” And yet Finn was inconsolable. “I told you what happened. I told you.”
In his bedroom, Finn curled against his pillow as though it were Sadie’s body. She hadn’t seen that posture in her son since he was a baby, and if Finn had suddenly popped his thumb in his mouth and began to suck it, she wouldn’t have found it out of place. As his mother, Ann knew every position of his sleeping body, every curve, every mood-based physical cue. What she saw here terrified her. It was as though Finn was retreating into himself, reverting to a preconscious infantile state. And Sadie was definitely missing—again. There wasn’t any way around it.
Finn lay on top of the coverlet. Anne took a blanket from the foot of his bed and covered him. As she watched, his shallow breathing deepened and he closed his eyes. If he was not actually sleeping, she thought, he was at least slowly calming himself. Ann ran her fingers through Finn’s hair. Her fingers came away matted with a combination of ash, sweat, tears, and snot. She wiped her hand on her bathrobe. Ash. Sadie? On fire? It’s not possible.
Back in the living room, Hank was waiting for her, pacing the floor. “Anne, what the blazes . . . ? Where’s Sadie? Did Finn say anything else?”
“He’s resting,” she said. It was as though she hadn’t heard the question. “Not sleeping, but resting. He’ll sleep.”
“Anne, where’s Sadie? Where’s the damn dog? Last night she could barely walk. This morning he takes her out for a walk and comes back without her, and with some crazy story like something out of a horror movie. Did he do something to her? Did he hurt her?”
“Jesus Christ, Hank. What do you mean, ‘did he hurt her’? Are you insane? He loves—loved—that dog like a baby. He’d never hurt her. What the hell are you asking me? Did he hurt her? What’s wrong with you?”
“Anne,” Hank said, with a patronizing patience that would normally have driven his wife to thoughts of murder, “the dog is missing. You don’t believe she burst into flames all of a sudden, do you?”
“Hank, Finn is covered with ashes! And Sadie isn’t here! You bet something happened! But what?”
Hank thought for a moment. “A gunshot? Did a hunter shoot her, maybe? Did he imagine the rest? You know the way he is, especially with those bloody Dracula comic books of his. His imagination can be the very devil.”
“Hank, if Sadie had been shot, he’d have blood on him. He doesn’t have blood on him. He has ashes on him.”
“Summer lightning, maybe . . . ? It does happen. It’s rare, but it does happen. I can’t think of any other explanation. Can you?”
Anne was silent. Then she said, “Hank, can you go out there and see if you can find her . . . her body? Even if she was struck by . . . by summer lightning, she should still be there, shouldn’t she? Can you bring her home? So we can bury her in the yard? I think it would be a good thing for Finn, don’t you?”
Hank sighed. “I can’t go now, Anne. I have to be at work. But I’ll try to cut out earlier today and head up there before sunset. I just can’t manage it any sooner than that.”
“How will you know where to look?” Tears filled her eyes at the thought of Sadie lying untended on some rock ledge somewhere up near Spirit Rock. “How will you find her?”
“Shouldn’t be hard to find her,” Hank said, his throat suddenly full. “I’ll find her. I’ll bring her back home. You’re right. It’ll be good for Finn to see that she . . . that he didn’t . . . well, that something else didn’t happen to her.”
When Hank left for work, and Finn was finally asleep in his room, Anne did two things in quick succession. First, she telephoned the Mrs. Brocklehurst at the school and told her that Finnegan was running a high fever and wouldn’t be at school for at least the next day or two. She was keeping him home, for everyone’s sake. Yes, it was a pity. Yes, these sudden changes in temperature were indeed the dickens. Yes, she’d make sure his bedroom window stayed closed. Of course. Yes, thank you Mrs. B. When Anne hung up the phone, she locked herself in the bathroom and turned the cold water tap full-blast in the sink so Finn wouldn’t hear anything. Then she sat down on the edge of the bathtub and wept her own tears, the ones she’d kept from Finn and Hank because if she fell apart, they would, too. And now Finn had fallen apart, and there was no more reason to keep the tears inside. At least not in private. She cried for Sadie, whom she loved as though Sadie were her dog, not Finn’s. She cried harder than she had since she was a little girl, so hard that her shoulders and her abdominal muscles throbbed with it.
But mostly, she cried for Finn, because whatever had happened this morning out there on the cliffs—whatever it was—it had destroyed something in her son she feared he’d never get back. Whatever other tragedy had happened here, something had been shattered beyond any possibility of repair.
Later, around lunchtime, through an upstairs window, she’d seen the Parr girl come up the driveway. Anne had heard the knock on the door, but hadn’t answered it. She’d prayed Finn hadn’t heard it. He was finally asleep. For her part, Anne didn’t have the faintest clue how to tell the Parr girl about Sadie, even if she’d had the heart to try.
She looked out the window again and saw the girl walking back in the direction of Matthew Browning. A nice girl, Anne thought, relieved that she’d left so quickly. She reminds me of Jack. I’ll tell Finn she was by when he wakes up. He’ll appreciate that she stopped by. So sweet of her to do that.