Enter, Night

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!”