The sun was coming in from the side and front windows, the west and the north. It was late afternoon. They were at the cottage. There was a fire in the fireplace. A bit of driftwood in the woodbox. Stella pushed herself up. She had been in a dead sleep and hadn’t heard Dianne get up and leave, make the fire. The tide was coming in. The water was a silvery golden quivering thing advancing on the land. Dianne pointed at the black book on the coffee table. “See you found that. Remember what it is?”
Stella did not remember what it was. But she did have a feeling it was important. Stella knew Dianne was watching her face carefully, looking for a change in Stella’s expression, any sign she might be recalling just what the book was. Stella felt a pulse in her arm, in her chest. Something inside of her was festering its way out, whether she wanted it to or not.
Poetry Night.
Private Matters.
Now
The poetry reading was in the old courtroom in the Jericho County Museum and Mal was the first one to arrive. She sat on a wooden bench at the back of the room. She hoped she would get more out of Grace than she had from the strange old woman on the Flying Squirrel Road and from Seraphina. Mal wondered if Grace might know who these women were, but it sounded so ridiculous when Mal tried to prepare a question: Do you know that old lady on the mountain who lives on a dirt road, by the run-down house with the strange fountain? She ran away into the woods when I questioned her. Mal tried to figure out what to ask. Grace hadn’t exactly been welcoming, but at least Mal knew how to talk to her.
“Malmuria?”
Mal jumped.
“Sorry. You were a million miles away, as they say. I didn’t mean to startle you.”
Mal stood up. Grace looked like her author photo in her book, which Mal had bought at the stationery in Bigelow Bay — her hair down, a flowing blouse. The stationery store had a whole gift section and a post office, a book section in the back, as well as a toy aisle, a puzzle aisle, and a table in the corner with a sign that said Tea-Leaf Readings.
Mal wanted to ask Grace if they could go for coffee, if Grace could tell her what to do. She needed a friend here. A big sister. Instead, Mal said, “Thanks for not calling security on me at the centre.”
“Thanks for coming to my reading.”
“I still want to speak with Stella Sprague.”
“I’m on holiday this week, Mal. And I really can’t talk about residents. I’d lose my job. You understand that, right? Privacy. Stella’s had a lot to deal with. She doesn’t need someone trying to pry into her past.”
“I’m not trying to pry. I’m telling you I interviewed someone in California who said she had been abused when she was young, by this group of men, Sodality, and that it went back for decades to some secret place at Mercy Lake. She said these men were worried there was evidence that could incriminate them.” Mal sighed. “Listen, I know this sounds crazy, but I want my work to have meaning and I can’t let this go.”
“I don’t think you’re crazy, I really don’t, Mal. You should go to the police. Most people my age know stories about Mercy Lake, but they’re the kinds of stories we told as kids to scare each other. If you’re doing research, you need to know how quickly fact gets mixed up with fiction. If any of this is true you could be in real danger. I don’t mean to sound motherly but I really think you should let this go. I know you talked to Stella’s friend. Dianne mentioned you came by. She seems to believe you. And one of the nurses on her unit said she saw Dianne talking to someone . . . who looked like you.”
“You mean Black?”
Grace smiled. “Yes, that’s what I mean.”
“I’m sure she didn’t put it that way.”
“No, she didn’t. This isn’t California. It’s a white place. It’s an English place. Some of my heritage is Acadian and they don’t like the French either. It’s the Georgia of the north here. You need to be careful if anything you’re saying is true.”
A woman at the front of the room was introducing Grace. She turned to go. “I read some of your stories online, Mal. The Paris Review. American Short Fiction. Impressive. And I listened to some of the episodes on your podcast. You have a lot of talent, you know. Your work already has meaning. You don’t have to be an investigative journalist on top of that.”
Maybe it was the strangeness of the setting, the old courtroom. And the fact that Grace and Mal were both writers. Whatever it was, Mal knew Grace understood the absurdity of the situation, and its seriousness, and the peculiar obscurity of a short-fiction writer and poet.
Grace read from her latest poetry book, which was about the murder of a woman in the early twentieth century that the husband had been hanged for. The trial had taken place in the same courtroom they were in. It was packed. Mal thought it had probably been packed back when the trial took place too. It was strange, poetic, being in the same space once for law and now for art.
There were three older Asian women in the front row, but almost everyone was white — white and middle-aged — except
