Enter, Night (36 page)

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?”