The Memento (47 page)

I wonder if you’ve been here all this time, Melissa, as I’ve told this story of the years you knew, and the years that were taken from you. It was your favourite time for a story, when the evening came. The stitches I put in now, of the old lady in the rocking chair on the
verandah—they show a wrinkled woman who looks asleep, but if you look careful you see she is still and her arms hang down, that she has fallen into a sleep she will never wake from, her eyes gazing ahead. There is an embroidery hoop on the verandah floor, and the little girl stands by the mirror and she is holding out her hand. Below the picture is stitched in finest silk floss:

I see you now. I am a twelfth-born Mosher, and when the dead appear in the mirror by the door it is time. Holy Mother Mercy sending you, perhaps, a gift for carrying the memento all these years. We walk through the meadow, leaving a path behind us in the tall grasses. The wind blows the path away and there is only an untouched field of sweet hay and late-summer flowers swaying under the enormous singing sky.

O
NGOING GRATITUDE
to the fiercely talented Kiara Kent, literary editor with the heart of a dramaturge. Thank you for such intellectual elegance, rigour and devotion to the novel. Endless thanks also to associate publisher Amy Black for kindness, wisdom and guidance.

Thank you to Kristin Cochrane, Susan Burns, Catherine Marjoribanks and the team at Doubleday Canada. Thanks to Mr. Five Seventeen who beautifully carried the world of the story into book format. Special thanks to Maya Mavjee, the first to believe in this novel, and to Lynn Henry. Thanks also to Lynne Reeder for salty Nova Scotian encouragement along the way.

My gratitude to artist and dearest friend Marie Cameron.
The End of Spring
graces the cover, a painting inspired by a photograph I took of a dead bird which fell on my door step during the writing.

Deep appreciation to Kent Hoffman and Mary Lynk for expert guidance through various forms of storytelling and understanding the power of voice. Thanks to the Box of Delights Bookstore in
Wolfville, Nova Scotia and the Writers Federation of Nova Scotia for steadfast encouragement.

Abiding appreciation for Sara Keddy’s affection for the old mountain and valley ways. Thanks Dana Mills and Meaghan Franey for those literary coffees. Thank you Melanie Little, Madeleine Thien, Barbara Lipp, Yvette Doucette, Millie & Maurice Laporte, Pat Acheson, Scott Campbell, and Waldo Walsh & Judy Noel Walsh at Birchleigh Farm. Thank you to Dr. Beverley Cassidy; to Dr. Chris Toplack for research on DES; and to Lois Hare, ND, for discussion of deadly flowers. I would like to also acknowledge the support of the Woodcock Fund through the Writers’ Trust of Canada.

Thank you Atsuko Tomita Poirier and Sarah Jane Blenkhorn for sharing their knowledge of traditional Japanese ghost stories and cultural practices. Thanks also to the work of Lafcadio Hearn, a 19th century writer who wrote extensively in English about Japanese culture and ancient texts. Thank you, Joan Levack, for unwavering encouragement from the very start, and the life changing vintage floral card table. Thanks to the effervescence that is Sheree Fitch.

Thank you Dan Conlin, helpful historian and big brother—for traditional Nova Scotia ghost stories told by island beach fires.

Gratitude to Gwenyth Dwyn and Bruce Dienes for never, ever doubting, not even once, and for your sea of kindness and love of eccentricity. A profound thanks to Joceline & Martin Doucette for the espressos and everything else.

And of course, sparkly thanks to my marvelous son, Silas, with me through the long journey of the book. Thanks to sweet Milo and Angus, and to the loving miracle that is Andy Brown—he has kept the home fires burning, the graphic novels flowing and the lamp glowing in the long dark nights.