Enter, Night (6 page)

There was a diner across the street from the motel. Christina sat at a
booth near the window and ordered scrambled eggs and home fries. From
where she sat, she could watch for Morgan in case her daughter woke up
and came looking for her. It seemed unlikely, given how deeply she was
sleeping when Christina had left the motel room. Sleep was nature’s best
balm. Morgan and Jack had been exceptionally close, perhaps closer than
most fathers and daughters, and his death had devastated her.

That, coupled with the sudden uprooting from the only home she’d
ever known—in the only city she’d ever known—to move to a town she’d
only ever heard discussed in the most negative terms by her parents, had
taken a visible emotional toll.

What sort of a mother packs up her grieving teenage daughter and loads
her into the back seat of a rusted-out 1969 Chevy Chevelle and drives her to
the ends of the earth to start a new life, you ask
? She took a sip of the fresh
coffee, wincing at the bitterness and adding more sugar.
A broke one, that’s
who. A broke widow whose freewheeling, romantic, carefree late husband
hadn’t taken out life insurance because he thought it was bourgeois, but took
out a second mortgage on their house without telling her—one she found out
about when the bank foreclosed on it. A woman with no job and no savings,
but who had a rich mother-in-law, one who might despise her, personally, but
might still feel a sense of dynastic responsibility for her granddaughter out of
love for her eldest son, if nothing else.

At least
, she thought,
I hope she will
.

As she ate her breakfast in blessed silence, Christina watched as
the light advanced. She’d forgotten how clear that light was, especially
in the fall. The mist on the lake was burning off as the sun climbed
higher. On the other side of the lake, she could make out a scattering
of white buildings underlined by a dirt road at the foot of the sloping,
mountainous hills stretching against the blue sky. Alone in the booth at
the diner with her thoughts, accountable to no one, and with nothing
around her at that moment that had any bearing on her life, she gazed
out the window as the sunlight touched the burnished leaves of the line
of maple trees framing the motel where her daughter slept.

When she was sure she could see the beauty, she allowed herself to
feel hope.

Christina felt a sudden crashing wave of terrible longing for Jack,
one that stunned her once again with its ferocity. Tears blurred her vision,
but this time she didn’t wipe them away. She rode the pain like a wave,
not fighting it, cresting with it instead, allowed it to deposit her, gently
and safely, in a rational place.

She paid her bill and left the diner to wake up Morgan and Jeremy.
They still had a four- to five-hour drive ahead of them to Parr’s Landing
and whatever waited for them there.

They were on the road
within an hour and a half. Morgan and Jeremy
were awake, showered, and packed up by the time she got back to the
motel. Christina was surprised but pleased. Getting Morgan ready in
the morning had been an ordeal more or less from the day she’d turned
thirteen. The waitress at the diner smiled at her when the three of them
trooped over and sat down at the booth she’d left twenty minutes before.

Christina said, “A couple more hungry customers for you before we
get back on the road this morning.”

“Couldn’t get enough of our good country cooking, eh?” The waitress
beamed at Morgan and Jeremy. “Is this your hubby and your little girl?
She looks just like her handsome daddy. You want some hot chocolate,
honey?”

Christina felt Morgan flinch beside her. She opened her mouth to
tell the waitress that Jeremy wasn’t her father but her uncle, but before
she could say a word, Morgan smiled at the waitress and politely replied,
“Just some orange juice, please.”

When the waitress returned to the kitchen with their order, Christina
turned to Morgan and said, “That was very nice of you, sweetheart. It
was very considerate.”

Morgan shrugged. “It’s not her fault. She didn’t know. And I
do
look
like daddy and so does Uncle Jeremy, so she wasn’t all wrong.”

Jeremy said, “Your father had all the looks in the family. Ask your
mother. He was so handsome when he was your age that everyone was in
love with him. Your mom was the only girl in Parr’s Landing who’d ever
caught his eye. It was like
Romeo and Juliet
with those two.”

“
Romeo and Juliet
was a tragedy,” Morgan said. The previous year,
her class at Jarvis Collegiate had studied Shakespeare’s play in English
Lit. The teacher, Mr. Niven, had run the Franco Zeffirelli version of the
film on the reel-to-reel projector in the classroom and Morgan had fallen
in love with Leonard Whiting. “Mom and Dad weren’t a tragedy. They ran
off and got married. They had me. They got out of Parr’s Landing. Romeo
and Juliet never got out of Verona.”

“You’re right, they did get out of Parr’s Landing.” Jeremy’s eyes met
Christina’s over the table. “They did. They got away and they met their
destiny. And the best part of their destiny was having you.” He reached
over and put his hand over Morgan’s. “I’m so very, very glad they did.”

Morgan allowed Jeremy to hold her hand for a brief moment, and
then pulled it gently away as though to avoid hurting his feelings. Her
love for her uncle was unquestioned. The question for Morgan seemed
to be how much of that love she could show without feeling disloyal to
her father, at least for now. Christina observed their interaction and saw
that Jeremy understood. She sent a silent prayer of thanksgiving for
Jeremy’s presence to whichever divinity took under its wing the families
of fatherless girls and husbandless wives.

When the food arrived, Morgan took a bite of her toast and asked
Jeremy, “Isn’t it weird having a town named after you? I mean, I’m going
to see my name everywhere, aren’t I? That’s going to be weird. Wasn’t it
weird for you and Daddy?”

“It
was
weird,” Jeremy admitted. “But you get used to it. Your dad
and I never thought twice about it. You won’t either, after a while. And the
town wasn’t named after
us,
it was named after our great-grandfather—
your great great-grandfather. He founded the town in the late nineteenth
century. That was a long time ago, and nobody thinks about it anymore.
We’re just like anybody else.”

“Then why did you leave? Why did you move to the city? If it’s so
great, why didn’t you stay?”

Jeremy glanced around the diner, which was slowly filling with
people. He lowered his voice slightly. “Morgan, you know why I had to
leave. There were . . . problems. I know you know what those problems
were. Your dad and mom and I have told you about them. We don’t need
to discuss it again here, do we?”

Morgan looked chastened. “I’m sorry, Uncle Jeremy,” she said. “I
didn’t mean to make you feel bad.”

“It’s fine, Morgan. But we have to remember that we’re not in the
city anymore. Things are a lot different out here. There are things we can
talk about in public and things we can’t talk about.”

Time to nip this one in the bud,
Christina thought. “Sweetheart, I
know you’re nervous about today. I know you’re nervous about meeting
your grandma for the first time, especially after everything we’ve told
you about her. Try to remember that the bad things we told you about
happened a long time ago. Your dad and I were very young and your
grandma and grandpa were very mad at us for running away together
and having you.”

“They didn’t want you to have me?”

“Morgan, we’ve talked about this before. They didn’t think it was
right for us to have you since we weren’t married.”

“But you
did
get married. You
are
married.”

“They wanted your daddy to stay in Parr’s Landing, go to university,
and take over the mine. When the mine shut down, they blamed him for
not being there to help save it. They were mad at both of us, honey. But
they weren’t mad at you.”

“I don’t think we should go there. I think we should go home.”

“That’s all in the past,” Christina said, ignoring Morgan’s last
comment. “Your grandma Parr was very nice to invite us to come and
stay with her for a while.” Christina saw Jeremy wince. She pursed her
lips to signal to him to keep quiet. “We need to get back on our feet.”

“Why couldn’t we get back on our feet in Toronto?” Morgan’s bottom
lip began to tremble. “Why did we have to come here? Daddy didn’t want
us to come back here. He
hated
it here. He told me so. And now you’re
making us move here. It’s not fair.”

“I know, Morgan. But we have to make the best of it when there’s no
alternative. And believe me, there’s no alternative. It’ll be what we make
of it.”

“It’ll be fine,” Jeremy said. “It’s a beautiful part of the country,
Morgan. And your grandma’s house is very old and very big. There are
wonderful log beams on the ceiling and lots of paintings on the walls. It’s
on the top of a hill with a great view of the town and the river below it.”

She brightened. “So, are we rich? I’d like to be rich.”

Christina and Jack had never been the beneficiaries of any part of
the Parr fortune after they’d left the Landing together, so there had been
no reason to inculcate Morgan with any illusions of wealth. As a result, it
had simply never occurred to Morgan that her new life in Parr’s Landing
would be any less hand-to-mouth than her old life in their house in the
Cabbagetown district of Toronto.

“Morgan—” There was a warning edge to Christina’s voice.

“Your
grandmother
is rich,” Jeremy corrected. “Well, she’s not as rich
as the family used to be before the thirties. But yeah, she’s rich.” Jeremy
looked across the table at Christina. This time, she was the one who
winced. “But she’s very stingy, so it doesn’t matter if she’s rich or not. It
doesn’t matter to
us,
anyway. But you’ll get to stay in a beautiful house,
one that’s so big you won’t hardly have to see the rest of us unless you
want to.”

“Beautiful, beautiful,” Morgan said sullenly. “I always know when
you’re lying because you say things like ‘beautiful’ instead of describing
them properly. It’s not beautiful at all, is it? It sounds like an old witch’s
castle or something. Daddy said she was an ogress. He said she ate her
young. I bet it’s a horrible house.”

Jeremy smiled. “I think your father was speaking metaphorically,
sweetheart. Did he really say that she ate her children?” He laughed. “Did
he actually use that phrase—that exact phrase?”

“Yeah, he did. Why?”

“Because that was my line. That was something I said to him once
about your grandma. I was kidding, of course. I don’t think she literally
eats her young. Although, she might want to eat her granddaughter. You
never know. You’re delicious.” Across the table, Christina felt Morgan
relaxing. Jeremy had succeeded in distracting her from her fretfulness.
She’d started to giggle. Jeremy continued, his voice ominous. “The
winters are very long up here and Parr’s Landing is in Wendigo country.”

“What’s a Windiggy?”

“Not ‘Windiggy,’
Wendigo
. It’s an Indian legend. The Wendigo was a
cannibal spirit that possessed men and made them eat human flesh.”

“That’s disgusting,” Morgan said, her nose wrinkled in distaste. “I
bet it’s fake anyway. There’s no such thing.”

“When we’re settled in, I’ll take you up to Spirit Rock,” Jeremy said.
“I’ll show you the Indian paintings on the cliffs above Bradley Lake. You
can see for yourself. They’re supposed to be paintings of a real Wendigo.
Your dad and I used to swim there when we were kids. Everyone in town
has seen them.”

“For real?” Morgan’s blasé façade of adolescent disinterest slipped
momentarily. She’d loved legends and stories ever since she was a little
girl, something Jeremy had clearly remembered and was now using to
his advantage. Christina again met his eyes but this time she smiled. He
smiled back.

“Well, the paintings are three hundred or so years old,” Jeremy
said seriously. “And they’re pretty faded. But yeah, that’s what they’re
supposed to be. There was a Jesuit missionary settlement on the site of
the town sometime in the seventeenth century. There are lots of stories
about it. Parr’s Landing is a pretty interesting place if you know what to
look for.”

“Mom, why didn’t you tell me any of this stuff when I was growing
up?”

“Oh,” Christina said, affecting nonchalance. “I don’t know. It’s
something you really need to see for yourself.”
I didn’t tell you any of this
stuff because I didn’t want to think about any of it. I wanted to forget it all.
And I never wanted you to be curious enough about it to go find out about it
on your own. You were supposed to be my city girl. And instead, here we are.
“It’s really a beautiful town in its own way, Morgan. I think you’re going
to like it a lot. At least let’s try to give it a chance, shall we?” She looked
hopefully at Morgan. She laid her hand on top of her daughter’s, much as
Jeremy had done earlier, but this time Morgan didn’t pull her hand away.

She squeezed her mother’s hand. “OK, mom, I promise. It’ll be OK,
you’ll see.”

The waitress came back to the table. “All done? Can I get you folks
anything else?” She looked at Morgan’s plate. “Honey, you didn’t eat
very much. Not a big eater, eh? Would you like something else? Some
pancakes or something?”

“No, thank you,” she replied. “I wasn’t very hungry. I’m not much of
a morning person. But the food was great.”

“Just the bill please,” Christina said, reaching for her purse. “We
have to get on the road. We still have a long way to go.”

They took Highway 17
north along Lake Superior towards Montréal
River.