Enter, Night by Michael Rowe

almost sixteen years
in the past when she’d fled the town with Jack Parr.
    Unlike Lot’s wife, however, Christina hadn’t been turned into a pillar
of salt as punishment for looking back. But for its part, Parr’s Landing
might as well have been petrified by her backward glance for all it had
changed.
    Faulkner was right,
she thought.
    “Wake up, Morgan.” Christina called gently over her shoulder. And
before she could stop herself: “We’re home.” Then she turned the Chevelle
left on Main Street, onto Martin Street, and began the steep uphill climb
towards Parr House.

CHAPTER SEVEN
    Adeline Parr heard the sound of wheels on the gravel below her
bedroom window and thought:
Now it begins
. She sighed.
I hope it’s not
all too awfully unpleasant
.
    She stared intently into the bevelled mirror of the nineteenth century Biedermeier burlwood dressing table at which she sat and took
her own measure in the glass. The result was pleasing, if slightly severe,
and it suited her purposes admirably. She adjusted her pearls, and then
took a piece of tissue paper from the enamelled box and expertly blotted
the lipstick on her bottom lip till it, too, was flawless. By habit, she
glanced at the silver-framed photograph of her dead husband and smiled
at it as though waiting for Augustus Parr to tell her how beautiful she
still was.
    Her gold Piaget watch read eleven-thirty. She sighed again.
Adeline stood up and smoothed her dark grey skirt, crossed the
floor of the bedroom, and closed the door behind her. Then she went
downstairs to greet the adventuress who had stolen and murdered her
favourite son; her bastard granddaughter; and her great mistake of a
second son.
    The smile Adeline had been practising froze on her face when she
first laid eyes on Morgan, hanging shyly behind her common slut of a
mother, in the doorway of Parr House.
    Adeline barely registered Christina, but she felt her heart might
stop when she saw Jack’s face staring back at her. Jack’s face, except it
was the open and trusting face of a young girl, with none of the rage Jack
had shown Adeline before he left. The girl’s hair was the same as Jack’s—
thick and dark brown, with caramel highlights when the light hit it just
so. Her eyes were the same as Jack’s, too: dark brown, almost-black irises
with pupils like dark pools.
    “Welcome, Morgan,” she said. “I’m your grandmother, Adeline Parr.
It’s nice to meet you.”
    Adeline extended her hand and Morgan shook it politely. Under
other circumstances, she would have been delighted to see that the girl
had been inculcated with some measure of good manners, but she was
still privately reeling from the shock of meeting the ghost of her eldest
son. The girl’s skin was lighter than Jack’s but more like Adeline’s own,
which she knew would please her when she recovered.
    “It’s nice to meet you, too . . . Grandmother.”
    For Morgan, there was an edge of a question in the way she said it,
as though she were uncertain—not about who Adeline was, but what to
call her. Certainly nothing in Adeline’s severe elegance inspired cuddly
appellatives like “granny” or “grandma,” nor had stories about Adeline
been any significant part of Morgan’s childhood mythology, apart from
the odd cryptic reference by one of her parents.
    “Yes, you may call me Grandmother,” Adeline said, smiling graciously
as though she were bestowing a great favour on Morgan. “I dislike
diminutives, especially when addressing one’s elders.”
    “Yes, ma’am. I mean, yes, Grandmother.”
    Adeline smiled down at Morgan again, then looked past Christina,
whom she still hadn’t greeted, to where Jeremy hung back behind them
in the doorway.
    “Hello, Mother.”
    “Behold the prodigal son returns,” Adeline said. Her expression was
neutral. “That’s Luke 15:11-32, son. I trust that, even given your lifestyle,
you haven’t entirely forgotten the word of