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“Yes. It’s very private. It’s between two people and God.”

Lily says nothing.

“Lily, I’m not — I don’t — I’m not trying to make you feel ashamed or embarrassed, I just want to prepare you for certain … wonderful — things that will occur as you mature.” Lily’s hands have kept working but Mercedes has stopped and gone to the pump to hide her embarrassment.

Lily answers with natural delicacy, “It’s all right, Mercedes. I got my period for the first time last March and Frances told me what to do.”

So. What else is it not given me to know around here, wonders Mercedes, pumping vigorously. Lily steals a look at her older sister. Suddenly she is aware of having hurt Mercedes’ feelings. It hadn’t occurred to her that Mercedes might feel left out of such a thing. It had only occurred to her that Mercedes might prefer to be left out. Lily would apologize but feels that would only intensify her sister’s humiliation.

“Mercedes, is Frances really going to have a baby?”

“So she’s told you.”

“Yes, but I wasn’t certain it was true.”

“It’s true.” Mercedes rinses away all traces of flour and dough, then reaches for a cake of lye and asks, “Did Frances tell you how she came to be with child?”

“Yes.”

Lily is quite flushed by now, not with guilty knowledge but with the delicate mortification of one whom it pains to trespass on the privacy of another.

Mercedes scrapes a bristle brush over the moistened lye and scrubs her way from fingernails to elbows.

“Well? What did she tell you, Lily?”

Lily works the dough reverently, shaping it with care.

“She told me that she became pregnant after the night she passed with Mr Taylor in the mine —”

Mercedes’ hands are sterile.

Lily continues with dignity, “But that she miscarried as a result of the shooting.”

Mercedes turns off the pump with her wrist and holds her hands up, allowing them to drip-dry towards the elbows. She asks, “Then how does Frances explain her present condition?”

Lily answers, “The bullet.” And goes on moulding the dough.

Mercedes contaminates her hands with a clean tea towel, drying, drying, drying them. “She told you that in order to avoid telling you the truth, Lily.”

“No. She believes it.”

Mercedes pauses. Folds the towel. “Well that’s not how women get pregnant.”

“I know, Mercedes.”

Mercedes has lost patience. “Well will you tell me then what in the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ on the Cross it is you altogether do know of the factual acts of life!”

Facts, Lily thinks but doesn’t say. Instead, she removes her apron and leaves the kitchen saying, “Excuse me.”

Mercedes is flummoxed. That girl is a cipher. Saint or no saint, why can’t anyone in this house ever just have a straightforward conversation?

Then she sees the sculpture:

Modest penis and vagina in coital embrace, already beginning to sag owing to the dough being overworked.

“Frances, why did you tell Lily that story about the bullet?”

“Because it’s true.”

This is the last thing Mercedes expected to hear. She was ready for an obscene joke or another lie, not this. What Frances is this? The same strange one who rose from the tub the other day.

“Do you really believe that, Frances?”

Frances is bundled supine on a camp cot on the front porch watching the afternoon street go by. Trixie is chasing moths in the yard. Frances does another un-Frances thing. She reaches out and takes Mercedes’ hand. Frances’s hand is warm. She smiles.

“I’m happy, Mercedes. I’m happy.”

Frances’s smile is true. It contains the memory of all her other smiles, the false grins of a lifetime, nothing has been banished from her face — but something immeasurable has been added.

“Everything’s going to be all right, Mercedes.”

Mercedes squeezes Frances’s hand and tucks the blanket up around her.

“Don’t worry, Mercedes, I’m not crazy.”

“I’m not worried.” Frances will always need me.

“Don’t be sad, Mercedes.”

“I’m happy, dear.” And Mercedes smiles through tears as she smooths back the curls from her sister’s brow.

“Mercedes.”

“Yes, dear?”

“Don’t be upset about Lily. She was too shy to say the words so she made a sculpture.”

“You’re right,” says Mercedes, serene, rising to leave, “Lily’s a complete innocent.”

“Either that or she’s possessed by the Devil.”

Mercedes turns sharply.

“Just kidding, Mercedes.”

And the white stripe appears across Frances’s nose, momentarily ruffling Mercedes’ best-laid plans.

“When can you start, Mercedes?”

“I can start today, Sister Saint Eustace.”

Mercedes savours the wood-polish smell of the principal’s office at Mount Carmel High School. The well-worn books ranged upon the shelves, Jesus on His varnished cross, broad oak desk with immaculate inkwell and pen, crisp memos scrolled into pigeon-holes. This is the type of office Mercedes would like some day. Someday I will cut off all my hair and enter the convent. I will teach. Or perhaps I will join a contemplative order.

Mercedes nips this fantasy in the bud, for it strikes her that her whole family would have to be dead or married before she herself could become the bride of Christ. And since marriage is extremely unlikely for any of them, her dream is tantamount to wishing them all dead. Or no. Frances could come with me as an invalid. Couldn’t she?

“How is Frances?”

“Oh she’s grand, Sister Saint Eustace, hale and —”

“Is she going to keep the child?”

Mercedes is flustered at the frankness of the question, even though she does not delude herself that the whole of Cape Breton Island is not fully apprised of the latest Piper scandal.

“Well I think — I should say quite possibly Frances may decide to put it up for adoption.”

“Really.”

Mercedes feels suddenly hot beneath the glare of Sister Saint Eustace’s spectacles. Why? I haven’t done anything wrong.

Sister continues, “God works in mysterious ways. Frances might finally come into her own. Raising a child.”

“Oh quite possibly, sister, without a doubt.”

Mercedes smiles and knows she is lying but is uncertain how to frame it as a confession of sin this Sunday, for is it one? Yes. And no. My head hurts.

“Shall I proceed to the grade ones, sister?”

“Yes.”

Mercedes rises. “Thank you, Sister Saint Eustace.”

But Sister Saint Eustace has returned to her paperwork.

James is enjoying his retirement. The wingback chair is surrounded by a growing turret of books. This is his other project, along with the secret one in the shed. He has opened the last of the crates and emptied the shelves of all the books he never had time to read. First he counted them alclass="underline" a hundred and three. Then he began stacking them in the order in which he intends to read them, the last ones forming the foundation. It is a slow ruminative process. He knows what he intends to read first, however, and has set it aside accordingly for the pinnacle of his walclass="underline" Dante’s Paradiso. Having gone through Inferno years ago, he has decided to cheat and skip over Purgatorio, eager for the beatific vision and the reunion with Beatrice.

He rests now from his labours, in his chair behind his partially constructed parapet of words, and allows his mind to drift in place. His capable eldest daughter making things go. His wild middle daughter settling down to raise her coloured child — oh yes, he hasn’t forgotten that. He has simply forgotten how such a thing was ever able to call murder into his heart; the birth of an innocent child. And Lily. My consolation.