A Town Called Solace

Clara is sent to her room to calm down after yelling at her parents. Once she stops crying, she sneaks out of the house and heads over to Mrs. Orchard’s, where she takes each item Liam put away and places it back exactly where it had been in the living room.

Later that evening, Clara refuses her father’s gentle requests to join them at the table, as she eats her supper at her usual vigil. She watches with satisfaction as Liam walks into the house and stops short when he notices the living room; he appears almost afraid. Liam doesn’t put Mrs. Orchard’s things away again the next day, and Clara feels a sense of achievement.

Clara’s teacher, Mrs. Quinn, visits her home to talk with John and Diane about how Clara hasn’t expressed much emotion since Rose left and has stopped interacting with her friends. John and Diane encourage Clara to invite some friends over, but she asserts she doesn’t like them anymore, privately reflecting on how they keep asking her about Rose. Clara thinks up a new rule: In addition to “scrambling the clothes on Rose’s floor” and “counting her footsteps to and from school” (98), Clara is sure that brushing her teeth a certain way will bring Rose back home.

On Friday, Clara is sick at school. When she returns, her mother, who is lying down again, groggily mistakes Clara for Rose before realizing who it is and promising to come down in a bit. Clara heads over to Mrs. Orchard’s house, where Moses climbs onto her lap again. Petting him helps Clara feel better. Later that afternoon, she fumes as she watches Liam put Mrs. Orchard’s things away again. She goes after supper to replace them again, talking to Moses as she does, but partway through, she looks up to find Liam in the doorway.

The heart specialist tells Mrs. Orchard that her heart is in bad condition. She knows it means she will not be returning home but can’t bring herself to ask how long she has left. She finds it difficult to fall asleep, afraid of approaching death. When she does sleep, she has a nightmare in which she is back in Guelph, where Annette is shouting at her while Liam is screaming for her.

Mrs. Orchard has been working on suppressing that memory for much of her life, and recalls a psychiatrist’s advice to replace it with the thought of something positive. She acts on it now, thinking of the second time she saw Liam. He arrives at her house asking for a cookie a couple of days after the first tea party. Realizing Annette doesn’t know he’s slipped away, Mrs. Orchard takes him back to his house, where Annette is skipping rope with the girls.

Mrs. Orchard reassures an ashamed Annette and joins her in watching the children play. The two women are getting along, but when Annette reveals she is pregnant again, Mrs. Orchard is stunned. She is furious when Annette claims that Liam, unlike his sisters, is an exhausting child, not realizing that Liam has overheard. However, Mrs. Orchard manages to keep her feelings hidden and offers to have the children over whenever they’d like to visit, explaining she hasn’t been able to have any of her own.

As Mrs. Orchard expected, it is only ever Liam who visits. The visits start out short, but he begins spending more time at the Orchards’ house as he grows more comfortable. Mrs. Orchard buys some books and toys to keep him entertained at home: “Ordinary, simple, inexpensive things. Things that say, to anyone coming in the door: in this house, there is a child” (114).

The local handyman, Jim Peake, claims he can’t work on Liam’s bathroom until spring; he has work lined up, and his son, who used to help out, has left for university. Liam insists he wants to sell the house soon. When Jim learns Liam’s place is Mrs. Orchard’s old house, he claims the place needs far more work than just the bathroom. Upon learning that Liam isn’t currently working, Jim suggests Liam help Jim out with his current work, so he can get to Liam’s place faster. Liam promises to think about it.

Back at the house, Liam mulls over his temporary inability to make any decisions, as he is constantly thinking of Fiona. He remembers her assertion that Liam is a failure at making friends, something Liam has genuinely struggled with, even as a child. He only attracted women as he grew older because of his good looks. Fiona constantly taunted him about his difficulty with relating to people, claiming he ought to see a psychiatrist.

Liam starts putting away Mrs. Orchard’s things. He comes across a suitcase full of a child’s drawings underneath her bed and recognizes them as his own. He remembers how an entire wall in the Orchards’ house was dedicated to his artwork and called “Liam’s gallery.” Anytime he made something new, the older couple would study it and appreciatively comment on it before putting it on the wall. Liam remembers the sense of pride he felt, as well as how the day his family left for Calgary he tried to run over to the Orchards’, but his mother brought him back and locked him in the car.

Later that afternoon, Liam packs up Mrs. Orchard’s things from the living room into cardboard boxes before heading to the Hot Potato. When he gets home, he is initially unnerved when he finds everything back in its original place, then rationalizes that perhaps the cleaning lady came in while he was away and put everything back for sentimental reasons.

Struck by an emotional lethargy, Liam doesn’t get back to putting things away again for the next couple of days. In the meantime, Jim arrives, saying his other job fell through, and invites Liam to take a look at the repairs needed together. They strike up a bargain where Jim will only charge Liam half his usual price for the work, provided Liam helps Jim out.

Snapped out of his spell by Jim’s visit, Liam begins organizing and putting things away again. He heads out for supper in the evening and returns a little earlier than usual to find Clara replacing Mrs. Orchard’s things while apparently talking to herself. Unsure what else to do, Liam says, “Hi.”

An initially frightened Clara quickly recovers and admonishes Liam for stealing Mrs. Orchard’s things. He asserts that they are his now, as Mrs. Orchard left them to him, and Clara realizes that Mrs. Orchard has passed away. She tearfully explains she promised Mrs. Orchard to take care of Moses; she can’t take him home, as Diane is allergic. Liam hasn’t seen Moses yet, as Moses is hiding. Liam promises they will work something out, and takes her home to tell her parents about Mrs. Orchard. Clara realizes that they already know—they have been lying to her all along.

John apologizes to Clara for not telling her about Mrs. Orchard; they didn’t want to worry her on top of things with Rose. However, Clara realizes that if her parents lied about Mrs. Orchard, they could be lying about Rose still being alive, too. The panic at this thought causes her chest to tighten, and, unable to breathe, she passes out. Dr. Christopherson arrives and gives Clara some medicine to help calm her down, and Clara eventually falls asleep.

A week later at school, Molly, Rick Steel’s sister, tells Clara that Dan will be waiting to talk to her at the same place on her way back from school. Dan reveals that before she left, Rose told him she was headed for the YWCA in Toronto. Dan was to send letters to her there. She also planned on buzzing her hair off, not wearing any makeup, and using the pseudonym “Rowena Jones” so no one would recognize her. Dan wrote Rose letters, but she never replied. He finally headed down to the YWCA in Toronto the previous week and discovered that “Rowena Jones” only stayed there for one night, and though his letters arrived, she never returned to collect them.

Dan is worried about Rose, but too scared to tell the police all this, as he promised Rose he wouldn’t. He knows that withholding information is a crime. It has been five weeks since Rose disappeared, and he doesn’t know if he should break his promise to Rose.

Later that evening, Clara goes to Mrs. Orchard’s to feed Moses and play with him as usual. Liam arrives and begins to tell Clara that while she’s free to play with Moses when he’s not home, he prefers to be alone. Clara ignores everything he says and abruptly asks him whether someone who belatedly came forward with important information would go to jail.