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Since her return from Roanoke, the situation for Fionna at home deteriorated. Her father avoided mention of her trip most likely because he considered the unspeakable as unmentionable, and he spoke to her of little else, either. Without pointedly refusing her company or conversation, he seemed forever to manage to find small tasks to occupy his immediate attention that excluded her. This estrangement with her father should pass. She hoped. Her mother turned red or white at the sight of her, as she made quick little intakes of breath, when they passed in the hallway or the kitchen. Her mother appeared uncertain whether she should boil over or take the vapors, as she waited for Fionna to apologize, beg forgiveness, and to promise tearfully never to — to what? — to do that unspeakable thing again with that horrid Drumcliff man.
If admission of sin could promote domestic tranquility, she would eventually acquiesce. She didn’t care so much that she had sinned or mind so much the admission, but the words that needed to come for her to beg forgiveness stuck in her throat, and just now, she found herself disinclined. There would be time enough to repent of Archibald after he left her for good, or he no longer asked her to do anything sinful. The best she managed to date in this serious matter of personal reformation amounted to a smirk.
Her Aunt Hyacinth, one of her mother’s sisters, visited for a few days. Aunt…
