The Cliffs

Genevieve Richards notices a crack in her home’s wall. It’s an old house and, despite all her work on it, seems to obstruct her efforts. When people visit, however, her husband, Paul, brags about the work they’ve done.

The new crack is next to her son Benjamin’s bedroom door, a hidden door that blends into the wall. Although the room is small, Benjamin insisted on taking it. She hears him talking inside the room, but when she opens the door, he’s alone.

When she asks who he’s talking to, Benjamin is confused that she can’t see the girl by the window, who has been coming to his room and talking nonstop. Genevieve believes him and realizes that signs of a presence have occurred throughout the house, such as flickering lights and, most strangely, the marbles she keeps finding everywhere. When she tells Paul on his nightly phone call from Boston, he scoffs at her. He suggests she call Allison, the woman who owns the inn in town. She doesn’t tell him that she tried to befriend Allison but she never called her back.

The first time Genevieve saw the house, while they were on vacation, she had to have it. Once they bought it, she hired a salvage company to remove the house’s contents and a contractor to tear down walls. She put on an addition and painted the interior white. Genevieve enjoyed all the activity, often feeling like her work was invisible. It was nice to take on a big project—one she would get credit for.

When Maine Coast magazine contacted her to do a feature on the house, Genevieve was thrilled. Because she made so many changes, however, the article would go forward only if she could show ties to local history. She bought an antique basket, woven by an Abenaki woman, to display, from local antiques dealer Thomas Crosby for $8,000.

Before the article, Genevieve decided to install an infinity pool. She directed her work crew to cut down the enormous trees at the location, but they stopped working when they found a small cemetery. After the contractor left, however, his assistant told Genevieve that he could dig it up for her. She agreed and left town for the weekend. When she came back, the cemetery was gone.

Now, she wonders if digging up the cemetery somehow disturbed the house. For the first time, she wonders what happened to the bodies and whether what she did was illegal. She decides to move herself and Benjamin into Allison’s inn.

Jane is at the town’s annual raffle. Even though she lived in Awadapquit for years, she still feels like an outsider. David’s absence compounds this sense. She hasn’t had a drink since she moved into her mother’s house three months ago and wants one now. Instead, she eats sweets and debates what to bid on in the silent auction.

She looks at her phone but has no messages; she hasn’t heard from Melissa since the incident, and she and David have spoken only a few times. Allison tells Jane that she won a gift certificate for a psychic reading.

On the morning the psychic is due to arrive, Jane walks her mother’s dog, Walter. She doesn’t like being stuck taking care of him—he barks at everything. She asked Holly to take him, but her son Jason’s friend is staying with them and is allergic.

Jane walks through Awadapquit. Locals attribute the name to the Abenaki language, translating it as “where the beautiful cliffs meet” (60). Over time, it became the town’s motto and was featured on souvenirs and signs.

As she walks through town and down to the cove, she realizes she hasn’t run since her mother’s death. On the beach, she remembers sitting on a towel, reading with her grandmother. She admires how Mary made a life for herself in Awadapquit as a single mother, cleaning houses and eventually owning her own. Jane remembers when she found the mortgage papers for Mary’s house, signed by a couple whose names she didn’t recognize. Shirley told her once that she thought a summer couple whose house Mary cleaned signed the mortgage and her grandmother paid them back over time.

Jane can’t believe she’s living in her grandmother’s house again and her life is falling apart. She can feel both her mother and grandmother in the house, and many of their possessions remain. In a way, Jane is used to going through other women’s possessions (part of her work at the Schlesinger Library is to help women cull and catalog their possessions), but going through her mother’s and grandmother’s things is different.

On her way back through town, Jane walks Walter past the local coffee shop. A sign by the door reminds passersby that “YOU ARE STANDING ON STOLEN ABENAKI LAND” (66). Discussions about this subject occur in her industry, but she’s surprised to see recognition of it in Awadapquit. She reflects on how white men named many things around Awadapquit but used Indigenous references—even Allison’s parents’ inn, named after “Saint Aspinquid, a seventeenth-century chief of the Pawtucket tribe, and a local folk hero, to whom they had no particular connection and whose very existence many people doubted” (68). She also thinks about the use of Indigenous identities and caricatures as school mascots and even the vast collection of Indigenous remains and artifacts at Harvard.

At her mother’s house, she sees that the psychic, Clementine, has arrived. Walter, who normally barks at everything, is calm and watchful around the woman. As Jane leads Clementine into the house, Clementine says that during the summer she lives at Camp Mira, a Spiritualist gathering place, and invites Jane to visit.

Clementine changes the subject to Jane’s mother, and Jane asks questions about Clementine’s process. Clementine explains that she has had her gift since she was eight and met her first spirit guide. She explains that the spirits are like “inconsiderate relatives” and “show up unannounced whenever they feel like it” (79). She begins by inviting spirits to the room and describes one that closely resembles Jane’s grandmother. Jane is still skeptical: Clementine could’ve gotten details from newspaper obituaries. The psychic tells Jane that her mom is there too and that a girl whose name starts with D is sitting in Mary’s lap.

According to Clementine, Jane’s mother says they should sit on the back deck. They move outside, and then Clementine talks about how Jane’s mother and Holly were close and Jane felt like an outsider. She says that “D” wants to get a message to her mother: It wasn’t her fault; D is “at peace in the water,” and is “not at Lake Grove anymore” (80). Jane doesn’t know how to find out who D’s mother is, but Clementine tells her that things often make sense later.

Clementine talks more about Jane’s family, but Jane gets sensitive about her mother. Shirley and Jane had a difficult relationship: Jane wanted her mother to take responsibility for her drinking and Jane’s upbringing, but she never did. Jane and Holly never knew if they would have food. As an adult, Jane worried about running out of food, using too much electricity, and even too many Christmas presents. It was “one reason why Jane was scared to have kids” (87). She recalls when Shirley was diagnosed with cancer: Instead of undergoing treatment, her mother took the entire family to Las Vegas for a long weekend. Less than six months later, Shirley was dead. David tried to comfort Jane.

Before Clementine leaves, she asks if Jane is pregnant because her grandmother keeps singing lullabies and talking about babies. However, Jane knows that’s not possible. When Clementine hugs Jane, she’s shocked by what she feels—she pulls away and says that Jane is in pain and will have to deal with whatever it is, lest it “pull [her] under” (89). She again invites Jane to visit Camp Mira and leaves.

That night, Jane goes to Allison and Chris’s home at the Saint Aspinquid Inn to tell them about Clementine’s visit. She admits that some things Clementine said were disturbingly on point and tells Allison about the girl, D. She’s slightly annoyed that she was tasked with passing a message to D’s mother. Chris makes a joke, and he and Allison share a look that Jane envies.

They discuss the possibility of reincarnation and a spirit world. Allison tells Jane that guests were often disappointed that the inn wasn’t haunted, so her mother Betty made up stories about a ghost called “the General.” One guest, a magazine journalist, had included the story in an article, and Betty worried for years that her made-up story would be exposed.

Jane and Allison get quiet after Betty’s name comes up. When Jane was younger, she spent many hours at Allison’s house, which was more stable than her own. Betty treated her like another daughter, and Jane idealized Betty and her marriage to Richard.

While they’re talking, a woman and a young boy approach. Allison completely ignores her, and Jane is shocked since Allison is kind to everyone. Finally, Allison reluctantly greets her, calling her Genevieve. Genevieve hovers near them until Allison introduces her to Jane. She explains that she and Benjamin are staying at the inn while exterminators deal with a squirrel infestation in their vacation home.

Jane asks which Awadapquit house is Genevieve’s and is surprised to learn that it’s the cliff house, or Lake Grove house. It was abandoned for so long she never thought anyone would buy it and thought that someday it would be hers. Realizing that Jane knows the house, Genevieve asks her to help research its history. She asks if Jane knows anything about Captain Samuel Littleton, the house’s first owner, or someone named Eliza and gives Jane her card before leaving.

After Genevieve leaves, Allison explains her dislike: Genevieve is demanding, entitled, and impossible to satisfy. Allison doesn’t believe the story about the squirrel and thinks that Genevieve is staying at the inn to annoy her. Jane points out that she could use the work, but Allison warns her to be careful. She misses her job, working with women and families donating their collections.

She admits now, however, that the Schlesinger Library’s collections, even though they’re meant to tell stories of unseen women, have vast gaps. The archives are filled with mostly “white, upper-class women’s papers” (105). Although they actively seek to include more diverse voices, especially since her boss, Melissa, took over, both she and Jane feel like they could do better.

Jane changes the subject, telling Allison what Clementine said about her being pregnant. Allison finds an old pregnancy test in her bathroom and demands that Jane take it. Unsurprisingly, it reveals that she isn’t pregnant, but this makes her sad. Jane wants a child, but the idea also terrifies her, and she’s never quite able to commit to it.

Allison asks Jane if not drinking is hard. Jane says that sometimes it is, and Allison tells her how proud she is. She remembers that at Allison and Chris’s wedding, Jane drank so much that she blacked out and had to be carried home. After the incident that changed her life three months ago, she told Allison right away. Allison was supportive but shocked, forcing Jane to realize how bad things had gotten. Sometimes Jane sees the parallel between her and her mother’s behavior. She thinks back to when David tried to get her to go to Alcoholics Anonymous and feels ashamed.