The Taken

wicked smile that said she’d been in charge her whole life. “That woman has a mouth like a cat’s anus,” she said. “Andrew understood though.”

“And?”

“They’ve given their tenants a month’s notice. Family, they said.”

“Well that’s nice,” said Hazel. “At least we’re still family.”

She lay in bed, staring at the small, high window in the wall opposite. The suggestion of late May sunlight was faint, but her mother had assured her it was there. She popped the lid of the little orange vial she was gripping in her fist and put the edge of it against her bottom lip. The thick, white pill tumbled onto her tongue. Sometimes she chewed it, this salty, bitter capsule. It worked faster this way, and the truth was, it had a little kick on it if it went down pulverized. It was now ten days after her second operation. She was taking three of them a day and there were two more refills on the label of the little orange vial. Sometimes the pain came back before it was time for the next pill and she’d take it early, send it like a fireman down a pole, the alarms shrieking everywhere. The one she’d just taken was already working: its promised six to eight hours of relief had begun with the May light outside the tiny window suddenly thickening. Glynnis might have had her clocks, but she had her pills, and they told the time with utter accuracy.

In her current state, she had more in common now with her younger daughter, Martha, that beloved and feckless child who kept Hazel more or less in a state of constant worry. Jobless, loveless, dogged by depression and incapable of making a constructive choice, Hazel sometimes wondered if Martha’s problems were selfmade, or if they were genetics. Looking at either side of the family (Andrew? Emily?) it was hard to credit heredity, but shipwrecked and miserable as Hazel was, she had to wonder if there wasn’t some kind of tendency in the blood to fall apart. Maybe only on the Micallef side. She hadn’t seen Martha in a couple of months, and she’d been careful to keep upbeat on the phone with her: no point in getting the girl more worked up than she normally was. Hazel knew that Martha teetered on a thin line when it came to her mother: on one side was resentment for everything Hazel did and had to do for her, on the other was a savage terror of loss. It meant shielding her, softening reality for her. And with her elder daughter, Emilia, living out west, it meant that Hazel felt even more alone than she needed to. But such were the facts of her motherhood.

Her own mother came down the stairs bearing a tray. Andrew’s beef stew, one of three things he cooked, all in the key of cow. Emily put the tray down beside the bed and arranged the pillows behind her daughter’s back so she could sit up straight enough to eat. It was this routine three times a day: the prisoner brought her meals. “Glynnis too tired to cook?”

“She’s got a late night,” her mother said.

“He should keep tabs on her.” She accepted the bowl of steaming stew and the end of a crusty loaf. “She’s got a wandering eye.”

“That’s wishful thinking.”

Hazel tucked into the meal. Everyone had a beef-stew “secret;” Andrew’s was Guinness. The only real secret was time. Given a pound of stringy, nigh-inedible beef, a few cups of water, two mealy potatoes, and maybe an onion, anyone with six hours could make a perfectly edible stew. She leaned forward to put the fork in her mouth and her scarred lower back resisted her. The pain was different than it had been before either surgery: it wasn’t sharp, like there was broken glass rattling around in her; it was deep and resonant. Seated in her marrow. She had to breathe through it. “You eat?” she asked her mother.

“I kept Andrew company.”

“Are you working both ends against the middle?”

“What’s the other end, Hazel?”

“Glynnis.”

“I gather that makes you the middle.” “I’m always the middle, Mother.”

“May 26 you get to be the middle, Hazel. Birthdays and anniversaries only. All the other days you’re on the outside looking in, like the rest of us.”

“You had to remind me, huh?”

“Sixty-two,” said Emily. “My little girl is finally going to be a woman.”

Emily continued to leaf through the growing pile of magazines beside the bed. Celebrity rags, local newspapers, travel magazines with colourful full-page pictures that teased Hazel with hints of a future out of bed. She ate in silence as her mother idly flipped the pages of one of the celebrity magazines. She held up a picture of a woman no older than twenty, one of the new crop of pop stars whose names neither of them could ever remember. She was parading down a street in Hollywood in a dress big enough to cover a volleyball, almost, with a grease-soaked paper bag in one hand and her purse slung over her shoulder. A tiny dog with a pointy face poked out of the top of the purse. “In a just society,” said Emily, “almost everything this child is doing would be illegal. She should be arrested, stuck in a housecoat, and made to listen to Guy Lombardo records until she smartens up.” She held the page up to her daughter. At that age, the worst either of Hazel’s daughters had ever done was wear torn jeans, listen to Madonna, and occasionally puke hard lemonade all over the bathroom. How did girls like this one get so lost? Did people get lost quickly, or did it happen over time?

Emily collected the tray off the bed. “You want dessert?”

“No.”

She held up a newspaper. Thursday’s Westmuir Record. “You read this yet?”

“It’s probably the same as last Thursday’s. Not to mention Monday’s. But leave it.”

“You’re falling behind on your papers. You don’t want your news getting stale, do you?” Hazel laughed at the thought of events passing so quickly in Westmuir that you’d have to make an effort to keep up. “At least it’ll pass the time without your having to resort to staring at pictures of nearly naked girls eating hamburgers.” Apart from the biweekly visits from Detective Constable James Wingate, the Record was her only window on the world she lived in. The paper that had been a thorn in her side for all of the previous fall was now necessary to her sanity. She held her hand out for it.

“What are you going to do now?” Hazel asked.

“I told Andrew I’d do the crossword with him.”

“I should have seen Andrew’s facility with those things as a sign.”

“Of what?”

“That he knew how to disguise himself.”

Emily Micallef patted her daughter’s hand. “If he didn’t, he’d be the only man on earth who lacked the talent.” She put Hazel’s fork and napkin in the bowl and moved the bowl into the middle of the tray. When she got to the door that led to the upstairs hall, Hazel called to her.

“Mum?”

“What is it?”

“Ask him to come see me. Please?”

“Read the paper,” Emily said. “They’ve already started the summer short story. The Record’s gift to us all for putting on our best May-long-weekend faces.”

Hazel glanced at the headline – “Welcome Cottagers!” – and immediately put the paper down.

2

Friday, May 20

Detective Constable James Wingate did not like being in charge of anything. His whole life, he’d been a brilliant follower of instructions: he’d been born to carry out the orders of others. He’d sometimes wondered if this made him some kind of perfect soldier, if, in another time and place, he’d have been the tool of a lesser regime. He knew he had it in him to cross the line; he’d been inspired at times by anger. But a righteous anger, he told himself, usually carried out a just vengeance.

Following orders had landed him in temporary charge of the Port Dundas OPS detachment, much to the mostly silent discomfort of many men and women his senior. He’d been the new guy when he arrived from Toronto only six months earlier and his nature had permitted him to navigate the many twists of fitting in to a new place. But