The Endless Knot

Jill snorted. “Contentment’s for cows. I’m calling back in an hour, and your answer better be yes.”

She hung up and I went back to arranging my marigolds and weighing my options. I truly was enjoying my life, but there were compelling reasons for giving Jill’s offer serious consideration. Trial law was a huge area of Zack’s life, and I’d never seen him in court. And Jill was right about the allure of the Sam Parker case. Professionally and personally, Sam Parker intrigued me. I wanted to know him better. I wanted to understand how, when his son’s situation made his political and personal views collide, he chose to alter his beliefs rather than turn against his child. By any journalist’s criteria, the Sam Parker case was a plum, and Jill had handed it to me. As I twirled the last bloom into place, the deciding vote was cast. My old friend Hilda McCourt once said that marigolds carry a great life lesson: they’re blooming when you put them in and they’re blooming when you pull them out. I wanted to be like Hilda, blooming to the end, and so an hour later when Jill called, I said yes.

Jill was elated. “In addition to everything else,” she said, “you’ll be doing the media world a favour. The Sam Parker case raises some interesting questions about journalistic ethics, and I don’t want some himbo or bimbo using this trial as an audition tape for a job with Fox News.”

I laughed. “You and Bryn have a good Thanksgiving.”

“You too,” Jill said. “Wow, Zack Shreve, and I thought the most daring thing you ever did was skip flossing once in a while.”

“My turn to hang up,” I said, and I did.

Within minutes, Rapti Lustig called. We agreed it was going to be fun working together again. She promised to e-mail the background information on the case immediately, and then she congratulated me on my new boyfriend.

Jill worked fast.

As I entered Rapti’s new contact information into my laptop, I knew the ineluctable cycle of the cosmos was pressing on. It seemed only fair to let my boyfriend know that our lives were about to change.

I dialed his private line at Falconer Shreve. He picked up on the first ring. “This is nice,” he said. “I’m always the one who does the calling.”

“Then it’s time I took the initiative. What are you up to?”

“Chasing my tail,” Zack said equitably.

“Why don’t you let me chase it for a while,” I said. “Come over here for lunch. The menu’s limited, but nobody will ask how your case is going.”

“You just pushed the right button.”

“Good. I’ll pick you up – give us more time together. Is noon okay?”

“Perfect,” he said. “As are you. Do you know I slept here last night? I fell asleep at my desk, woke up this morning, and kept on working. I’m getting as crazy as a shithouse rat.”

“I’ll watch my back,” I said.

“I’m not after your back,” he said.

I was smiling when I hung up the phone, but my sense of being at one with the world didn’t last. When I turned around, I noticed a boy standing at our back door. He was framed by the screen, and I tensed at the sudden knowledge that I hadn’t been alone. I walked to the door, but I didn’t open it.

He met my eyes. “I’m looking for Taylor,” he said.

“She left for school twenty minutes ago.”

The boy didn’t move. “I’m sorry if I scared you,” he said. “You were on the phone.”

“That’s all right,” I said. I looked at the boy more carefully and felt my pulse slow. With four children of my own, there had been hundreds of kids through my house and there was nothing about this one to alarm. He was young – perhaps thirteen or fourteen, but he was already taller than me – at least five-foot-eight. He was slender, fine-featured, and dark-haired, a good-looking kid, dressed in a black pullover and khakis. Unexceptional except for one detail. Suspended from a hemp cord around his neck was a five-pointed gold star.

I opened the door and peered more closely. “That’s a pentangle, isn’t it?” I said. “I haven’t read Sir Gawain and the Green Knight since university, but I remember that.”

His eyes met mine. “I’ve never met anybody who’s read Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” he said. “It’s the most important book in my life.” His fingers touched the pentangle. “Five perfect points, wholly distinct, yet part of one whole.”

The boy’s gaze was unnerving. For an awkward moment, we were silent. Neither of us seemed to know what to say next. Then the boy gave me a small smile. “I’d better go,” he said. “If I’m late, I’ll get another detention.”

He turned and ran across my backyard towards the alley. I watched until he disappeared, then I gave myself a shake, wiped the kitchen counter, and went upstairs to check my e-mail.

As promised, Rapti Lustig had sent files on the background of the Sam Parker case. There were no revelations, but it was grim reading. I’d followed the case closely and I was acquainted with several of the principals. Kathryn Morrissey, the woman Sam Parker was alleged to have shot at, was a faculty member in the school of journalism at the university where I taught. I knew her well enough to greet her when we passed in the hall or to chat with her while waiting for a meeting to begin, but we weren’t friends.

Kathryn was intelligent and articulate, but she was unnervingly self-centred. Once, after she’d just begun at the university, we had lunch together at the Common Table in the Faculty Club. Over the asparagus soup, Kathryn gave a nasty account of her evening at the home of a colleague who had invited her to dinner. The colleague and his partner had a Santa Claus collection they enjoyed, and Kathryn dismissed their collection as kitsch and ridiculed them for being bourgeois. Over the years my kids, like the children of many who worked at the university, had enjoyed the Santas and the sweet, milky tea and lacy cookies their hosts had served them. Kathryn’s mockery of their hospitality rankled, and in the two years since that lunch I hadn’t sought her out. In my opinion, she was cruel and untrustworthy. When her book Too Much Hope was published, I was proven right.