“I’ll come into town with you,” he said. “An office can be a lonely place on Sunday afternoon.”
Since the day I’d met Blake and Lily, I’d wondered what kept them together; I wasn’t wondering any more. Clearly, Lily’s involvement with Alex hadn’t diminished the marital passion of the Falconers. The sexual charge that flowed between them as they stood together on the dock could have powered the CN Tower.
Not a creature was stirring when I got back to our cottage, but when I checked on Taylor, she rolled over and mumbled about breakfast. Peace would be short-lived. I smoothed her sheet and went back to my bedroom to check my e-mail. Anne Millar hadn’t lied about being an early riser. She’d already answered my note, and what she said was promising. Clare had graduated from the University of Saskatchewan College of Law. Anne remembered her mentioning two professors who had been particularly helpful. Clare hadn’t named them, but she had said that both professors were women. That narrowed the field. It also gave me an in.
My friend Holly Knott taught family law at the University of Saskatchewan. She was smart and she was a feminist, exactly the kind of professor to whom a bright young female student might gravitate. I typed in Holly’s address and wrote a note explaining that I was spending the summer at a friend’s cottage on Lawyers’ Bay, that Clare Mackey’s name had come up, and I wondered if Holly remembered her. Just as I was finishing off, Taylor drifted in to my bedroom, draped her arms around my neck, and stared at the screen. “Who’s Clare Mackey?” she asked.
“That’s what I’m trying to find out,” I said.
It was Sunday – pancake day – and when we went into the kitchen Leah and Angus, well aware of family tradition, were there in T-shirts and matching polar-bear boxer shorts mixing batter.
I poured myself coffee. “Gold stars all around,” I said.
“Two for me,” Angus said. “I took Willie for his walk.”
Leah wiped her brow with the back of a floury hand. “One star for you,” she corrected. “You were here all of thirty seconds before Jo and Taylor showed up. So far all you’ve done is grunt ‘Make way for a man who needs his engines stoked.’ ”
As I leaned across her to turn on the griddle, I patted Leah’s shoulder. “Thanks for not dumping the batter over his head.”
“It would have meant starting again from scratch,” Leah said. She narrowed her eyes. “Why don’t you sit down and let the hungry man serve you some pancakes? You look like you could use a little sustenance. In fact, you look like you need a holiday from your holiday.”
After we’d eaten, I checked my e-mail. I’d sent my note to Holly Knott’s university address so I was surprised to see her name in my inbox. As it turned out, she was at work. She was off to Crete the next day, so she was spending Sunday in her office finishing an article. She suggested that I give her a call to talk about Clare. The tone of her note was brisk except for the last line. “It’ll be good to hear your voice,” she wrote. “It’s been too long.”
Something about the words “it’s been too long” tugged at me. It had been too long since I’d seen Holly. It had also been too long since I’d talked to someone with whom I could let down my defences. My daughter Mieka and her family lived in Saskatoon. A visit with them might prove to be just the holiday from my holiday I needed.
I called Mieka and Holly. Both were enthusiastic about a visit. Holly said she’d see me at three o’clock that afternoon at the university, and Mieka had already planned our dinner menu by the time I hung up.
Taylor was sitting cross-legged on her bed knitting when I walked in. “Hey, are you up for an adventure?” I asked.
“Sure,” she said. “What is it?”
“I thought we might drive up to Saskatoon to see Mieka and Greg and the little girls.”
“Today?”
“Right now. Throw some stuff in your backpack and we’ll hit the road. If we get moving, we can make it in time for lunch.”
“And after supper, when it’s not too hot, we can take Maddy and Lena to the merry-go-round in Kinsmen Park and Maddy can ride the unicorn and I can hold Lena on the yellow pig.”
“I used to hold you on the yellow pig,” I said.
“When I was young,” Taylor said.
A half-eaten apple peeked out from under Taylor’s pillow. I picked it up and held it in the air. “Right,” I said. “When you were young.”
The moment I walked into the backyard of the house on 9th Street, I knew the trip had been worthwhile. Mieka and her girls were sitting on an old quilt under the shade of the elm tree. My seven-month-old granddaughter, Lena, was on Mieka’s lap, her Woody Woodpecker thatch of black hair on end, her bright brown eyes focused on her sister, Maddy, who was singing a song about five little rabbits.
For a beat, I stayed silent, revelling in the sun-dappled Mary Cassat lyricism of the scene. But Taylor was not partial to scenes in which she played no part. “We’re here, guys,” she said, and tranquillity gave way to an exuberant jumble of hugs and greetings and confusion.
“Is it always this idyllic?” I asked Mieka.
“Sunshine and lollipops, twenty-four/seven. Never a tear, never a tantrum. That’s our motto here at the Kilbourn-Harris home. How’s Lawyers’ Bay?”
I looked at the fresh yellow paint on Mieka’s clapboard house, the frilled red and white petunias in the window boxes, the sand spilling out of the tire by the fence, and the little-girl bathing suits and rinsed-off Ziploc bags pegged to the clothesline.
“Not as nice as this,” I said.
Mieka took my hand in hers. “Is the accident still weighing heavily on you?”
“Among other things,” I said.
“What other things?” Mieka asked.
I squeezed her hand. “Things you and I are going to need two long spoons and a quart of Haagen-Dazs to talk about,” I said.
In midsummer, most university campuses manage to look almost as good as the photograph on the front of their calendar, and the Tyndall-stone buildings and big prairie sky gave the University of Saskatchewan a special glow. It was a Sunday, but there were still enough tanned and leggy students tossing footballs and ambling past flower beds towards the libraries to create a Kodak moment.
As she was about everything, Holly had been precise about the time of our meeting. When I parked in front of the law college and checked my watch, I discovered I was ten minutes early. Rather than take the elevator, I hoofed it up the three flights of stairs to her floor; then with more time to kill, I wandered into a small student lounge, found the ubiquitous soft-drink machine, and bought a bottle of water. I sipped it as I checked out the walls of the lounge. They were lined with photos of recent graduating classes. It took me less than a minute to find Clare Mackey’s photograph.
Delia Wainberg had threatened that, if she ever saw Clare Mackey again, she would punch Clare’s heart- shaped face. Clare’s face was indeed heart-shaped, and at first glance she did seem chocolate-box pretty: honey- coloured hair with a gentle curl, and a nose with a becoming upward tilt. But her blue eyes were penetrating, and there was a firmness in the set of her mouth that stamped her as a woman who knew her value. She would, I sensed, be a formidable opponent. I finished my water, and then obeying an impulse I leaned over and spoke to Clare Mackey’s photograph. “I’m going to find you,” I said. My moment of high drama over, I pitched my bottle into the recycle bin and walked down the hall to the office of my old friend. I was right on time.
Holly Knott was Saskatchewan-born and -bred, but there was something ineffably French about her style. She was in her late forties but her look was timelessly chic: the lines of her shiny black bob were ruler-straight, her makeup was skilfully muted, and the lipstick-red scarf knotted casually around her shoulders was a precise match for the colour of the polish on her nails. When she stood to greet me, she moved with the athleticism of the lifelong tennis player.
“Jo, this is kismet. One more day, and I would have missed you, and that would not have pleased me.” For a small woman, the timbre of her voice was surprisingly rich. She motioned me to the chair on the student side of the desk. “Make yourself comfortable. I can’t offer anything that doesn’t come out of a machine, but if you’d like a soft drink…”
“I’m fine,” I said. “And I know you’re busy, so I won’t take much of your time.”
“You wanted to talk about Clare Mackey.” Holly slid into her own chair. “On the phone you said you needed to
