weren’t many women in our class, and all of us would have been livid at being objectified as sexual objects, but we had a lot of fun speculating about the men in the Winners’ Circle.”
“Who would be the best lover?” I said. “That kind of thing?”
“We were much more cerebral than that,” Holly said. “We had a theory that you could discern a great deal about a woman by the man she most admired in the Winners’ Circle. Chris was for the altruists. Blake Falconer was for the party girls. Your friend Kevin Hynd was for the rebels.”
“How about Zack Shreve?”
“The Prince of Darkness. We always figured he was for women who longed to get up close and personal with a chainsaw. But he certainly had his partisans.”
I laughed. “Where did Delia fit in?”
“One of the gang.”
“Any theories about which member of the Winners’ Circle she most admired?”
“No need for theories. It was Chris Altieri. They were both idealistic – passionate about changing the world, big into human rights. A lot of people thought they’d end up together.”
“But they didn’t?”
“Nope. Delia ended up with one of the leftovers.” Holly pointed a perfectly manicured nail at the last picture on the page. “Good old Noah.”
“Noah Wainberg is a lawyer?”
“He has a law degree.”
“I thought he was a sort of handyman.”
“Well, that’s pretty much what lawyers are.”
“Is that what you tell your students?”
She smiled. “Not until they’re in third year. By third year, they’ve pretty well lost their illusions.”
“The members of the Winners’ Circle have certainly lost their illusions,” I said.
“So I’ve heard,” Holly said. “And it really makes me sad. When they were here at the college, they were dazzling. They used to talk about their ‘lust for justice.’ ”
“Delia still does,” I said.
“Good for her,” Holly said. “Who knows? Maybe Falconer Shreve can reclaim its magic. I always wondered about exactly what went wrong there… not that there was a dearth of rumours.”
“What kind of rumours?”
“None worth repeating.” Holly’s pretty mouth had hardened into a line. “People I trusted said they had some kind of money problem. Whatever happened, it was a crucible for Falconer Shreve. Before it happened they were one kind of firm; after it happened they were another. They took cases they wouldn’t have taken before, cut corners the old Winners’ Circle never would have dreamed of cutting. Nothing to get them in front of the Law Society, of course, but they started operating in the grey area.”
“The worm was in the bud,” I said.
Holly raised an eyebrow. “I’d never thought of it that way,” she said. “But yes, they had been corrupted.”
After that, there didn’t seem to be much to say, except goodbye. Holly walked me to the stairs. “Thanks for squeezing me in today,” I said. “I know you were pressed for time.”
“It was the least I could do. Clare’s a decent person. If Falconer Shreve railroaded her, she deserves justice. She was a student of the College of Law, and our motto is Fiat Justitia.”
“Let justice be done,” I said.
Holly nodded. “Right,” she said. “And those should not be empty words.”
CHAPTER
6
It was drizzling by the time I got to my parking spot in front of the College of Law. I was as tired as I could ever remember being, and when I checked the skies, I was relieved to see that the clouds rolling in were the colour of asphalt. God in Her infinite wisdom had heard my prayers. A gully-washer was on the way, and that meant a reprieve from my date with the yellow pig on the merry-go-round at Kinsmen Park.
The blessings continued. Mieka made my favourite creamy Spanish gazpacho with sourdough bread for dinner, and after we’d finished eating we sat by the big window in the kitchen watching the storm and listening to Taylor read from a book she’d found in Maddy’s room about Inuksuit, the rock figures the Inuit build to mark the Arctic landscape.
Taylor was passionate about process. She liked to know how to make things – origami, compost, lasagna from scratch – and the book’s instructions about how to pile stones to create landscape intrigued her. She was, however, puzzled by the fact that a book so obviously intended for adults had found its way into Maddy’s library. When she asked, Mieka was matter-of-fact.
“A father’s logic,” she said. “Maddy’s favourite book this summer is Hide and Sneak, and there’s an Inukshuk in it. So Maddy’s father bought her a book that tells her more than anyone needs to know about Inuksuit.”
“History repeating itself,” I said. “When Mieka was Maddy’s age, she stacked six blocks on top of one another, and her dad came home with a book on the world’s greatest architects.”
Taylor turned to Mieka. “So how come you didn’t grow up to be an architect?”
Mieka shrugged. “I discovered the Easy-Bake Oven,” she said.
When the lights flickered and the power went out, Mieka lit candles to ward off the gloom. I held Lena a little closer, and Taylor taught Maddy how to tell the distance of a strike by counting off the time between a lightning flash and a thunderclap. It wasn’t long before my eyes grew heavy, and when Maddy decided it was story time, she didn’t have to coax me to crawl into bed with her and read. We unearthed a flashlight, burrowed under the covers, and started on the pile of books beside her bed. Somewhere between Hide and Sneak and A Promise Is a Promise, I fell asleep. When I awoke, the room was dark and quiet, and my granddaughter’s small fingertips were resting on the pulse in my neck. I turned so I could see the other twin bed in the room. Taylor was in it, breathing rhythmically. I watched as she stirred, then settled in. A sense of peace, unfamiliar as it was welcome, washed over me, and I rolled over and drifted into a deep and dreamless sleep that lasted until morning.
During the next twenty-four hours I kicked back and let the domestic rituals of a happy household carry me along. When we woke up, Taylor and I took the girls outside so Mieka could catch some extra sleep. The horizon was bright, and Taylor dried the front steps off with an old beach towel so the four of us could sit on the top step in our nighties, watching 9th Street spring into the accelerated rhythms of Monday-morning life. Mieka’s catering business was closed on Mondays, so when she woke up we all gave ourselves over to the sweet laziness of a day off. We took a long and aimless walk, then spent the rest of the morning in the backyard, running through the sprinkler and playing ball. Mieka cranked up James Brown on the CD player, and she and the girls rocked to “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag”; we ate a picnic lunch, and then the little girls and I retreated to my shady bedroom and I napped with a granddaughter in each arm.
When we woke up, we made the long-anticipated trip to Kinsmen Park, where Taylor and my granddaughters squeezed into the seats of the same miniature train and rode the same merry-go-round that Mieka and her brothers had thrilled to during Saskatoon visits when they were kids. There were a few changes – an ear-splitting whistle on the train and two new horses on the merry-go-round, a black stallion with wild green eyes and a zigzag blaze of white on his chest, and a bubblegum-pink pony with curling eyelashes and a lush showgirl mane. Maddy tried out both the newcomers, but the old yellow pig with a handful of freshly painted blue daisies sprinkled like freckles over his snout was still the favourite. As I watched Taylor hold Lena on the pig’s broad back and saw my granddaughter’s small body sway to the music and the wonder of it all, I gave thanks for summer moments – inconsequential and ephemeral, but capable of warming the bleakest day of deep winter.
Magic time, but Lawyers’ Bay was never far from my mind, and Mieka was quick to pounce when my smile grew fixed and my eyes deadened into a five-mile stare. A half-dozen times she asked me to tell her what was wrong, and a half-dozen times I shook her off and changed the subject. That night, after the kids were in bed, she
