“Finished?” I said.
“I have to pee,” she mouthed.
I waited a moment, assessed the situation, and followed her.
She’d been quiet during dinner, but Taylor had always been serious about food. That said, she was not a morbid child, and the fact that she’d talked about a legacy worried me. She was already in the stall when I got there.
“Everything okay?” I asked.
“I just had to pee,” she said.
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll wait. We can go back together.”
“As if I was two years old,” she said.
“Taylor, one of these days you’ll be a woman, and that means you’ll be going to the powder room with other women for the rest of your life. Consider tonight your rite of passage.”
Taylor was grinning when she came out of the stall. “ Powder room.” She rolled the words around in her mouth. “Who calls it that?”
In a photo above her, the cartoon Mr. Magoo peered nearsightedly at the spectacular cleavage of a life-sized Marilyn Monroe. “Women who need a place to talk privately about how their evening’s going,” I said.
“Cool,” Taylor said. Her eyes held mine. “About that ‘leaving behind’ thing. Maddy’s book about the Inuksuit said that once people all over the world built things like Inuksuit and left them behind to help the people who came after. I was just wondering what I was going to leave.”
“I imagine you’ll be like your mother and leave behind a lot of amazing art.”
“But what if I’m like my father?” Taylor said. “He didn’t leave anything behind.”
“That’s not true, Taylor,” I said. “We all leave something.”
“But what did my father leave?”
I put my hands on her shoulders and turned her towards the mirror. “He left you.”
CHAPTER
8
After we left the ladies’ room, Taylor went back to the dance floor to rock around the clock with Bill Haley, and I returned to our table on the deck and a fait accompli. Zack was alone, his fingers tapping out the beat on the Formica tabletop and his eyes fixed on the progress of a red canoe moving towards shore.
When I sat down, he gave me a satyr’s smile. “Change in plans,” he said. “Blake caught a ride to Lawyers’ Bay with those people he was talking to before dinner. He’s decided to drive back to the city tonight.”
“So he can look for Lily?” I said.
“I imagine Blake can make an educated guess about his wife’s whereabouts.”
“Can you?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Anybody can make a guess, but Lily’s wandering ways are Blake’s concern. I never assume another man’s burdens.”
“Unless he pays you a retainer,” I said.
“Good one,” Zack said, raising his metal milkshake container to me. “But back to the situation at hand. I didn’t see any reason to end the evening. The girls and I are having a good time, and you looked as if you could use a little fun.”
“You’re very perceptive,” I said.
“When it matters to me, I am. And since you matter to me, I’ll do what I can to lighten your spirits. Would you care to dance?”
Taken aback by what sounded suspiciously like a pass, I hesitated a beat too long before answering. Zack picked up on my uncertainty.
“I can dance, you know.”
I stood and extended my hand. “In that case, let’s dance.”
Zack took it. “A woman who leads,” he said. “I like that.”
The spectators around the dance floor were closer to Taylor’s age than to mine, and they were agape. True to his promise, Zack really could dance. He manoeuvred his chair with skill and finesse, and he led me through the Twist, the Stroll, the Jerk, the Monkey, and the Swim before, sweaty and breathless, I raised my hand.
“I have to sit the next one out,” I said. “It’s either that or coronary care.”
Zack was sweaty and breathless too. “Thank God,” he said. “I was afraid you’d never give up.”
“I didn’t know it was a contest,” I said.
“Everything’s a contest, but I also wanted you to have a good time. You seemed preoccupied.”
“Sorry,” I said. “Just parent stuff. In the boat coming over, Taylor said something that bothered me.”
“Fill me in,” Zack said. “I’m a good listener.”
“Is this going to be a billable hour?” I asked.
He grinned. “Nope. This hour’s free. This is where I suck you in. Get you to like me.”
“I already like you,” I said.
“So the pressure’s off. Let’s talk about Taylor.”
“There’s not much to say. On the ride over, Taylor seemed a little down. I offered her a penny for her thoughts and she told me she was wondering what she’d leave behind after she died. That’s why I followed her into the bathroom. But she assured me her concern about a legacy was no big deal – it was just a question she was mulling over.”
In the candlelight, Zack’s eyes were lustrous. “You don’t believe her?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Taylor has a complicated history. She was the daughter of a friend of mine – the artist Sally Love.”
“Wow,” Zack said. “I own a Sally Love. It’s my favourite piece. It’s also the most valuable thing I own.”
“I’m not surprised,” I said. “The price for Sally’s work hit the stratosphere after she died, and it’s stayed there. Taylor’s a very rich young girl.”
“But tonight she’s a girl who’s wondering whether she’ll leave a mark on the world. A very human concern.”
“Is it a concern of yours?”
“Not any more,” Zack said.
A flotilla of ducks was moving towards shore. Twilight had calmed the winds and quieted the lake. As the ducks swam, each one left behind it a tracing, feather-delicate. Within seconds, the tracing was absorbed by the water.
Zack pointed to the ducks. “That’s what we leave behind,” he said. “Nothing. Once you accept that, everything else is easy.”
“Then why does Chris’s death matter so much to you?”
“Because he was special,” Zack said. “A good man in a bad world.”
“He didn’t think he was good,” I said. “The night he died he told me that he had done something unforgivable.”
As a trial lawyer, Zack had years of experience keeping his public face unreadable, but a tic in his eye betrayed him. “Did our friend elaborate on his unforgivable act?”
I weighed the options: a pleasant evening or a painful discussion. Given the past twenty-four hours, there was no choice. I turned to Zack. “Chris told me a woman he’d been involved with had had an abortion. He couldn’t get over it. More to the point, he didn’t believe he deserved to get over it because there’d been something else – some previous sin. Does any of this ring a bell?”
I could almost hear Zack’s brain click through the calibrations: I had information he needed; he had information that would interest me but that he didn’t want to divulge.
“I didn’t know about the baby,” Zack said carefully. His words had the ring of truth, and I believed him. That said, I hadn’t just fallen off the turnip truck. I knew his response had been selective.
