“But you knew something was wrong,” I said. “The night Chris died you tried to make me doubt what he’d told me. You told me that sometimes people confess to big things because they’re burdened with guilt about little things.”
Zack didn’t answer. Seemingly, he was still trying to assimilate what I had just told him. “An abortion,” he muttered as if to himself. “That’s all it was.”
“Chris didn’t see it as a small thing,” I said.
Zack sighed. “No, he wouldn’t. But Jesus, to kill yourself over something like that.”
The glass-shattering falsetto climax of Roy Orbison’s “Only the Lonely” pierced the air. It seemed to bring Zack back to the moment, and he smiled. “That was the favourite song of a client of mine. He said it was so sad it could make a dog cry.”
“Sensitive client,” I said. “What were the charges?”
“He was alleged to have dropped a barbell on the windpipe of his sleeping grandmother.”
I shuddered. “Guilty?”
“Absolutely,” Zack said. “But he still had a good ear for a ballad of doom.” He pushed his chair back from the table. “Ready to call it a night?”
“I am,” I said. Then, like a long-married couple, Zachary Shreve and I collected the girls from the dance floor, rejected their pleas for just one more song, and shepherded them down to the dock for the trip across the lake.
It was a moon-drenched night, so serenely beautiful that it drew the giddiness out of the girls and made them reflective. Except for the purr of the motor and the squawk of the occasional gull, our passage was silent. Continuing in our oddly parental roles, Zack and I walked Gracie and Isobel home. Gracie’s cottage was nearest to the dock, so we dropped her off first. Rose Lavallee met us at the Falconers’ door. Her grey hair was neatly pincurled and she had covered it with a gorgeous scarf patterned with the logo of a famous New York designer and tied at the top of her head to make bunny ears. The house smelled good, of spice and warmth.
“I made those spice cookies you like,” Rose said to Gracie.
Gracie planted a kiss on Rose’s leathery cheek. “You always do that when she goes away.”
“It’s to take the sting out,” Rose said. She gazed at the four of us still waiting outside. “Not a good night for company. But I can bag you up some cookies.”
“We can get some tomorrow,” Taylor said.
“They’re better fresh.” Rose disappeared into the kitchen. In a flash she was back with four brown lunch bags. She handed one to each of us.
“This is a treat,” I said. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome,” Rose said. “Now if you don’t mind, I’m going to close this door. The bugs are getting in.”
It was a night for threshold encounters. Delia Wainberg met us at her door. She was wearing orange velour pyjamas that looked roomy and comfortable. Her black hair was a nimbus and, for the first time since I’d met her, she seemed happy and relaxed. On the day Chris’s ashes had been scattered, Lily Falconer had speculated that, with Chris out of the way, Delia and Noah might have a chance. Whether or not this was true, it was clear to me that the Wainbergs had been making love.
The same thought seemed to occur to Zack. After Isobel said her thank yous and goodbyes and the door closed behind her, he turned his wheelchair to go back down the walk. “It would be nice to have someone to come home to,” he said, and his voice was full of yearning.
When Taylor and I got back to the cottage, there was a note on the table from Angus and Leah. They’d gone to a cottage down the shore for a wiener roast and a planning session for the Ultimate Flying Disc Tournament starting the next night, so Taylor and I were on our own. We got into our nighties, but when I went to tuck Taylor in, I didn’t leave after prayers and a hug.
“Can we talk for a while?” I said.
Taylor surprised me by moving over in bed and making room for me the way she had when she was little. I slid in beside her.
“Let’s turn out the lights,” Taylor said. “It’s nicer to talk in the dark.”
I flicked the switch on the lamp on her bedside table and we waited for a few seconds until our eyes grew accustomed to the shadows.
“We haven’t done this for a long time,” I said.
“It still feels the same,” Taylor said.
“You’re right,” I said. “It still feels good.”
“I love it here at the lake,” Taylor said.
“I’m glad,” I said. “You and Isobel and Gracie seem to be having a lot of fun.”
“We are,” Taylor said. “But we talk, too. Gracie says she thinks her parents are going to get a divorce.”
“How does Gracie feel about that?”
“She says it’s for the best. She says her mother’s unhappy – that’s why she keeps running away.” Taylor paused and took a hiccuping breath. “Was that why my mother went away?”
Over the years, Taylor and I had trod lightly around the subject of her mother. We had talked often about her art. Sally had given me one of her paintings as a gift, and friends in Regina had others. Taylor’s hunger to connect with her mother through spending time close to the art Sally made had always moved me. I had once come upon her tracing the lines of one of her mother’s paintings with her small fingers. “My mother touched this,” she had said simply.
In truth, Taylor had probably spent more time gazing at her mother’s art than Sally had ever spent gazing at her daughter. Sally Love had walked out of her daughter’s life not long after Taylor was born. In the years before she decided to claim her now four-year-old child, Sally made some spectacular art and slept with enough men and women to populate a small town. Taylor had never asked me why her mother left, an omission for which I was grateful because I didn’t have an answer. That night it seemed my luck had run out.
“Why did she go away?” Taylor asked softly.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Did she and my father love each other?”
“Truth?”
“Truth,” Taylor said.
“No,” I said. “I don’t think they did.”
“Then why did they get married?”
“I think your mother hoped she could have a different kind of life. She wanted a child, and your father did too.”
“If my mother wanted a child, why did she leave me?”
“Your mother was always searching for something.”
“Is that why she made art?”
“No. She made art for the same reason you do.”
“Because she had to,” Taylor said.
“She loved that about you. When she came back and saw that you were an artist, like her, she knew that you were what she’d been searching for all along.”
“And then she died.”
“Yes,” I said. “And then she died.”
Beside me, Taylor stared up at the ceiling, her arms pressed against her sides, rigid as a soldier’s. When I drew her into my arms, she began to cry. She was not a girl who cried often and the intensity of her grief frightened me. Her body convulsed with sobs, and for a while it seemed as if the tears would never stop, but her grief had been gathering force for a long time. She had never cried for her mother and father. I buried my face in the lake- water smell of her hair and held her tight until the sobbing ceased and her breathing quieted. Finally, she seemed to fall asleep. But when I inched towards the edge of the mattress to leave, she reached out to me.
“Do you want me to stay?” I asked.
“No. I’m okay.”
I got out of bed. “You know where I am if you need me.”
“And if I call you, you’ll be there.”
