When I got back to the cottage, I changed into dry clothes, lit a fire, and made myself a hot drink. Then I went over and picked up Louis L’Amour’s Buckskin Run. The book jacket told me there were over 110 million copies of his books in print around the world, and assured me I would be spellbound. I wasn’t, but it wasn’t Louis L’Amour’s fault.
Rod Morgan and Jed Blue had just agreed to be partners because they were cut from the same leather, when the phone rang. It was Zack.
“Something’s screwy, Joanne. I’m at police headquarters. They don’t know anything about an arrest – especially not one involving Alex Kequahtooway. He’s been suspended from the force.”
“But Lily confessed to everything. They left together. I assumed…”
Zack sighed. “Never assume. Don’t talk to anybody until I get there, okay? There are a hundred cops looking for Lily and the inspector, and they’re sending someone to Lawyers’ Bay to talk to you. I’ll be there as soon as I get some ice for your jaw.”
“If you brought some single-malt Scotch to go with that ice, I wouldn’t take it amiss,” I said.
I hung up the phone furious at Alex for deceiving me once again, and at myself for being stupid enough to believe that he had suddenly remembered the oath he’d taken when he’d graduated from the police college. He and Lily were clearly on the run. Like everything else, that decision made no sense. Alex knew me well enough to know I would follow up on what happened after Lily was taken to the police station. And he knew that the moment the police realized he and Lily had fled, they would deploy every available officer to track them down. There was no way they could escape. Then, like Paul on the road to Damascus, the scales fell from my eyes, and I knew.
It was a short drive to the church at Lebret. Not more than fifteen minutes, and for the first time that day, the skies had cleared. The silver Audi was parked behind the church, facing the Stations of the Cross on the hill that Lily’s mother had climbed every day during the last year of her life. My legs were weak as I picked my way through the puddles towards Alex’s car. Bathed in the watery sunlight, the vehicle already seemed unearthly.
I think I had realized all along that I would be too late. If I hadn’t known the truth, I would have mistaken Lily and Alex for lovers. Her head was against his chest; his arm was around her shoulders, shielding and protecting. Later, forensic testing would determine that Alex had fired both shots. There was no way out for either of them and they hadn’t wanted to take a chance that one would live without the other. But at that moment, all I could see was the blood that flowed from their wounds, mingling and mixing like tributaries of a larger river, two lives that had run their parallel courses and come together in death. At long last, Alex Kequahtooway and Lily Ryder were home.
There are few sites that have the emotional resonance of a fresh grave in summer: the moist dank scent of earth and the too-sweet smell of cut flowers curling with heat and the onset of decay. The week after the tragedy at Lebret, I was present as two people were put in their graves and a third was removed from hers.
Lily and Alex were buried in Lake View cemetery across the water from Lawyers’ Bay. In an act of generosity that made it possible to believe in human decency, Blake Falconer arranged to have the woman he had always loved buried next to the only human being she had ever cared for. Both Lily’s funeral and Alex’s were private. Both were marked by the bruised bewilderment of mourners forced to deal with the fact that a human being’s final act had been to throw a grenade into the careful construction that housed everything that those who loved them believed them to be.
From the moment Eli Kequahtooway arrived back from Vancouver, where he was studying art at Emily Carr, Angus was at his side. There had been a time when the boys had been like brothers, and I was glad to see that the bond between them was still strong. Eli had chosen to stay at Standing Buffalo until his uncle’s funeral, and Angus had, without comment, simply moved in with him. They bunked together at Betty’s house, and the night before the funeral, Betty made tea and fried bannock for the boys and me and then withdrew to her pretty, frilly bedroom so Angus, Eli, and I could talk.
We sat at Betty’s kitchen table until the small hours. Eli was haunted by the fact that there had been no suicide note, no final telephone call, and that night, in an attempt to explain the unexplainable, the three of us tried to piece together what we knew. It wasn’t enough. As I watched the hope in Eli’s eyes turn to despair, I knew that it would be years before he would trust again. When finally we said goodnight, I drew Eli to me and whispered that his uncle had loved him deeply, but that events had overtaken him and he simply hadn’t had time to say goodbye. The words were cold comfort, but they were all I had.
Clare Mackey’s funeral was the same day as Alex Kequahtooway’s. Had there been no conflict, I might have gone. Then again, I might not have. I’d said my prayers the day the machines ripped up the hill where Clare was buried. The workers had been careful as they disassembled the gazebo. One of the men assured me that not a pane of glass was cracked. The wooden carving of Gloria Ryder had been placed to one side. It lay on the beach, its back to the gazebo as the police dug up Clare Mackey’s remains.
Sandra Mikalonis sent me a copy of the eulogy she had delivered at Clare’s funeral. In it she praised Clare’s integrity and remembered her passion for Bach and her joy when she scored the winning goal at the national law games in her graduating year. Sandra ended her eulogy by noting Clare’s steadfast dedication to her principles. Clare’s life, Sandra said, had been fired by her commitment to the motto of the University of Saskatchewan’s College of Law: Fiat justitia – let justice be done.
A week after the funerals, Rose and I visited the Lake View cemetery. We came with flowers, jam jars full of petunias from Betty’s garden. Lily’s were pink; Alex’s purple. “Better for a man,” Betty had declared.
As we always seemed to be, Rose and I were in step. We were silent as we placed our flowers on the graves and unhurried as we thought our private thoughts. It was a gentle day, cool, sunny, and breezy.
“So how are you doing?” Rose asked finally.
“Truthfully, I feel as if someone ripped away my top layer of skin.”
Rose nodded sagely. “I know that feeling. But we have to stop. The old people say if you mourn too long they get stuck, the ones who’ve passed away. They can’t get on with their journey.”
“I’ve heard that,” I said. “I always thought it made a lot of sense.”
“And you and I have to get on with it, too. We’re not young women.”
“No,” I said. “We’re not.”
“And we’ve got responsibilities,” Rose said. “I’ve got Gracie and her dad.”
“And I’ve got my kids and my job. Did I tell you my daughter and her family are spending the month of August here?”
“Is that the daughter I met at Alex’s funeral?”
“Yes,” I said. “My daughter Mieka.”
“How old are the kids?”
“Maddy’s three and Lena’s seven months.”
“That’s good,” Rose said. “We could use some babies around here.”
I stopped to pick a weed from a grave. Rose took the Safeway bag from her pocket and held it out to me. I dropped the weed in and she nodded approvingly.
“That Zack Shreve’s an interesting man,” she said.
“He is,” I agreed.
“Tough.”
“So they say.”
Rose raised an eyebrow. “They also say that sometimes the toughest nuts have the sweetest meat. I wonder if that’s true.”
“I don’t know,” I said.
Rose shoved the Safeway bag back in her pocket. “Well,” she said, “isn’t it lucky that you’ve got the rest of the summer to find out?”
