“Mind if I join you?”
“I’d like that,” I said. I stepped closer. “Despite that accidental walking into a fist, you seem to be doing better.”
Chris grinned and shrugged. “Nothing lasts forever. Remember?”
The cottage we were staying in was at the tip of the east arm of the horseshoe that was Lawyers’ Bay. Built in the 1950s by Kevin Hynd’s parents, Harriet and Russell, it was a dwelling with a thousand charms, and that night after Angus headed for his room above the boathouse and Leah and Taylor had gone to bed, I entered my bedroom with a sense of homecoming. I slept in the bed Harriet and Russell had shared, surrounded by photos of other summers at the lake and shelves of books containing their personal favourites: Virginia Woolf for her, Louis L’Amour for him. Everything I could wish for, yet that night as I slipped between the sun-fresh sheets, I couldn’t sleep. The windows were open, but no breeze stirred the filmy curtains. Oppressed by heavy air and sharp-edged memories, I tossed, turned, and finally picked up my pillow and headed for the screened porch.
Rectangles of light from the other cottages around the bay pierced the darkness. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one struggling with sleeplessness. The opening notes of Bill Evans’s incandescent “Waltz for Debbie” drifted from Zack Shreve’s cottage. As I listened, I took the measure of my neighbours’ blessings: money, success, health, and for troubled nights, a law partner who played piano with fluid beauty. Yet somehow this wasn’t enough. I carried my pillow to the couch, lay down, closed my eyes, and pondered the universal truth that lay behind Gracie Falconer’s question to her father: Why couldn’t people just see how nice everything was?
I don’t know how long I slept before I was jerked awake by a beam of light and the screech of tires peeling along the gravel road that led past our cottage to the boat launch. My first thought was that some kids had fuelled their Canada Day celebrations with one too many kegs, but the explanation didn’t wash. Lawyers’ Bay was a gated community. Nobody got in but us.
My heart pounded as I waited for a sign that the wayward car had headed home. But I heard nothing. When the splash came, there was no mistaking its significance. The car hit the water with a dull thud, and life moved into fast-forward. I jumped up and headed for the lake. It wasn’t long before Angus caught up with me. Standing on the road in his jockey shorts, my son didn’t look like a hero, but he had a hero’s coolness. “I called 911, Mum, but it’s going to take them a while to get out here. You and I will just have to do what we can.”
The red roof of the car was still visible when Angus and I arrived on the scene.
“That looks like Chris Altieri’s MGB,” Angus said. There was no time to check out his assessment. The vehicle had apparently built up enough momentum to sail through the air before it hit. There was a sharp drop in the level of the lake bottom about ten metres from shore. The car had reached that point, and the dark waters were greedily swallowing their prize.
Before I could stop him, Angus dove off the dock and swam towards the spot where the car had gone under. In a heartbeat, he vanished too. Frozen with fear, I stared at the place where he’d disappeared.
When – finally – he surfaced, I could hear the panic in his voice. “I can’t get to him, Mum.”
“Is it Chris?” I asked.
“I guess so. I don’t know. I need help. I can’t open the door. Maybe if you spell me off…”
I didn’t hesitate. I threw off my robe and dove in. The water had a familiar fishy-weedy smell, and in one of those synaptic leaps that fracture logic, I remembered another lake in another time when my friend Sally Love and I, poised on the cusp of adolescence, would go skinny-dipping, thrilled as cold water surrounded the new contours of our changing bodies.
That night, the only thrill was of terror. The world below was murky, and I could find my way only by touch. When a weed slithered against my leg, my fear was primal. Finally, my hand found metal. Blindly, I sought a handle. Like a beginner learning Braille, I kept moving my fingers hoping to unlock the mystery. All I could feel was impenetrable steel. Finally, lungs on fire, I shot to the surface, and Angus went under again. We alternated dives until, exhausted and frustrated, I faced the truth. When Angus ducked to go back under, I grabbed his shoulder. “No,” I said. “No more. It’s over.”
We swam to shore and clambered up the boat launch to the dubious safety of dry land. Shivering and breathless, we gulped air and stared ahead. In the distance a siren’s shriek pierced the night. Help was on its way. I inched closer to my son.
Above us the uncaring moon moved through the sky, drawing a bright ribbon of light across the smooth expanse of water that covered all that remained of Christopher Altieri. The man of water had gone home.
CHAPTER
2
From the moment I met her, I had been a fan of Angus’s girlfriend, Leah Drache. She was smart, funny, and original – a young woman with a blond bob and shiny brown eyes who charted her own course, but embraced anyone who chose to travel with her. The night of the drowning she was invaluable. The paramedics had convinced the police to let Angus and me go back to our cottage to towel off and get into dry clothes before they questioned us. Leah didn’t hover, but she knew what we needed, and she offered it: hot tea with plenty of sugar, the softest towels, the thickest sweatshirts and socks. She seated everyone in the kitchen, the room farthest away from the room in which Taylor, innocent of the night’s events, dreamed her summer dreams.
The RCMP confirmed my fear that the driver of the MGB was Chris Altieri, but beyond revealing his identity, they were tight-lipped. The officers who took our statements were smart enough to simply let us talk. They were professionals who recognized human limits, and they knew my son and I were on the edge. They also knew where to find us when the need for tough and close questioning arose.
After they left, Angus stood up, wrapped himself more tightly in his towel, and said he was leaving for his room over the boathouse. Leah was a woman who valued her space, and that summer she had opted for a room of her own in the cottage, but she loved my son and her tenderness as she reached for him brought a catch to my throat. “You shouldn’t be alone tonight,” she said. “I’ll come with you.” I went to my solitary bed envying them.
The physical exertion of the doomed recovery efforts had taken its toll, and I slept deeply. When I awoke, light was pooling on my bedroom floor and the scent of roses hung in the air. For a sliver of time, I was blissful; then with the suddenness of a cloud blocking the sun, Chris Altieri’s face flashed into my consciousness. It took an act of will to plant my feet on the floor and take the first step that would begin the new day.
When I came into the kitchen, Leah was at the sink, rinsing dishes. She was wearing khaki shorts and a sleeveless white cotton blouse that showed off her tan. There was something achingly lovely about the way in which she performed this most commonplace of tasks, and I was grateful to her for offering me an anchor to moor me to the workaday world.
She poured us both juice. “Rose Lavallee picked Taylor up about ten minutes ago. She thought the girls shouldn’t have to see police all over the place, so she’s taking them to Standing Buffalo. She’s bringing them back at three-thirty.” Leah handed me my glass. “Her sister’s going to teach them how to knit.”
“Our neighbours seem to take care of everything,” I said.
Leah’s brow furrowed with concern. “I’m sorry, Jo. I should have listened to Rose. She said I should wake you up to see if it was okay for Taylor to go, but I figured that, after last night, you’d want to sleep.”
“You were right,” I said, relenting. “And it’ll be handy having a knitter around the house. This family goes through a lot of scarves and mitts.” I sipped my juice. “How’s Angus?”
“He seems okay,” she said. “I’m glad we’ve got the grand opening of Coffee Row today – keep him distracted.”
“Your elderly gents are not going to lack conversational topics,” I said.
Leah’s smile was thin. “Half the town is probably out there already, sitting on the picnic benches, trading grisly details.”
Coffee Row was Leah’s answer to a quandary that had developed the week she and Angus started managing the Point Store. Stan Gardiner still lived over the business, and whenever the bell tinkled, announcing that a customer had come through the front door, Stan came down to visit. His continuing presence created a problem in
