impression he’d turned a corner.”
Zack frowned. “That surprises me, because I don’t know anybody who would have trusted Jason to handle their spare change. Of course, it’s entirely possible Margot was blowing smoke. I’ve done that myself when I got broadsided during a trial.”
“Margot’s your partner now. You could ask her.”
“Good idea.” Zack picked up his cell and hit speed-dial. “Hey, it’s me. I’ve got some questions, and don’t get pissed off and start telling me it’s none of my business, because I think it may be. How much did you charge Jason Brodnitz?” Zack whistled when he heard Margot’s answer. “You don’t come cheap. Has he paid you? Good. Now, Joanne tells me that during the custody dispute, you implied that Jason’s business reverses were over.” He listened. “Fair enough. The truth is always open to interpretation, and if he paid your bill up front, no worries. One more question. Is Brodnitz named as a beneficiary in Cristal’s will? Really? That is weird. Anyway, easily solved. Just go online with the Law Society and ask the firm that handled the will to get in touch with you.”
He held the phone away from his ear. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. But for all your expertise, you haven’t found the will, have you? So keep at it. If Brodnitz was Cristal Avilia’s boyfriend, we may have an interesting situation on our hands.”
The Friday before Mother’s Day, Zack flew up north with a client who was the CEO of a mining resources company. Their meeting was in La Ronge, and the client took pleasure in flying his own plane and doing some serious sightseeing en route. I spent the day trying not to think of my husband suspended over one of the heart- stoppingly immense lakes that make the north so beautiful and so deadly. At three-thirty, I left Ginny campaigning in a seniors’ home and picked Taylor up at school. We were going shopping.
Taylor surprised me by suggesting we start at Value Village. “Sometimes they have neat stuff,” she said. “And I don’t want to be like everybody else. I guess I’m kind of like my mother.” Her dark eyes scrutinized my face, watching for a reaction. I sensed there was something more she wanted to say, so I waited. “Did it matter to my mother that she was beautiful?” she said finally.
I shook my head. “No. The only thing that ever mattered to your mother was the art she made.” It was the truth, but that didn’t make the statement any less thoughtless.
Taylor didn’t let it pass. “And me,” Taylor said. “I mattered to my mother.”
“Yes, you did. Very much.”
“Because I had talent.”
“She loved you,” I said. “Your talent was just something else that connected you to her.”
Taylor’s look was assessing. “I guess some day I’ll figure out whether that’s true.”
I put my arm around her. “In the meantime, we might as well check out the bargains.”
The shopping gods were with us that afternoon. Value Village offered up a genuine treasure – a white cotton jersey T-shirt with cap sleeves and printed with Andy Warhol’s acerbic observation “Everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes” in black and pink. The moment Taylor put it on, she knew what she needed to complete the look: fitted black cotton pants, pink Capezio ballet flats, and a black cardigan. We continued shopping, stopped for a bowl of soup at the Creek Bistro, then went home. While Taylor changed, I let out the dogs and tried Zack’s cell, but he was out of range. I’d just started to riffle through the mail when Taylor came in wearing her new outfit. She looked like a very young Audrey Hepburn.
“So what do you think?” she said.
“I think for a girl who used to go to birthday parties in frilly dresses, pyjama bottoms, and odd socks, you’ve developed a definite fashion sense.”
“Did you really let me go out wearing my pyjama bottoms?”
“Sure. You were happy. That was all that mattered.”
Taylor lowered her head and stared at her pink Capezios. “Jo, what would have happened to me if you hadn’t taken me?”
“Where did that come from?”
“Lately I’ve been thinking about it a lot. You know, just kind of wondering…”
“Well, my guess is that some amazingly lucky family would have adopted you, and you would have been fine.” I touched her cheek. “But, Taylor, I wouldn’t have been fine.”
Her voice was small. “You wouldn’t have known.”
“I would have known,” I said.
“You have the other kids.”
“But I wouldn’t have had you, and I cannot imagine my life – any of our lives – without you.”
Her lips were tight. “I can’t imagine not having you either.”
“Then let’s let it go for the time being,” I said. “But if you want to talk, I’m here.”
Taylor swiped her eyes with the back of her hand. I reached across her desk and took a tissue from the box and handed it to her.
“Thanks,” she said. She blew her nose ferociously. “Angus says you’re always there whether we want you there or not.”
“Angus is right,” I said. “Now, we both have homework, but as soon as we get that out of the way, let’s make some popcorn and watch an episode of
“Sweet,” Taylor said. “Can I ask Isobel to come over? She is so into Tahmoh Penikett.”
“As opposed to you,” I said.
Taylor dimpled. “I’m not as fanatic as Isobel. She sleeps with his picture under her pillow.”
When Taylor went off to call Isobel, I picked up the mail again. At first glance, it seemed like the usual: two magazines, a brochure encouraging us to holiday in Prince Edward Island, a tax receipt from a charity, and a bill from our water-softener company. But at the bottom of the pile there was a surprise – a peach greeting card envelope addressed to Joanne Shreve. The hand was unfamiliar, and there was no stamp. Neither fact set off any alarms. Zack liked surprises, and he always said I was a hard woman to spoil. There’d been another mystery envelope in the mailbox at Christmas. That one had contained the key to Chris Altieri’s cottage – the one closest to ours at Lawyers’ Bay. Zack had bought his partners’ shares of the cottage so that our grown children would have a place to stay when they visited. I smiled at the memory and opened the flap.
The envelope held three condoms and the bulletin from Cristal Avilia’s funeral. Across the picture of Cristal someone had scrawled a message in pink ink: “Is your husband missing her? I’ll help him forget.” There was a telephone number. I scanned the room to make certain Taylor hadn’t come in, then I picked up the phone and dialed. My hands were shaking, but I was tired of being jerked around.
When a woman picked up, I pressed on. “This is Joanne Shreve,” I said. “I got your card. Who are you?”
The woman on the other end of the line sounded young and stoned. “My name’s Bree,” she said. “Are you mad at me?”
“Not yet,” I said. “But I want to get to the bottom of this.”
“It will cost you,” she said.
“How much?”
“Is fifty dollars too much?” she said.
I exhaled. “No. Fifty dollars is fine. Where do you want to meet?”
“Nighthawks?”
“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes,” I said. “And, Bree, you’d better be there too.”
As I freshened my makeup, my resolve began to weaken, but Bree was expecting me. There was no turning back. Taylor’s bedroom door was open. She was at her desk, with Bruce and Benny at her feet.
I went over to her. “I have an errand,” I said. “I’ll be back in an hour. If I’m going to be longer, I’ll call.”
She nodded and kept working. “Isobel’s coming over in a few minutes to do homework with me.”
I leaned over to check her math exercise book. The pages before me were scrubbed thin with erasures. I rubbed her shoulder. “Taylor, do you need a tutor?”
She bent to her task again. “Uh-uh,” she said. “I just need a brain.”
I would have bet a cup of joe that the owner of Nighthawks on Broad Street hadn’t named his establishment after Edward Hopper’s signature painting of three customers seeking refuge from the loneliness of the night in a big city diner. Sealed off from the world by the diner’s expanse of glass, sealed off from one another by their own impenetrable isolation, the three customers in Hopper’s picture are a poignant reminder that, in the small hours, we are all alone. The people who haunted Nighthawks didn’t need Hopper’s painting to remind them of that. They knew
