The Brutal Heart

laundry hamper heavy with groceries, I was grateful for her help and for the chance to chat.

“How’s it going?” I said.

“Not bad,” she said. She gave me a sidelong glance. “I’ve been thinking about that story you told Em and me about hurling on your dress at your birthday party.”

I smiled at her. “It’s a memorable story,” I said.

She stopped walking and looked at me. “It was the same as me cutting, wasn’t it? You know, a way of saying, ‘Hey, does anybody actually realize that I’m in here, going crazy?’ ”

“It took a while, but I did finally figure that out.”

Chloe’s eyes were like her mother’s, grey and probing. “That’s because you didn’t have the benefit of professional help.”

“So how do you feel about the cutting?”

“Now you sound more like my therapist than the girl who puked on her dress.”

“Sorry,” I said.

“It’s okay. It’s a fair question.” She levelled her gaze at me. “So when you’re under pressure, do you still drink cherry brandy till you blow chunks?”

“No,” I said “It doesn’t seem to help.”

Chloe shifted the hamper. “Well, there’s your answer,” she said.

As soon as the cars were unloaded, Ginny and the twins went back to the court and resumed shooting hoops. They were still there when, as on dozens of other evenings after we’d arrived at the lake, we took our granddaughters for a run along the shore to get out the kinks before we sat down to dinner.

The basketball court was deserted by the time we got back and slipped into the grooves of our familiar routine. We ate at the partners’ table so we could watch the birds on the lake; then Zack and Taylor cleaned up and I gave the kids a bath and readied them for bed. Zack was always the hands-down choice to read bedtime stories. Years in the courtroom had taught him how to draw in an audience and keep them with him as he wove a narrative. Like countless juries before them, the girls thrilled to his booming bass, as Taylor and I accepted our fate and walked the dogs.

That Friday night, as we passed her cottage on our way home, Ginny waved us over.

“Can I interest you in a drink?” she asked.

“Not me, thanks,” Taylor said. “Jo and I made up this book list, and she says that, starting this weekend, I have to read fifty pages a day, so I’ll be ready for high school in the fall.”

“What are you reading?”

“It’s called A Complicated Kindness. My friend Isobel says it’s good, but I haven’t even started it yet.”

“Better get on it, then. Joanne, can you stay?”

“Are you sure you want company?”

Ginny nodded “I’m sure. Can I get you anything?”

“I’m fine.”

“So am I,” Ginny said. “Or at least moving in that direction.” We watched as Taylor and Pantera walked towards our cottage. “A girl and her dog,” Ginny said. “It’s a nice reminder that life doesn’t always have to be complicated.” She stretched out in a Muskoka chair and motioned to the one beside her. “I know I should call Keith or Milo, but truthfully, I don’t want to deal with what they’re going to tell me.”

“There’s no rush. Keith’s coming out for dinner on Sunday. You can talk to him then.”

“Is this visit your idea or his?”

“Both,” I said.

“You two were a kick together. That was such a great campaign.”

“Past tense?” I said.

“Past tense,” she replied. “Joanne, I know I’m going to lose Palliser.”

“Sounds as if you’ve come to terms with it.”

“I don’t have an alternative,” Ginny said. “Vince Lombardi may have believed that winning is the only thing, but even kids know that every time somebody wins, somebody else loses.”

“Have you thought about what you want to do next?”

“Well, until this mess is cleared up, I can’t do anything. Even then, I imagine it’ll be a long time before the corporate headhunters come knocking at my door. Financially, I’m in good shape. Maybe I’ll just coach the twins and see what happens.”

“You’re amazing,” I said.

Her smile was sardonic. “I’m faking it,” she said.

Willie, curled up by my feet, began to moan. The awareness that Pantera had headed home without him was dawning. I picked up his leash. “Ginny, if you want to talk, we’re around, but I’m not going to press it.”

“I appreciate that,” Ginny said.

When I got back to the cottage, Taylor was sprawled on the living-room couch engrossed in Miriam Toews’s novel. The little girls were in bed asleep, and Zack was in his chair beside their bed reading Charlotte’s Web.

I touched his shoulder. “You do realize the kids are down for the count,” I said.

He raised an eyebrow. “That’s why I’m not reading aloud. I wanted to know how the book ends.”

“You’re not going to like it,” I said.

“Does Wilbur die?”

“No.”

“Not Charlotte!”

“Zack, the lifespan of a spider is about a year. But Charlotte does have her magnum opus.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Which is?”

I kissed his head. “Finish the book.”

We spotted Ginny and her girls often over the weekend: running on the beach, playing tennis, kayaking. We waved at one another and shouted greetings, but we went our separate ways. They were obviously relishing the chance to be alone and, as someone who has experienced that need many times in my own life, I understood.

Besides, we were busy. Zack and the little girls barrelled through to the end of Charlotte’s Web. He and I were both relieved that Madeleine and Lena, unlike their grandfather, showed no signs of being scarred forever by Charlotte’s passing and were comforted by the fact that Charlotte completed her magnum opus before she died. Taylor, too, had been gripped by literature. She had never been a reader, but A Complicated Kindness captured her interest and made me hopeful that she might get more than a mercy pass in Grade Nine English.

Not all our pleasures were literary. Our front lawn ended in a sandy hill that ran straight to the lake, and on Saturday morning Maddy and Lena embarked on an ambitious project of digging and dam building that occupied us all for much of the weekend. The plan was to create a stream bed that would allow them to dump water at the top of the hill and watch while it made its way to the lake. There were many impediments in their way, not the least of which was the unassailable truth that sand swallows water, but the girls were determined. They dug and piled up dirt, shoring the sides of their waterway with twigs and stones as they worked. After half an hour, I set aside the biography of Matisse I was reading and got down on the sand to help. Zack, who normally hated being out of his chair, slipped onto the ground and dug along with us. We burrowed patiently down the slope. When it was time for lunch, Zack waved off my offer of assistance, hauled himself back up the hill, and, dirty but triumphant, got back into his chair.

That afternoon, Taylor and I took the girls for a canoe ride, then returned to the sand project. The next day, after a run with the dogs, an intense reading session, and lunch, we were back on the hill. When Ginny and her daughters came by to check our progress, the sun was hitting the sandy slope, and the air was warm and inviting. Emma and Chloe looked at the hill with narrowed eyes. “Looks like you could use some help,” Emma said.

Lena wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “Do you know how to dig?”

“Sure,” Emma said.

Taylor handed each of the twins a trowel and they all walked down to the excavation site. I turned to Ginny. “Do you want to dig, or do you want to sit under that aspen and watch the kids slave away?”

Ginny’s face brightened. “They’re young. Let’s watch. As you may have noticed, the girls and I have decided