The Nesting Dolls

CHAPTER 6

The Hotel Saskatchewan is one of the grand hotels built by the nation-building Canadian Pacific Railway in the early part of the twentieth century. At the peak of construction, a thousand men were working shifts twenty-four hours a day, so that the young blades of Regina would have vaulted ceilings under which to waltz their belles and marble thresholds over which to carry them. The clientele today tends to be corporate, more interested in mergers than romance, and there are places in town where the food is cheaper and better. That said, for an evening of mid-winter enchantment, the Hotel Saskatchewan is the place to be, especially if you are six years old and four years old, as Madeleine and Lena were, respectively, on that starry December night.

From the moment the girls looked up at the towering wooden soldiers flanking the entrance and spied themselves in the floor-to-ceiling mirrors, they were captivated. The lobby held more charms: the frothy extravagances of the tree decorations were a reminder, if we needed one, that Christmas is the season when too much is not enough, and the chandeliers glittering in the dining rooms promised further delights. Best of all, there was the hotel’s gingerbread display. This year’s theme was an Alpine village with a real train that ran on a figure- eight track past candy-covered houses. Transcendent.

There had been secrecy about what Lena would be wearing that evening. New holiday dresses, along with dinner and The Nutcracker, were our present to the girls. When I had taken them shopping, Madeleine found a dress she liked within the first half-hour. It was classic: a simple, scoop-necked, long- sleeved black velvet bodice, with a pretty dark green shot taffeta skirt. Standing in front of the triple mirrors in her undershirt and panties, she handed the dress to me with a sigh of relief. “Now I don’t have to try on any more,” she said. Lena had proved harder to satisfy, and when finally we gave up and went for hot chocolate we weren’t even close. In the end, Mieka had taken Lena dress shopping while Madeleine and I stayed at Mieka’s and read. Lena was wrestling with a large box when they returned. She refused all offers of help and all requests for a preview, saying only that she wanted the dress to be a surprise. As I was leaving, I asked Mieka about the dress, but she just rolled her eyes and changed the subject.

When Lena took off her coat at the hotel, I understood Mieka’s eye-roll. Lena’s dress was a poufy explosion of satin, tulle, ribbons, and pearls, all the colour of grape Kool-Aid. Zack and I were both speechless. Maddy, who was always quick to pick up on nuance and was a loyal sister, gave us our cue. “Lena really looks nice, doesn’t she?” she said, and there was an edge in her voice that suggested she would not brook contradiction.

“Unforgettable,” Zack said.

“Absolutely,” I said, and with that, the four of us swanned into dinner.

We decided on the buffet – mostly because of the dessert table – so our only order was for drinks. The girls ordered Shirley Temples, but when the server handed Zack the wine list, Madeleine frowned. “Wine is kind of plain for a party. Why don’t you and Mimi get Shirley Temples too? They come with cherries on a crazy straw.”

Zack looked at me. “I don’t know about you, but that cherries-on-a-crazy-straw sounds tempting.”

“I’m tempted, too,” I said.

Zack handed the wine list back to the server. “Shirley Temples all around,” he said, “and please don’t stint on the cherries.”

When the drinks came, Lena took her napkin and tucked it into her collar. “I don’t want to spill on my dress,” she said.

“Very prudent,” Zack said. His gaze swept the faces at our table. “I’d like to propose a toast.”

“I’ll bet it’s to us,” Lena said.

“Only indirectly,” Zack said. He raised his glass. “To Mimi’s toothbrush, because without your grandmother’s toothbrush, none of us would be here tonight.”

Madeleine narrowed her eyes. “Is this one of your funny stories?”

“No, this is one of my true stories, but before I tell it, we have to drink a toast to Mimi’s toothbrush.”

Giggling, the girls raised their glasses. “To Mimi’s toothbrush,” they chorused.

“Now you have to tell the story,” Madeleine said.

“It starts the morning after Mimi and I had our first date,” he said.

I shot my husband a warning glance. Madeleine and Lena didn’t need to know that their grandparents’ first evening together had lasted all night.

“Did you have fun?” Lena asked.

“Yes,” Zack said. “And that was the problem.”

“How could fun be a problem?” Madeleine asked.

Zack’s eyes met mine over our Shirley Temples. “Because I’d always been on my own – I’d always been able to do what I wanted to do when I wanted to do it. I never had to think about anybody other than myself.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad,” Maddy said judiciously.

“It wasn’t,” Zack said. “In fact, it was pretty good, but when I met your grandmother, I knew that if I stayed with her, everything would be different, so I was scared.”

Lena furrowed her brow in disbelief. “You’re not scared of anything.”

“Everybody’s scared of something. Anyway, we were at the lake, but I had business in Regina, so when I was ready to go, I asked your Mimi if I could bring her anything and she said she’d like a toothbrush.”

“Where was her toothbrush?” Madeleine asked.

“She must have lost it,” Lena said.

“She didn’t have it with her at the time,” Zack said. “So she asked me to bring her one. And this is the scary part. This is the part where things almost didn’t work out – where if I’d done one thing instead of another we wouldn’t be sitting here tonight drinking Shirley Temples.”

Struck by the solemnity of the possibility, the girls put down their drinks.

“As you well know, it’s a long drive from the lake into Regina.”

“Forty-five minutes,” Madeleine said.

Zack nodded. “By the time I got to the city, I decided that I didn’t want to change my life, and I wasn’t going to see your Mimi any more.”

Madeleine’s eyes were anxious. “You were going to dump her?”

“I was going to send flowers and a note first. I called the florist, and when I started telling her what to write on the card, I thought of your grandmother… ”

“Waiting for her toothbrush… ” Lena said, and her voice was tragic.

“Waiting for her toothbrush,” Zack agreed. “So I tore up the note, cancelled the flowers, bought the best toothbrush I could find, and drove back to the lake -”

Zack’s cell rang. His eyes met mine. “Sorry,” he said.

“I’ll take the girls to the buffet,” I said.

Zack was still on the phone when we got back with our food. When he rang off, he did not look happy. “I’ll tell you later,” he said.

“Better get something to eat,” I said.

When we had finished our meal, the girls and I went into the ladies’ room to freshen up. It was an elegant space with two chaise longues and many mirrors. Tearing Lena away from a space that offered endless reflections of herself was not easy, but the ballet beckoned. Zack was waiting for us at the gingerbread village. When the girls gravitated towards a chalet overlooking a surprisingly realistic waterfall, Zack motioned me to join him.

“What’s up?” I said.

“I was going to save this particular sugarplum till later, but Debbie called this afternoon. The medical examiner’s team have done a preliminary examination of Abby Michaels’s body – just observing and gathering samples – no autopsy yet. In their opinion, Abby died of traumatic asphyxia caused by neck compression.”

“She was strangled,” I said.

Zack nodded. “There was seminal fluid in the vagina and on the perineum and inner thighs. There were no contusions in the genital area, so apparently the penetration was not forced.”

“The sex was consensual?” I said.

Zack took a deep breath and exhaled. “No. The theory is that Abby was already dead when penetration took place.”

For a moment I felt light-headed. I gripped the edge of the table that held the idyllic gingerbread village.

“You okay?” Zack said.