command ‘push.’ So when Darryl stepped out of line, I gave the command.”
I laughed. “You’d better watch it,” I said. “Darryl Colby strikes me as a litigious kind of guy.”
“My favourite kind,” Zack said. “Now, could you help me get back into bed? Strategically, it was important for me to deal with Darryl from an upright position, but I’m beat.”
Zack shifted his chair so he could transfer his body from the chair to the bed. I didn’t comment when the move made him groan. I helped him ease his body into a lying position, unzipped his trousers, and pulled them off. “So the meeting did not go well?”
“Nah, just the usual shit. Darryl has lined up some people who are prepared to swear that Delia is, to put it kindly, an absent mother. I was prepared for that. I was also ready for his dark allusions to Noah’s violent past. But Darryl always surprises me.”
Zack pointed to some glossy black-and-white photos on the nightstand. “Check out the new additions to the Wainberg family photo album.”
I flipped through the photos. In all of them Noah was holding Louise Hunter in his arms. They were both laughing. Louise’s hair was tousled; her strapless gown had slipped on one side, revealing a nipple, and Noah’s hand was cupping her small breast.
I studied the photograph. “Who says pictures never lie? This looks bad, but if there’d been a photographer around the night I was putting Louise to bed, he could have snapped equally provocative pictures of us.”
“You know that, and I know that, but a family court judge wouldn’t, and Darryl assures me there are plenty more where these came from. His investigators have also dug up watchful neighbours who will testify that Noah spent the night at Louise’s on more than one occasion.”
“That’s disgusting,” I said. “Not the fact that Noah stayed with Louise, just that an act of kindness can be deliberately distorted.”
“We’re doing it, too,” Zack said. “When Nadine and Abby were estranged, Nadine took a group of students to France. There were rumours that she became involved with one of the girls.”
I helped Zack into his pyjama bottoms. “There are always rumours like that.”
“These rumours were serious enough to warrant investigation.”
“And…?”
“And nothing was proven.”
“Nadine still has her job,” I said. “She teaches at a fine school, and they’ve produced a lot of lawyers. Nadine wouldn’t be teaching if there were any questions.”
“You sound like Darryl Colby.”
“I sound like a sensible person.”
“Well, that makes you a rarity in this situation.”
“Actually, it doesn’t,” I said. “Before I came home I was at UpSlideDown with Jacob. Noah had asked me to take care of the baby because Declan needed his help with Louise. Anyway, while I was at UpSlideDown, Nadine Perrault arrived. She must have come straight from the airport. She held Jacob and she and Mieka talked. When Noah showed up, he asked Nadine if she’d like to stay and play with Jacob for a while.”
“Reassuring to know that there’s some decency in the world,” Zack said. “Every so often the Darryl Colbys and the Zack Shreves crowd out the good guys.”
“You’re a good guy,” I said. “I’m not so sure about me any more.”
My husband opened his arms, and I leaned in. “Did you get knocked around a bit today?” he asked.
“I did. My visit to the Brokaws was a disaster. When I left, Theo was sobbing and Myra was livid. On the bright side, my blundering did result in one interesting piece of information. Myra told me that Theo had had many women, and all his women were the same type as Delia: ‘clever, pale, and Semitic.’ That’s a direct quote.”
Zack shook his head. “You hear something like that and it really does make you wonder about the old chicken- and-egg question.”
“You mean, which came first?”
“Right. Did Theo play around because Myra was a piece of work, or did Myra become a piece of work because Theo played around?”
CHAPTER 13
A phone call at midnight seldom brings good news, but since I’d married Zack, the shrill of a telephone in our sleep-quiet house had ceased to terrify me. Clients and enemies of trial lawyers tend to keep irregular hours, and so as I groped for the phone the night after my visit to the Brokaws’, I was more resigned than alarmed. The voice on the other end of the line was low, breathy, and vicious.
“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” the voice said. “Listen.”
I kept the phone to my ear a beat too long before I started to hang up. My caller was obviously holding out the phone to pick up the noise in the room. The sound I heard was primal – a man keening a loss whose magnitude I could only imagine. I knew immediately that Myra Brokaw was on the other end of the line, and that I had somehow speeded Theo Brokaw’s descent into the abyss.
Beside me, Zack stirred and mumbled. I slid out of bed and moved across the room. “All right,” I said. “I’m listening, Myra. What’s happened?”
She spit out the words. “I found that picture you gave him – the picture of that ‘clever girl,’ as he calls her. I found it, and I made him watch as I ripped it up. There will be no more clever girls in his life and he knows it. Listen to him.”
Theo’s wails grew louder. Surprisingly, I was able to keep my voice steady. “Myra, Theo needs help. Take your husband to Emergency and get him admitted.”
Her laugh was harsh. “Oh, that would be perfect, wouldn’t it? Having Theo out of my control and medicated. Under those conditions, he would be capable of saying or doing anything. Believe me, I know. That would be the end of Mr. Justice Theodore Brokaw. That would be the end of the intellectual jewel of Canada’s Supreme Court.”
“Myra, if there’s anything I can do to help, I will.”
“Stay out of our lives,” she said.
“I will,” I said. “Good night.” I hung up, turned off the ringer on the phone, and crawled back into bed.
“Who was that?” Zack mumbled.
“We’ll talk about it in the morning,” I said. I put my arms around him and hoped he couldn’t feel the pounding of my heart.
In December in Saskatchewan, the sun doesn’t rise until almost nine, but dogs have their own internal clocks, and by five-thirty the next morning Willie and Pantera were pacing.
When I started to slide out of bed, Zack caught my wrist. “So what was that phone call in the middle of the night about?”
“It was Myra Brokaw,” I said. “I did something stupid, and she wanted to make sure I was aware of the consequences.”
“Stay here where it’s warm and tell me what happened,” Zack said.
I lay back down and put my arms around him. “Yesterday when I went to the Brokaws’, I had what seemed at the time to be a stroke of luck. Myra wanted to mail a gift, so she left me alone with Theo. As I’d planned to, I told him he had a daughter. He didn’t seem to grasp what I was saying, so I took out the family photo the Michaelses used as their greeting card last Christmas. Alwyn gave me hers for Jacob. The resemblance between Abby and Delia is so striking, I thought Theo might make the connection. Anyway, I showed it to him.”
Zack whistled. “That was a high-stakes move.”
“It was a stupid move.”
“Did Theo react?”
“He did,” I said. “He thought it was a photo of Delia. He called her ‘his girl,’ ‘his clever girl.’ He hid the picture in a magazine. Apparently, Myra found it. When she called last night, she told me she made Theo watch as she ripped it up. Zack, as long as I live, I will never forget the sound of that man’s anguish. It was terrible, and it was my fault.”
