The Killing Circle

without another word doesn’t seem possible either. If it weren’t for the blackened tongue that the smaller of the two kids sticks out at me, I might not have come up with a question.

“Has there been a funeral already?”

“Two days after she died. A few round here were the only ones who showed up. As well as the son.”

“The son?”

“It’s who we all figured it was anyway.”

“What was his name?”

“Never asked.”

“What did he look like?”

“A big guy, I guess. Wasn’t the kind who seemed to like you looking at him all that much. Like he wanted to be there, but not have anybody else know it.”

I step down off the cement steps at the trailer’s door. The midday sun unveils itself from behind a bank of clouds.

“When was the funeral?”

“Last week. I told you.”

“Which day?”

“Thursday, I think.”

Thursday. Two days before William’s arrest. A big guy.

“I better be getting back,” I say. But as I try to pass the woman, she stops me with a hand on my arm.

“I suppose someone should look that son of hers up if his sister’s passed on.”

“I’ll let him know.”

“So you know him? We was right? He was Michelle’s boy?”

“You know families,” I say vaguely, but the woman seems to understand. She gives me a nod that takes in her own children, Angela’s mother’s trailer, the blazing sun, all of Hilly Haven.

“Oh yeah,” she says. “Full of surprises.”

When I get home there’s a message from Tim Earheart. He wants to get together, see how I am. But I know even as I return his call and arrange to meet at a bar near his new house in Cabbagetown that he’s heard about William’s arrest and wants to find out what I know about it. This has been Tim’s assignment from the start. And now that the final act is beginning—the public cleansing ritual that is every high-profile criminal proceeding—he wants to milk every advantage he has over the competition.

Tim thinks I know something. And unless something juicier presents itself, he’ll keep asking what it is. And yet I still cling to the possibility that I can escape disclosure. It’s true that if William does end up going to a full trial, I’ll be called as a witness. But if the prosecution ends up not having to probe that far, or, better yet, if William pleads guilty, no one need ever know that the author of The Sandman was once in a writing class with the Sandman. I still have a chance. So long as Tim can be discouraged from digging further into the Patrick Rush angle.

“How’re you liking the new place?” I ask him as the first round arrives.

“It’s an investment. Besides, I’m thinking of settling down pretty soon.”

“Stop it. You’re killing me.”

“I just need to meet someone.”

“Haven’t you met enough someones?”

“She’s out there. Just like your Angela person.”

I nod, trying to read Tim to see if he knows something about Angela’s disappearance that I don’t.

“Must be strange,” Tim muses. “Being so close to this William Feld business.”

“I wasn’t so close to it.”

“Your book could have been the guy’s biography.”

“That’s an exaggeration.”

“The whole title thing. It’s kind of hard to accept as coincidence.”

“The police didn’t think it was so hard.”

“They’ve talked to you?”

“A detective came round to ask some questions.”

“Ramsay.”

“I think that’s the guy.”

“And what did you tell him?”

“What I’m telling you. It’s a novel. It’s all made up. I’m just glad it’s over.”

Tim chokes on the sip he’s taking from his bottle. “Over? Not for me. This is my story. I’m going to be filing on Mr Feld’s trial for the next several months. Which could turn out to be a real bitch if I can’t come at it through a side door.”

He looks at me straight now, hands flat on the bar.

“I wish I could help you,” I say, blowing him back an inch with an exhaled belch. “But there’s not a goddamn thing I know about William Feld that anybody who read your story in today’s paper doesn’t know.”

I’ll never know if Tim believes me or not. But whether out of a sense that what I’ve said is true, or some last tug of friendship, he lets me go.

“Working on anything new?”

“I was thinking of returning to newspapering. I’d be prepared to try something new. The horoscopes, classifieds, crossword puzzles,” I say. “You think the Editor-in-Chief would have me back?” Oh yes. We both have a good laugh over that one.

In the morning I drive down to St Catharines. I’ve brought all sorts of presents with me (a plasma screen TV for Stacey and her husband, iPods and a Tolkien collector’s set for their kids) but nothing, intentionally, for Sam. Our gift to each other is the reunion itself. It will be up to Sam how he wants to spend the rest of the summer. We will work our way back to what we used to be at our own pace, and with only ourselves to tell us how it is to be done.

On the drive home I make a point of not overdoing how difficult the last weeks have been without him. And for the first hour or so, he offers anecdotes involving his numbskulled cousins, how good a swimmer he’s become. He’s going easy on me, too.

Then, somewhere around Oakville, flying past the low-rise head offices and steakhouse franchises, Sam decides I’m able to take his coming to the point.

“You have to tell me, Dad.”

“I know.”

“It doesn’t have to be now.”

“Okay.”

“But sometime.”

“I owe you that much.”

“It’s not about owing.”

Sam turns in his seat. And there’s not an eightyearold looking back at me but a young man who is surprised at how his father can’t appreciate what should be obvious.

“If you don’t tell me, you’ll be the only one who knows,” he says.

August decides to behave, with afternoon breezes off the lake nudging the smog northward to reveal the city it had shrouded in orange for the month before. To honour this change, Sam and I go for long walks. Lunching out in T-shirts and flip-flops, biking along the trails in the Don Valley, sliding our hands over the Henry Moore sculptures at the gallery when the security guards aren’t looking. We’ve even started reading again. Bookish picnics in Trinity- Bellwoods swallowing Robinson Crusoe (Sam) and Atonement