The Taken

was drunk.

They shooed her out of the kitchen with a cup of camomile tea, and Martha beckoned her into the sitting room, near the door. “Your birthday’s not over yet,” she said. They went down the hallway together and Hazel saw the glass table in the front room was mounded with a small pile of gifts. They sat down together on the couch. “Mine first,” said Martha, passing Hazel a limp, wrapped package. She hefted it in her hands; it was a blouse or a blanket or something like that. “It’s a hat,” said Hazel.

“So close.”

She unwrapped it. It was a handmade case for a throw pillow, a needlepoint that was a painstaking copy of a photograph from Martha’s childhood, of herself at the age of three on her mother’s shoulders. It amazed Hazel and she held it in her lap, staring at it. “My god, Martha. This is beautiful, just beautiful.” She leaned across the couch and held her tightly. “You made this?”

“You didn’t know I could needlepoint, did you?” Her face was bright with joy. “Well, I just learned. And it’s not easy. I pulled that apart three times before I got it done.”

“It must have taken you months.”

“I calculated it took about two hundred hours,” said Martha. “I figure if I wanted to sell that thing and make minimum wage I’d have to charge, like, twenty-three hundred for it.”

Hazel laughed, but she was already cancelling the things she wanted to say that she knew would be translated in Martha’s head into something dark. It was hard to think straight, with the J &B in her and the wine, and the withdrawal symptoms, which had begun to make her sweat, like she was running a fever. But she had to be careful. Any comments on how much free time her daughter had, the fact that the gift had been made, not bought, anything around the idea that maybe this newfound talent was a “calling,” reference to the fact that Hazel would have to buy the pillow to put in the case herself, anything, to be sure, that wasn’t unalloyed gratitude. “Amazing,” she said. “You’re amazing.”

“Am I?”

“Yes. You surprise me.”

“In a good way?”

There it was, thought Hazel, she’d already gone through the bad door without realizing it. But she was drunk enough to shimmy back over the threshold. “If you hadn’t shown up here tonight, sweetie, this day would have had no saving graces. You’re a miracle.”

Martha hesitated, and then she allowed the compliment with a warm smile. “And you’re drunk.”

“Let’s open the rest of these impersonal, pointless gifts, shall we?”

“Absolutely.”

Martha lined them up, the smaller gifts in front, the larger ones behind. Hazel was touched to see her mother’s handwriting on one of the envelopes as well as Andrew’s. There were five more gifts in total. She reached for one of them, but then pulled her hand back, feeling a chill run up her spine. “Maybe we should wait for the others?”

“Sure,” said her daughter. They sat silently for a minute, Hazel staring at the wrapped boxes. “What was all the shouting about earlier?” said Martha quietly.

“Huh?” said Hazel.

“I heard some shouting.”

“Oh… it was just a rough day.”

“It’s hard being in this situation, huh? Living here. With Dad and Glynnis.”

“It’s temporary, honey.” She recognized the handwriting on all of the cards, she thought.

“Is that what you were upset about?”

“It’s okay,” said Hazel.

“Are you listening to me?”

She turned sharply to Martha. “Sorry, sweetie. Honestly, you don’t have to worry. Today had nothing to do with you.”

“Why do you think I’d be concerned only if it had something to do with me?”

“I don’t…” She got up from the couch, with difficulty, and wiped her hands on her slacks. “Are all these gifts from you and Nanna and the, um, Pedersens?”

“Mum, why don’t you want to talk to me?”

Hazel looked down at her daughter. It was getting hard to think straight. It felt like her brain was bumping around inside her head. Pay attention, she told herself. “I do. You know… recovering from surgery has been hard. Going back to work has been hard. And it was a rough sixty-second birthday. But it’s better now.”

“Nanna is worried about you.”

“I know, but I promise you,” Hazel said, looking Martha in the eye, “that everything is okay and that everything is going to be okay.”

“Good,” said Martha.

Emily emerged from the kitchen and started down the hall. “You ready for us?”

“Actually… Mum, if you wouldn’t mind, could you pass me the phone?”

Emily gave her a look and then retreated to the kitchen and came back with the portable. “You want to invite someone else over?”

“Sort of,” she said, and she dialled the number of the station house. Wilton answered. “Spencer? Who’s on shift tonight?” She listened. “Will you ask MacDonald to put down what he’s doing and come over here, please?”

“What?” said Emily.

Hazel cupped the phone. “I’ll explain in a second.” She put the phone back to her ear. “Yeah, as soon as he can.”

She passed the phone back to her mother. Andrew and Glynnis were standing in the hallway behind her now. Andrew was drying a wineglass. “What’s going on?”

“We had a bit of a scare at the detachment on Tuesday. A gift that we weren’t expecting.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t think you want to know,” she said.

Martha had stepped away from the sitting room and was standing in the hallway behind her mother. She quietly took Hazel’s hand. “There’s nothing to worry about,” Hazel said. “Sean MacDonald is a trained scene-of- crime officer and he’ll know what to do.”

“Scene of crime?” Emily said, rather incredulously.

“It’s nothing to worry about.”

“Is he going to blow up your presents or something?” Martha asked.

Hazel squeezed her hand. “No. But he’ll tell us if I can open them.”

Glynnis made some more camomile tea while they waited, and they sat in the kitchen together, stiffly. “Most of that stuff in there is from us,” Andrew said. “And the rest is from people you know. The Chandlers came by with something. Your deputy dropped a couple of things off.”

“You saw him? Wingate?”

“I did,” said Glynnis.

“And he said the gifts were from him?”

“He said they were from your staff. Nothing was ticking, as far as I can tell,” she said.

“Well, I still think we should wait for MacDonald.”

“Never a dull moment,” said Andrew.

The sergeant arrived ten minutes later, and she took him aside and explained her concerns. He nodded seriously. He held his kit bag up. “I got a chemical swiper thing in here,” he said. “And some litmus strips.”

“You’re going to test whether my gifts are too acidic, Sean?”

“Maybe.”

“Just get to it. Don’t blow up the house.”

He vanished into the sitting room, and she stood apart from the others, waiting. She couldn’t untense her hands. After a few minutes, she took a couple more steps backward down the hall. Glynnis poked her head out of the kitchen. “You want us to wait outside?”

“Or in Fort Leonard, maybe?” called Andrew.