as soon as we stepped into the living room. It had reason to sing. Its home was a floor-to-ceiling affair of bamboo, glass, and pastel silk screens; the aviary was lovely enough to be a piece of Japanese art. Taylor was enchanted.
I turned to Ed. “When I’m old and addled will Barry build me a space like that? It’s magnificent.”
“He’d jump at the chance,” Ed said. “Barry thrives on challenge. That’s why he’s been able to stay with me so many years.”
“Nobody deserves a hero medal for living with you, Ed.”
He blushed. “Rare praise, but deeply appreciated. Now, may I get you ladies a drink?”
“Would it be all right if I looked at my mother’s painting?” Taylor asked. “I can hardly remember her at all any more, but when I look at the paintings she made, I can. I like that, and I like your nightingale, too. You have a lot of stuff that makes me happy.”
As I followed Ed upstairs to the kitchen, I thought that Taylor’s assessment had been right on the money. I was surrounded by stuff that made me happy, too: a mahogany cabinet that glowed with a collection of mercury glass; a turn-of-the-century daguerreotype of a mother and child; an oval mirror whose bright ceramic border was a celebration of queens, young, old, gorgeous, ugly, real, and mythical. It was, Ed had told me once, a reminder to every queen that, however stunning she believes herself to be, there’s always a Snow White waiting in the wings.
Ed took a pitcher filled with something pink and frothy from the refrigerator. He poured Taylor’s Shirley Temple into a fluted glass, stabbed a maraschino cherry with the toothpick handle of a paper umbrella, and positioned the umbrella carefully against the glass’s edge. He turned to me. “Now what’s your pleasure?”
I pointed to the frosty pitcher of Shirley Temples. “I wouldn’t mind one of those.”
Ed frowned in disbelief. “With or without umbrella?”
“With,” I said. “It’s been a lousy day.”
Ed and I took Taylor her drink, then carried our own onto the upstairs deck with its spectacular view of the bird sanctuary and the northwest edge of the university campus. It was almost twilight. Next door, Ed’s neighbour was making a last lazy pass across the darkening lawn with his mower, and his kids were playing hide-and-seek in the shadows. In the distance, the haze hanging over Wascana Lake was alive with the sounds of birds deep in the mystery of their epic migration north. Everything was as it had always been; yet everything had changed.
Ed read my thoughts. “Out here it’s almost possible to forget, isn’t it?” he said softly.
“Have you heard anything more?” I asked.
“Just rumours. I stayed at the office till around four. I thought there might be something I could do. A few students came by to talk. There are some pretty wild stories going the rounds, but apparently the two with the most currency are that Ariel was killed either by an embittered ex-student or by the worker who found her.”
“I don’t buy the ex-student angle,” I said. “Ariel hadn’t been teaching that long, and she was pretty intuitive. She would have picked up on a problem before it festered into a grudge. I don’t buy the worker theory either. How could someone get up in the morning, shower, shave, dress, and come to work to kill a perfect stranger?”
“It happens,” Ed said.
“Not at this university,” I said. “Another thing. I’ve taught here for years, and I’ve been in that archive room exactly once. There’s nothing down there but a bunch of mouldy Who’s Whos and some bound volumes of old periodicals.” I bit my lip in frustration. “As Daffy Duck would say, ‘This makes no sense and neither do I.’ ”
Ed sipped his drink pensively. “Jo, you should probably know there’s a third rumour going the rounds. Apparently there’s talk that Charlie could be more than the grieving boyfriend.”
I put my glass down so hard, the little umbrella toppled out. “Damn it, why don’t people think before they start spewing garbage like that?”
Ed winced. “I shouldn’t have said anything,”
“You didn’t start the rumour,” I said. “And if the story’s out there, it’s better to know, so Charlie can deal with it. Damn. I was so sure Howard was overreacting, but I guess he was right. This afternoon, we drove out to CVOX because he figured Charlie needed a lawyer.”
Ed raised an eyebrow. “A lawyer, not a father…?”
“Charlie had some problems with his father,” I said.
“Haven’t we all,” Ed said tightly.
I turned to him. “All the years we’ve known each other, I’ve never heard you even mention your father.”
Ed’s usually genial face was a mask. “There was nothing to mention. He didn’t approve of the choices I made in my life. We quarrelled. He died. Case closed.”
“Cases between children and their parents are never closed,” I said.
Ed shrugged. “Let’s keep the focus on Charlie,” he said. “What went wrong between him and his father?”
“Timing,” I said. “Charlie was born the night Howard was elected premier. Our daughter Mieka was born the same week. It was wild. We hadn’t expected to win the election. Almost all our members were rookies, and they had to learn everything from scratch. The day he was sworn in as attorney general, my husband didn’t even know where his office was. Of course, it was a hundred times worse for Howard. He was in charge. Everybody was expected to work fifteen hours a day; then dedication was supposed to kick in. Luckily for us, Mieka was a happy, healthy baby, so she didn’t suffer from having an absentee father…”
Ed finished the sentence for me. “But Charlie suffered.”
“He did,” I said. “So did Marnie. When your child is hurting, you’re hurting, and a lot of the time Charlie’s birthmark made his life a misery. Marnie never coddled him, but she was always there, encouraging him, making him laugh, trying to help him understand why people reacted the way they did.”
“And where was his father in all of this?” Ed’s tone was wintry.
“Marnie and Howard had a very traditional marriage,” I said. “She stayed home with the kids, and he saved the province. A lot of us made the same trade-off.” I was surprised at the bitterness in my voice.
Ed’s look was unfathomable. “Another untold story?” he asked.
“If it is,” I said, “it’s one without villains. We all did the best we could. Sometimes it just didn’t work out.”
“And it didn’t work out for Charlie?”
“It didn’t work out for any of them,” I said. “Charlie always excelled at school. He graduated when he was sixteen. By that time, Marnie and Howard had grown so far apart that when Charlie moved out to go to university, Marnie left, too. She started Ph. D. work at the Centre for Medieval Studies in Toronto. Howard was devastated. He moved east to try to win her back. But the lady was not for wooing. She was a devout Catholic, so divorce was out of the question, but she had no interest in reconciliation. She was having the time of her life.”
“Where’s Marnie now?”
It was a question I would have given anything to duck. But there was no evading the truth. “In a nursing home,” I said. “Her bike was hit by a car when she was on her way to class. Her injuries were incapacitating. She needs total care.”
“That won’t change?”
“No,” I said. “That won’t change.”
“And Charlie blames his father,” Ed said quietly.
I nodded. “He felt that if Howard had been a better husband and father, Marnie wouldn’t have left.”
“And she wouldn’t have been in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“Something like that,” I said. “For the first year after the accident, Charlie wouldn’t even speak to Howard.”
“But they were working things out…”
“Because of Ariel. According to Howard, she was the one who convinced Charlie to give him another chance.”
“Who got another chance?” Taylor was standing in the doorway to the deck. One of her braids had come undone, she had spilled some of her drink on her T-shirt, but as always, she was unfazed.
“Your uncle Howard,” I said.
“Ms. Cousin says everyone deserves a second chance,” Taylor said. “That’s why she didn’t send me to the principal’s office the time I broke her laptop.”
