Jill raised an eyebrow. “Why wouldn’t they? Barry and Ed give the best parties in Regina. You, of course, have no interest in champagne splits, lobsters flown in from Nova Scotia, and Barry’s famous croquembouche.”
“We can stop at Tim Hortons on the way home from Dan’s,” I said. “You can buy us each a box of Timbits.”
After I’d showered and put on my most comforting nightie, I settled into bed with A Christmas Carol, hoping that the words I had read and loved every Christmas since I was ten years old would work their magic one more time. But even the thrilling resonance of “Old Marley was as dead as a doornail” couldn’t banish the memory of Bryn, prostrate beneath the altar. As I pulled up the comforter, I wondered if, like Ebenezer Scrooge, I was destined to carry my own low temperature always with me. My sleep was spectre-ridden, but my spooks weren’t guides to enlightenment – just embodiments of scary possibilities. I awoke the next morning heavy-limbed and heavy-spirited. It was a Christmas morning I would gladly have skipped, but Taylor was one of life’s celebrants. She burst into my room with a holiday shine. “Time to get up. I thought we could take our stockings into the hall, so we could listen to the new tree while we looked at our stuff.”
“Swell,” I said.
“I knew you’d love the idea,” she said. “Now come on!”
As we huddled in the hall in front of a tree glittering with images of the famous dead, listening to endless tinny repetitions of “The Way We Were,” I was not optimistic about my chances of making it through the day. But my spirits improved when we moved into the living room. It’s hard to be gloomy when people are ripping open presents, and we had a mound of presents to rip through. We had all collaborated on Angus’s gift, the electronic drum kit that Dan Kasperski had assured me was the very thing for a beginner. Because we’d planned to be at Mieka’s for the holiday I’d given him the gift early. By Christmas morning, Angus had already been through three sets of sticks and cracked a cymbal, but he had gag gifts to crow over, and he did loudly and lustily.
Taylor’s eclectic interests were reflected in her presents: cool clothes from Jill and Bryn; uncool clothes and an art print of Pegasus by Frank Stella from me; a Barbie with a homemade dress for every day of the week – all crocheted in the same retina-searing bubble-gum pink – from our friend Bebe Morrissey. A first edition of Noel Streatfield’s Ballet Shoes and a pair of aqua dance slippers from our old friend Hilda McCourt; a painting of the bears of Churchill from my son Peter, who was working in the north; and a gift pack of glitter nail polish from Angus.
When the pile beneath the tree had diminished, Jill went upstairs and returned with a large flat package. She handed it to me and said, “For you.”
“You already gave me that gorgeous sweater.”
“Anyone with a wallet full of plastic and impeccable taste could have chosen that. This is something I made myself.”
“Since when did you get crafty?”
Jill scowled in mock exasperation. “Just open your present.” I tore off the paper, prepared for a joke, but Jill’s gift touched my heart. It was a collage of photos of the two of us, starting with the days when I had been a young political wife and mother and Jill had been my husband’s press officer. In the twenty-five years of our friendship, we’d shared some amazing moments, and Jill had selected photos of both the public and private times with care. There were photos of the nights when we won elections and of the nights when we’d lost; of my kids knee-deep in the gumbo of a prairie barnyard during a campaign when the rain never stopped; of Jill and me at a glittering dinner with a prince; of all of us at a deep-fried turkey potluck in a town that no longer existed; of births and deaths; weddings, funerals, baptisms – in short of all the small ceremonies that make up a life. Across the bottom, spelled out in letters cut from shiny paper, were the words “The Best of Times.”
I was fighting back tears when I turned to Jill. “I love this,” I said.
“I’m glad,” she said. “I was going to call it ‘The Best of Times. The Worst of Times.’ ”
“But you ran out of shiny paper for the lettering,” I said.
She grinned. “Nope. I just realized that even the bad times were good because we were together.” Jill caught Bryn’s gaze. “That’s the way it’s going to be for us too, baby.”
“You’re embarrassing me,” Bryn said.
“Sorry.” Jill knelt and reached far under the tree. “A final present,” she said, “and it has your name on it.” Bryn took the package and opened it. Inside was a silver bracelet: wide, handsomely designed, and clearly pricey. Bryn balanced the bracelet on her fingertip for a few seconds, then dropped it back in its distinctive David Yurman box. “I don’t want it,” she said. “I’m not my mother. I have nothing to hide.”
Taylor frowned at her. “When you get something you don’t like, you’re just supposed to take it and say, ‘Thank you for thinking of me.’ ”
Bryn threw the bracelet into the pile of discarded wrapping. “Thank you for thinking of me.”
Jill swallowed hard, then retrieved the box and took Bryn’s hand. “You’re welcome,” she said. “Come on, let’s get some food into us.”
“Then we go tobogganing,” Taylor said. “We always do that on Christmas morning, then we come home and everybody’s supposed to have a long bath so we’re not bouncing off the walls at Mr. Mariani’s party.”
“Sounds like a plan to me,” Jill said.
It was the most glorious morning of the winter: a Grandma Moses landscape with a high blue sky, a round yellow sun, and snow so white it hurt my eyes to look at it. As we walked along the creek path, Taylor took the lead, planting her feet carefully to make footprints that were clean in the snow. As Bouviers do, Willie used his front paws to swim through the drifts along the way. Bryn started out with Jill but fell back to walk with Angus, who was dragging the big toboggan.
When they came to the first and most dangerous of the toboggan runs, she grabbed his hand. “Let’s go,” she said.
Jill stepped closer to check out the ice-slick slope. “This is your first time, Bryn, maybe you should start with something gentler.”
“Jill’s right,” Angus said. “That slope’s a killer.”
Bryn wrenched the sled from Angus, ran to the top of the hill, and threw herself on the toboggan. Within seconds, she had bellied down the hill and across the frozen creek where she rammed the bank and was thrown back on the ice. For an agonizing minute, she lay there, then she pushed herself to her feet, dragged the toboggan back across the creek, and climbed the hill. As she stood before us, flushed with triumph, she was lovelier than ever. The cold burnished her beauty, drenching her cheeks with colour, glancing off the sheen of her hair, but there was a wildness in her eyes that was hauntingly familiar. As she pulled the toboggan to the top of the run, I felt a chill that had nothing to do with the weather. The day before she had told my son that she wanted him to take her virginity. Clearly, Annie Lowell’s daughter had entered the high-stakes game of reckless hedonism that had killed her mother. Dan Kasperski had called Bryn a time bomb; it seemed that somehow the fuse had been lit.
Jill’s mind had obviously hit the same groove as mine. “Evan’s death has transformed her,” she said. “She was always so careful. Now it’s as if she doesn’t care what happens to her. I’d think it was grief except that she hated him.”
“Whether she hated him or not, her father was the dominant force in her life,” I said. “She’s lost her moorings.”
“How do I get her back?” Jill asked.
“You’ve already made a start,” I said. “Your handling of that business with the bracelet was exactly right – firm but low-key, and this afternoon we’re going to find out how to help Bryn deal with what happened in her life before you knew her.”
“If the past is prologue, how can we change the future?”
“Angus’s football coach always says, ‘Never give up. Never give in.’ ”
Jill grinned. “Thanks,” she said. “I’ll be sure to write that on our locker room wall.”
Dan and Kevin Hynd were waiting for us when we got to the house on Wallace Street. There was a welcoming fire in the stone fireplace and the smell of fresh coffee in the air. Dan’s living room was warm with homemade quilts and framed photos of people in happy times. It was a space that spoke of comfort and family, but as Kevin flicked on the video machine, it was clear that the footage Evan MacLeish had shot of his daughter’s life was a violation of both.
