Gail Bowen - The Last Good Day

There are few sites that have the emotional resonance of a fresh grave in summer: the moist dank scent of earth and the too-sweet smell of cut flowers curling with heat and the onset of decay. The week after the tragedy at Lebret, I was present as two people were put in their graves and a third was removed from hers.

Lily and Alex were buried in Lake View cemetery across the water from Lawyers’ Bay. In an act of generosity that made it possible to believe in human decency, Blake Falconer arranged to have the woman he had always loved buried next to the only human being she had ever cared for. Both Lily’s funeral and Alex’s were private. Both were marked by the bruised bewilderment of mourners forced to deal with the fact that a human being’s final act had been to throw a grenade into the careful construction that housed everything that those who loved them believed them to be.

From the moment Eli Kequahtooway arrived back from Vancouver, where he was studying art at Emily Carr, Angus was at his side. There had been a time when the boys had been like brothers, and I was glad to see that the bond between them was still strong. Eli had chosen to stay at Standing Buffalo until his uncle’s funeral, and Angus had, without comment, simply moved in with him. They bunked together at Betty’s house, and the night before the funeral, Betty made tea and fried bannock for the boys and me and then withdrew to her pretty, frilly bedroom so Angus, Eli, and I could talk.

We sat at Betty’s kitchen table until the small hours. Eli was haunted by the fact that there had been no suicide note, no final telephone call, and that night, in an attempt to explain the unexplainable, the three of us tried to piece together what we knew. It wasn’t enough. As I watched the hope in Eli’s eyes turn to despair, I knew that it would be years before he would trust again. When finally we said goodnight, I drew Eli to me and whispered that his uncle had loved him deeply, but that events had overtaken him and he simply hadn’t had time to say goodbye. The words were cold comfort, but they were all I had.

Clare Mackey’s funeral was the same day as Alex Kequahtooway’s. Had there been no conflict, I might have gone. Then again, I might not have. I’d said my prayers the day the machines ripped up the hill where Clare was buried. The workers had been careful as they disassembled the gazebo. One of the men assured me that not a pane of glass was cracked. The wooden carving of Gloria Ryder had been placed to one side. It lay on the beach, its back to the gazebo as the police dug up Clare Mackey’s remains.

Sandra Mikalonis sent me a copy of the eulogy she had delivered at Clare’s funeral. In it she praised Clare’s integrity and remembered her passion for Bach and her joy when she scored the winning goal at the national law games in her graduating year. Sandra ended her eulogy by noting Clare’s steadfast dedication to her principles. Clare’s life, Sandra said, had been fired by her commitment to the motto of the University of Saskatchewan’s College of Law: Fiat justitia – let justice be done.

A week after the funerals, Rose and I visited the Lake View cemetery. We came with flowers, jam jars full of petunias from Betty’s garden. Lily’s were pink; Alex’s purple. “Better for a man,” Betty had declared.

As we always seemed to be, Rose and I were in step. We were silent as we placed our flowers on the graves and unhurried as we thought our private thoughts. It was a gentle day, cool, sunny, and breezy.

“So how are you doing?” Rose asked finally.

“Truthfully, I feel as if someone ripped away my top layer of skin.”

Rose nodded sagely. “I know that feeling. But we have to stop. The old people say if you mourn too long they get stuck, the ones who’ve passed away. They can’t get on with their journey.”

“I’ve heard that,” I said. “I always thought it made a lot of sense.”

“And you and I have to get on with it, too. We’re not young women.”

“No,” I said. “We’re not.”

“And we’ve got responsibilities,” Rose said. “I’ve got Gracie and her dad.”

“And I’ve got my kids and my job. Did I tell you my daughter and her family are spending the month of August here?”

“Is that the daughter I met at Alex’s funeral?”

“Yes,” I said. “My daughter Mieka.”

“How old are the kids?”

“Maddy’s three and Lena’s seven months.”

“That’s good,” Rose said. “We could use some babies around here.”

I stopped to pick a weed from a grave. Rose took the Safeway bag from her pocket and held it out to me. I dropped the weed in and she nodded approvingly.

“That Zack Shreve’s an interesting man,” she said.

“He is,” I agreed.

“Tough.”

“So they say.”

Rose raised an eyebrow. “They also say that sometimes the toughest nuts have the sweetest meat. I wonder if that’s true.”

“I don’t know,” I said.

Rose shoved the Safeway bag back in her pocket. “Well,” she said, “isn’t it lucky that you’ve got the rest of the summer to find out?”