Gail Bowen - The Endless Knot

“ ‘Hate’ is a strong word,” I said.

Zack looked amused. “You just don’t want to think ill of your fellow granola-crunchers. But I’ve talked to the cops over the weekend, and they think that bomb came from somebody who wants to blow me up because I’m defending a Jesus-loving millionaire who believes he has the right to own an unregistered gun.”

“How can they tell?”

“Same way I can. I’ve had dozens of threats from folks who believe in an eye for an eye. The spelling is usually bad and the quotations always come from the Good Book.”

“And your bomb threat had a quote from The Merchant of Venice?”

Zack raised his eyebrows. “How did you know that?”

“Charlie told me.”

“What would we do without him?” Zack said mildly. He looked at his watch. “I’d better get a move on. My eager young associates are going to be here in fifteen minutes.”

“They’re going to be here by 7:30 on a holiday Monday?”

Zack gave me a blank look. “Is that a problem?”

“Not for me,” I said. “What’s in it for them?”

Zack shrugged. “More work,” he said. Then he balanced his empty bowl and spoon on his lap and wheeled off to the kitchen.

I carried in my dishes and went back to our room. If I was going to be neutral about Kathryn Morrissey, I had some research to do. I pulled out my laptop, Googled Kathryn, and steeled myself to read only the most positive articles about her illustrious career.

Zack’s guest room was, like the rest of the cottage, a large and uncluttered space with functional, expensive furniture, art objects that were arresting, original, and executed in rust, plum, and silver – colours that coordinated perfectly with the cool monochromatic greys of the walls. The bed was custom-built, extra large but raised from the floor by the smallest of platforms. The bedding in a palette of warm browns was sleekly inviting. The room was, in short, exactly what a single man would get if he gave a decorator a blank cheque and carte blanche.

The space was so perfectly ordered that it seemed guest-proof, but Taylor and Isobel had unpacked their neon backpacks, slung them over the doorknobs, and fulfilling the manifest destiny of pubescent girls, they had unfurled. On a low square table just inside the door, hair products that promised to tame Isobel’s wild curls fought for pride of place with the gels and sprays Taylor needed to keep her new ’do spiky. Creams, lotions, and splashes distilled from rare flowers of the rain forest crowded a shelf designed to hold a smoky glass sculpture whose sole function was to delight the eye. Scraps of lacy underwear in shades the catalogue described as yellow sunshine, green tea, and English rose pooled on the mochaccino bedspread, and stuffed animals, relics of a more innocent age, nestled among the rust and taupe pillows at the head of the bed.

In the span of a weekend, Taylor and Isobel had created a world that was as richly turbulent as their lives. The girls themselves were in the middle of the bed, side by side on their stomachs, hair tousled from sleep, faces rosy, feet kicking the air, reading.

“I can’t believe you’re awake already,” I said.

Taylor glanced up. “We wanted to finish this book.”

Isobel put her finger in the book to mark their place and turned the cover towards me. “We’ve been reading Too Much Hope,” she said.

Taylor scrambled into a cross-legged squat. “We’d already read the chapter about Glenda Parker,” she said, “but after we saw that interview with Kathryn Morrissey last night, we decided to read the rest.”

I cleared myself a place on the corner of the bed and sat down. “So, what do you think?” I asked.

Isobel put the book face down on the bed and frowned. Isobel’s mother, Delia, had argued several cases before the Supreme Court. Delia’s approach to the law was painstaking with every phrase scrupulously considered; every argument turned like a cube to reveal its facets. Her punctiliousness drove Zack nuts. That morning, as her mother would, Isobel considered my question gravely before she answered. “Well except for Charlie Dowhanuik’s father, we only have the kids’ stories about what happened, but so far it seems as if the parents didn’t care about their kids at all.”

“Olivia Quinn tried to tell her mother that her stepfather was making her have sex with him, but her mother wouldn’t listen,” Taylor added. “When Olivia started skipping school and doing drugs and sleeping with all those boys, her mother said she was acting out because she was jealous.”

“And Olivia’s school said she was incorrigible,” Isobel said, pushing herself up to a sitting position. “She was only fourteen years old. Not much older than Taylor and me, but everybody blamed her.”

“All the kids in that book say their parents blamed them for everything that went wrong,” Taylor said.

I turned to Taylor. “Did you read the chapter about your Uncle Howard and Charlie? Howard blames himself.”

“That’s who he should blame,” Taylor said. “Every time he needed to get elected, he made Charlie go out and meet people, but when Charlie needed him, he was never around.”

Isobel ran her fingers through her explosion of black curls. “Glenda Parker’s mother was worse. She was around, but when Glenda tried to tell her mother what was going on in her body, she told Glenda that unless she prayed to be delivered, she was going to Hell.”

“The worst one of all is Kathryn Morrissey,” Taylor said. “Isobel’s mother says she got people to talk about their problems by promising they’d help other people. Then she just used what they told her to sell books.” Taylor’s pretty mouth hardened into a condemning line. “Soul-fire says the worst sin of all is betrayal.”

Isobel’s face relaxed into mischief. “Oh, Soul-fire. I love Soul-fire. He is so wise and so brave and sooooooo cute.”

Taylor reached back, grabbed a pillow, and the discussion ended, as many discussions did with Taylor and her friends, in an old-fashioned pillow fight.

For a while I dodged pillows and shared in the giggles. Then, cognizant of the recreation director’s axiom that it’s best to kill an activity before it dies on you, I called time. “I’ll be the bad guy,” I said. “Hit the showers. Zack has people coming out from the office, and when they get here you shouldn’t be wandering around in your skivvies.”

Isobel shook her head. “Work. Work. Work. Work. Work.” She said, and her intonation was exactly the same as her mother’s.

When I arrived at the cottage where my oldest daughter and her family were staying, the inside door was open. I peered through the screen and saw that Greg was in the living room reading the paper; the little girls were sitting on a blanket in front of him, sharing a bowl of dry Cheerios and watching TV.

I called through the screen, and Greg leapt out of his chair and came to the door. “Caught me,” he said. “Come in, make yourself comfortable, and let me convince you that TV is educational.”

“No need,” I said. “I just came by to score some Cheerios.” I walked over and squatted between my granddaughters. “Hey, ladies, are you sharing?”

Eyes still fixed on the screen, Madeleine picked up the bowl and passed it back to me. “Why, thanks,” I said. I took a handful of cereal, kissed her head and Lena’s, and went back to join my son-in-law.

“So where is everybody?” I asked.

“Mieka and Pete and Charlie decided to squeeze in one last canoe ride,” he said. “You just missed them.”

I looked towards the dock. My children and Charlie were dressed alike in blue jeans and dark hoodies. Outlined against the stark background of lake and hazy white sky, their resemblance to one another was striking. They had put one canoe in the water and were sliding in a second. “They’re a person short,” I said to Greg.