Gail Bowen - The Endless Knot

Arden checked her watch. “So, the boardroom in two hours, right?”

“Right,” Zack said, but he wasn’t looking at Arden when he spoke.

I turned to Pete. “Could you drive the girls home in my car, and let Charlie take your truck?”

“Sure,” he said. He grinned at me. “You’re blushing, Mum.”

“So are you,” I said. “Now give me a hug and get out of here.”

After everyone left Zack turned to me. “It’s a forty-five-minute drive back to the city and that gives us an hour and fifteen minutes – ample time for a heavy-duty love sesh.”

“What are you talking about?”

We moved into the bedroom. “Something a client of mine told me about,” Zack said, unbuttoning his shirt. “My client’s theory was that a heavy-duty love sesh cleared the toxins from the body and made a favourable impression on the jury.”

“That’s insane,” I said.

“Maybe, but I leave no stone unturned.” He shifted his body from the chair to the bed and patted the place beside him. “Come on. We’re wasting Sam Parker’s money.”

Sam got his money’s worth that afternoon. When we left Lawyers’ Bay, Zack and I were both relaxed and content. We drove home listening to a Beach Boys CD. Zack kept hitting number twelve – “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” – a plangent anthem to the joys of being married because it meant spending the night together and having kisses that were never-ending. When we pulled up in front of my house, Zack leaned over and kissed me. “So did the Beach Boys convince you?”

“That we should be married?” I said.

“Yeah,” he said. “So we could be happy.”

“We’re already happy,” I said.

“Agreed,” he said. “But if you’d been listening harder, you would have learned that if we were married, we wouldn’t have to go to school.”

I could hear Taylor’s music pounding from halfway up my front walk. No need to fumble for my keys; my daughter was in residence. Before I opened the door, I checked the mailbox. For once I was rewarded with more than flyers and the community newspaper. There was a padded envelope inside – obviously hand-delivered. It was addressed to Taylor. I tucked it under my arm, opened the door, and followed the beat of the drums.

Taylor was curled up on the couch with her cats, doing homework. I turned down the decibels and glanced at the notebook in front of her. “Math,” I said. “Well, better late than never, I guess.”

She gave me a corner-of-the-mouth grin. “So have you done all your homework for the trial tomorrow?”

“Not a scrap,” I said. “What do you say we order a pizza and get caught up together.”

“Sounds like a plan,” she said. She scrunched her face. “What’s in the envelope?”

I handed it to her. “Something for you,” I said.

She glanced at the address but didn’t open it.

Clearly, she wanted some privacy. “I’ll go check our messages,” I said. “Let me know when you’re hungry.”

There were ten new messages – a surprisingly high number considering that I’d had my cell with me all weekend and that Taylor’s friends knew how to reach her at the cottage. The mystery was soon solved. There was a curt message from Jill, saying she’d hoped I’d watched the Kathryn Morrissey interview and she’d call me after I’d done my report the next day. The rest of the messages were from Howard Dowhanuik, who had apparently forgotten the adage “Never drink and dial.” He had started phoning me Sunday night just as Kathryn’s interview aired. From his slightly off-centre articulation at the outset, it was obvious he’d fortified himself against the ordeal of watching Kathryn turn on the charm coast to coast. Judging from his speedy descent from toasty to drunk, Howard’s bottle of Canadian Club had never been far from his side. By the time he made his last phone call Sunday night, he had moved from belligerence to lachrymose affection. I was, he assured me tearfully, his last goddamn friend in the world. Given the fact that he had spent the evening berating me for failing to protect him from himself, the fact that he was friendless didn’t come as news.

Howard’s final phone call had come at 7:05 Monday morning. He didn’t waste time apologizing for his behaviour the night before. It was clear that with the drunk’s breathtaking efficiency, he had simply wiped away the memory of his previous calls and moved along. He was now strategizing. His new plan was to track Kathryn Morrissey. From now on, he assured me, she wouldn’t take a goddamn step without him knowing what she was doing and who she was seeing. I would be getting regular reports. I could count on that.

As I erased his final message, I was optimistic. In his previous life, Howard had been a lawyer. It was plausible that he had retained some knowledge of the laws governing stalking. Whatever the case, if he was hanging around the bushes eyeballing Kathryn Morrissey, he would be away from the rye bottle. Besides, the fresh air would do him good.

CHAPTER

6

The first day of the trial our city was hit by a freak snowstorm. As I stood at my bedroom window watching the wind whip the branches of the evergreens in our yard and the snow pelt the window, I felt my nerves twang. Anything could happen. From his place beside me, Willie stared at the blizzard, unperturbed.

I scratched his head. “ ‘Winter is iccumen in,’ ” I said. “ ‘Lhude sing Goddamm.’ ” Literary allusions were lost on Willie; nonetheless, he cocked his head thoughtfully and followed as I went to the basement to unearth the storage bin that held our boots and the larger one in which we stowed winter jackets, mitts, and toques. I found our parkas, Taylor’s new boots, and my old Sorels, went back upstairs, and started layering up. Finally, equipped to battle the elements, I opened the front door and stepped into a suddenly wintry world. The streetlights were still on, and snow was swirling through the halos of light they cast. It was a familiar sight, but one I wasn’t ready for.

Nor, as it turned out, was I ready for the sidewalks. Before we reached the Albert Street Bridge, I’d slipped twice. I gave Willie’s leash a tug. “We’re cutting our run short, bud.” We covered half our route, doubled back, and came home to a silent house. I filled Willie’s dog dish, poured myself a cup of coffee, and went back up to my bedroom to check my e-mail. There was a note from Charlie, thanking me for my hospitality and wishing Zack luck. I scrolled down to the quotation Charlie had chosen for his e-mail signature: Life is Painless for the Brainless .

As he’d promised, Charlie had attached an MP3 file of excerpts from his interviews with the Too Much Hope kids. I clicked it on and went over to the chair by the window to watch the snow and listen.

What I heard shouldn’t have shocked me. I had read Kathryn Morrissey’s book. I knew the histories of her subjects: the ones who had been discarded like toys their parents had acquired on eBay and had tired of; the ones who had been caught in the crossfire of toxic marriages; the ones who had been freighted with their parents’ baggage or whose lives had been appropriated by their parents to fulfill their own needs. And I had read Kathryn’s meticulous accounts of her subjects’ confused, raging, blighted lives. What I wasn’t prepared for was the agony in their young voices. Clearly whatever their failings, Kathryn’s subjects weren’t brainless.

I was so absorbed in the voices on the tape that I didn’t hear Taylor come in.

She was still in her pyjamas, and she was exuberant. “It’s snowing,” she said. She ran to the window seat and knelt among the cushions so she could peer out the window. “Sweet, eh?” she said.

“Sweet,” I agreed.