Gail Bowen - The Endless Knot

“How are you doing?”

“I wish you were here.”

“I will be,” he said. “A few more hoops to jump through on this end.”

“So what’s happening?”

“Ethan told me his story. I have to get in touch with his father. The YCJA – sorry, the Youth Criminal Justice Act – says parents have to be notified, involved, and in some cases ordered to attend youth court proceedings. But Ethan’s mother is dead …”

“Because Ethan killed her,” I said.

“Can’t talk about that,” Zack said, “but I do need to get in touch with Ethan’s father and Ethan won’t tell me his name or where he lives.”

I gave Zack the number Douglas Thorpe had given me. “I should warn you,” I said. “This man is a total prick.”

“I’ve always wanted to meet a total prick,” Zack said. “I guess today’s my lucky day. So what do you think? Is Douglas Thorpe going to tell me to take a hike, so his trusted family lawyer who hasn’t been in a criminal courtroom in thirty years can take over?”

“He won’t be pleased that you’re involved,” I said. “You’re high profile, and Mr. Thorpe wants this to go away.”

“Even if his son gets buried in the system until all of us are but a memory?”

“I think that would be his preference.”

“Hey, guess what?” Zack said. “Mr. Thorpe’s preference doesn’t count. According to the YCJA, if Ethan’s father’s choices aren’t in Ethan’s best interests, Ethan has the right to be represented by a counsel independent of dear old Dad.”

“You sure you want to take this on?” I said.

“You bet,” Zack said. “That kid has not had what I would call a lucky life. Right now, there’s a psychologist testing him to see just how damaged he is.”

“Anyone who talked to Ethan for five minutes would know he has serious problems.”

“The system runs on experts, Jo. The opinion an expert forms now will help down the road when it comes to sentencing.”

“What’s going to happen to him?”

“The charge will be murder. Because of Ethan’s age, if it’s first degree, the maximum sentence is ten years; if it’s second degree, seven years max.”

“So Ethan could be back walking among us when he’s twenty.”

“Do I detect a hardening of your gentle heart?”

“I’ll get over it,” I said. “Whatever happened to easy answers?”

Zack laughed softly. “Welcome to my world.”

CHAPTER

15

Taylor was still sleeping when I went back to her room. I pulled her desk chair close to the bed and drank her in. She was beginning to look like herself again. Her cheeks were rosy with sleep, and her breathing was deep. When she awoke, she cat-stretched and furrowed her forehead. “What time is it?”

“A little after noon. You slept through the cannons.”

For a moment she seemed confused. “So it really is my birthday,” she said.

“Yes.”

“And all that stuff with Ethan really happened.”

“Yes.” I moved closer, “Taylor, I think it will help if you tell me about it.”

Taylor’s usual speaking voice was melodic, but that morning the music was gone. As she described the time she’d spent with Ethan, her tone was lifeless. “Somebody threw something – pebbles, I guess – against my window. I thought it was Gracie and Isobel coming to surprise me, so I ran downstairs. When I opened the kitchen door, Ethan was there. Everything happened so fast. Ethan pushed past me, slammed the door, and grabbed me. He had that knife. He said a bunch of stuff about Soul-fire and Chloe. I was really scared – not just because of the knife, but because of the way he looked. He told me to get my jacket because we were going away together. I said I didn’t want to go. Then he pointed the knife at my heart.” Taylor touched the left side of her chest. “This is where my heart is, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” I said. “That’s where it is.”

Taylor moved her hand reflexively over the vulnerable area. “He made me go to this place under the footbridge where he used to hang out after school.” She raised her eyes to me. “He kept his knife pointed at me in case I yelled if anyone went by on the bike path. Sitting still like that I got really cold, and I said I wanted to go home. Ethan said we didn’t have homes any more – we just had each other. I knew I had to get away, so I told him I’d made a painting of Soul-fire and it was in my studio.”

“Was there really a painting?”

She nodded. “I was going to send it to him at his new school. I wanted him to know everybody didn’t hate him. We were on our way to see the painting when … when you came.” Taylor closed her eyes, moaned, and turned away from me. I sat on her bed and stroked her back.

“It’s all right,” I said. “Everything’s all right.”

“Where is he?” she asked.

“Zack took him to police headquarters.”

“And he won’t be able to get out.”

“Not for a long time.”

“Nothing will ever be the same,” she said.

She was silent again, and I could feel her drifting from me. I had not given birth to Taylor, but from the day she came to me, the connection between us could not have been closer. She was a girl whose life was filled with passions: her family, her friends, her animals, making and experiencing art, chatting, eating with gusto everything from paella to licorice whips. No matter what her mood, I had always known how to reach her, but that day I was at a loss, and so I waited.

Finally, responding to one of those inexplicable internal shifts that push us back from the abyss and into life again, Taylor sat up. “Can we go down to the creek? There might be some birds.”

“Good idea,” I said. Her decision didn’t surprise me. Taylor was four when she became part of our family, but she had already known a lifetime of tragedy. Within a period of six months, every adult in Taylor’s life had died. I adopted her because she was the daughter of the woman who had been my closest childhood friend and because there was no one else to care for her. A frightened child, she was saved by three things: her art, our family, and the creek that flowed behind our house.

For a body of water in a residential area close to the heart of the city, it was large – twenty-five metres across. In spring, the creek was swollen and tumultuous with runoff from snowy fields on the outskirts of town; in summer and fall it was tranquil, a mirror reflecting the prairie’s living skies; in winter it was ice, thick enough to support skaters and tobogganers. Always, it was a place of rustling indigenous grasses and intense bird and animal life.

The first spring Taylor was with us, I bought her a sketchbook and she and I had started a bird list. At the beginning, she had drawn pictures of the birds she spotted, and I had written their names. In later years, Taylor had recorded her finds herself, but she continued to draw detailed miniatures of the birds she identified: the rare ones that swooped down for a moment in the course of their great migration, and the usual suspects that were part of our everyday lives: western grebes, cormorants, mallards, mourning doves, thrashers, warblers, blackbirds, and the faithful and ubiquitous sparrows. She began her bird record anew every year – seven books so far. The eighth, pocket-sized and bright orange, was waiting on her plate with the rest of her forgotten birthday gifts.

Taylor pulled underwear, socks, blue jeans, and a shirt out of her dresser drawers and went into the bathroom. When she came back, she was dressed and she’d run a comb through her hair.

“Ready to go?” I said.

She hesitated. I could see the uncertainty in her eyes, but she knew she couldn’t stay in bed forever.

The world we walked out into was the shade of half-mourning that grieving Victorians used to affect after the blackness of the first grief was fading. Earlier, the sun had sent out a few tentative beams, but they’d been extinguished by the weight of a November sky. Underfoot, the wintry earth was leached of colour. A skim of ice covered the silent creek.