LEITH STOOD IN THE detachment’s foyer with Luna in his arms as the cameras snicked. The baby was the talk of the town, a bit of a celebrity, and the press wanted to capitalize on her adorable smile.
Both JD and Dion had refused to take part in the photo shoot, so Leith had stepped up to the plate. The last two days had been a flurry of activity, a bit like a lead-up to a parade. Luna had undergone a battery of examinations and been declared healthy, happy, and well nourished. In short, about as alive and well as a person could be.
How had it happened? As Faith James explained her actions, Leith had quickly gathered that Chelsea was right to worry about her godmother’s state of mind. Chelsea’s theory was that Faith’s dementia had accelerated when she was left with a baby. A dead baby she had to hide from the police. Once Chelsea left, Faith had started preparing for the funeral. She had filled a tub with warm water and gently washed the child’s lifeless body, but soon realized the baby was in some distress. The poor thing was cool and waxy, and her breathing was so shallow. Faith didn’t panic, though, she told Leith. She had seen more than a few youngsters through difficulties over the years. So she walked her, patted her, kept her warm. And when the baby revived, she had fed her.
Faith’s slipping mind had lost sight of the big picture and focused on the small. But why bury the doll? As the baby slept, she recalled there was a body to bury. She dug a grave close to the spot she had laid her dog to rest last year. She was a bit foggy on what she was supposed to bury, exactly, but believed it was something that made Chelsea cry. Accordingly, she had buried the rag doll that had sat on a tiny rocker in the corner of her bedroom for years. “I made it for Chelsea when she was small.”
Faith wasn’t completely loopy. When lucid she understood that there had been some kind of terrible mix-up. When not lucid, on the other hand, she was convinced Luna was a young Chelsea and would be going home with her at the end of the day.
Which she wouldn’t be.
Leith had spoken to the doctors who had examined Luna, and was told it wasn’t unthinkable that the panicky parents would fail to detect flutters of life in their comatose baby and believe she was dead.
Leith couldn’t guess what kind of sentences the parents would receive for the long lists of charges they were facing, but in the long run, once Zachary had done his time and taken enough anger management and parenting courses, he would likely receive sole custody of Viviani, and maybe even Luna. In the meantime, the children would be kept together in a foster home.
When the photo shoot was over, he said goodbye to Luna and went to visit Dion at his desk. After an extended weekend, the man was nose-first into his work, typing reports.
Leith dropped into the visitor’s chair and said, “What are you working on?”
“Wrap-up on Gemma Vale.”
Leith nodded. “You know, it’s occurred to me there are way too many heights here in B.C. for people to drop off and get hurt. You being a case in point.”
Dion’s grunt as he typed said this wasn’t a topic to be joked about.
“Think I’ll put in a transfer request back to the flatlands while I still have a chance,” Leith said. “It’s a lot harder to fall to your death in Saskatchewan.”
Dion looked up from his keyboard, startled. “Serious?”
Leith laughed. “Not serious. Yet.”
Dion went back to work, and Leith took the hint and left him alone. But as he walked down the hall he continued to reflect on their short conversation and that startled look he’d been given. Was that dismay? If Dion didn’t want him heading to Saskatchewan, that meant he needed him to stay on the North Shore. Why?
He put the question to Alison over the dinner table that night. She didn’t know about Leith’s low-key investigation into Dion’s past, but she did know of the workaday tension between them. He had told her about their inability to see eye to eye more than once.
In answer to his question, which was only rhetorical, she told him he had a bad habit of overthinking things.
He denied it.
She insisted. “You think things to death. Maybe he simply likes you, and doesn’t want to lose a friend.”
“He doesn’t like me,” Leith told her. “I’m about his most unfavourite person in the world. That’s why it’s weird that it matters to him if I’d move to Saskatchewan.”
“Okay then,” Alison said, but only to herself, and served the salad.