THE NEXT MORNING, MAUREEN TOOK A BUGDEN’S CAB to the airport. She wasn’t feeling sad or even worried anymore. In fact, she couldn’t seem to stop herself from feeling happy—which in and of itself was terrifying. Maureen walked through Torbay Airport clutching her boarding pass. The ticket Fox had given her was in Leanne Fardy’s name—the one whose hair Maureen had gummed up at the Turtles concert. The youngest Vague Sister, apparently, had been planning to go to Montreal but had ended up on the locked ward at the mental. LSD had taken Leanne from vague to vacant. Leanne’s cloud had turned out to be Maureen’s silver lining. A lot of bad things had had to happen to a lot of people in order to get Maureen to the airport and on her way to Montreal to get her baby. Bo’s death had only been the first in a cascading cluster of fucks. But Maureen wasn’t going to start down that road of guilt and remorse, that long, long road that started with her getting knocked up in the first place and ended with her using poor old Leanne’s ticket to finally find her heart’s desire. No, Maureen didn’t have time for all that, because today was a new day and she was headed out and headed back to where it all began.
Maureen hadn’t asked Cramm how the boys had been able to get the documents—she’d been afraid to know. She tried just to be grateful that they’d done it, that they’d found her baby and a new line of defence—whatever it could be. But at least it didn’t involve her humiliating herself on the stand. Sailing through the yellow dinginess of the Torbay Airport, past the big luggage carousel, Maureen was brought up short by the sight of McCarthy and Kent, who looked to be headed right for her. Maureen’s eyes darted around desperately, looking for somewhere to duck into or something to squat down behind, but there was nothing in the big, open departure lounge. For one mad moment, she did think she could coopy down behind one of the vinyl seats, but she stopped before she made a total fool of herself. She was just straightening her knees when Kent said, “What are you doing here, Miss Brennan?”
“What are you doin’ here? Why don’t you leave me alone?”
“We’re here on an entirely separate matter, Miss Brennan,” Kent replied.
McCarthy chimed in with, “Now that we answered your question, why don’t you answer ours.”
“I’m going away.”
“Where away?”
“Away away,” said Maureen childishly, and then figured there was no harm in telling the truth now she was almost out the door anyway. “I’m going to Montreal.”
“Montreal,” McCarthy said. “Didn’t you get in enough trouble last time you were up in Montreal, enough trouble to last you a lifetime?”
They knew she’d gotten knocked up. Maureen felt the blood rush to her face, but she calmed herself by thinking, Of course, they’ve been investigating me. By now, they pretty well knew everything there was to know about her, but thanks be to God, there was a lot of it that they couldn’t prove.
“I’m going to Montreal to find my baby.”
“You know, don’t ya, that they’re gonna let Jack Dunne get away with murder? Just charge him with manslaughter. And the way it’s looking, he probably won’t even do federal time. They’re saying he was out of his mind provoked because of what your Mr. Browne did to Jack’s brother, Deucey. Jack always looked after his little brother, but that time he went too far and he should be made to pay for it.
Maureen was looking at McCarthy and keeping her eyes as dead as possible because her mind was flying around like a rat on a wheel. Flying back to that time in the auditorium when Carleen had “the incident.” She could almost hear Sydney Carton say, It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done . . . And Maureen remembered the weird thing Fox said the night they kidnapped her: he said to Jack, “You’re not going to throw everything away again just . . .” And how Jack told Fox to shut up and how, inexplicably, Fox had done just that. Jack had given up his dreams of playing in the NHL because the scouts didn’t want Deucey. She remembered what Cramm had said about Deucey almost dying for Jack, before they were born, and she remembered Deucey’s eyes that day on the street when he said Bo’s name. And suddenly, Maureen knew the truth. All the clues pointed the one way, but Maureen had been too blind to see it. Now she knew, as sure as she was standing there, that it was Deucey who’d committed manslaughter. Deucey was the one who hated Bo so much, who’d been humiliated by what Bo had done to him, and in a rage, he had tied Bo up, put him in the back of the car and left him there. Jack was protecting Deucey. Jack was willing to give up his freedom for the brother who had almost lost his life saving Jack’s.
How had she been so wrong? She had been so sure that Jack was nothing but a low-life skeet capable of the worst crimes. But despite how he looked, Jack had a noble nature. Shure he was just like Sydney Carton in A Tale of Two Cities.
“What?” said McCarthy.
Maureen snapped out of it. “Did I say something?”
“Yea, something about Sydney or something.”
“Canadian Pacific Airlines Flight 647 departing for Montreal from Gate A, all passengers should now be on board Canadian Pacific Airlines flight 647 at Gate A . . .”
“Oh, that’s me. I gotta go,” Maureen said.
“So that’s it, you’re just gonna go, duck your responsibilities? If you do manage to find that youngster and bring it back, is that what you’re gonna teach it? To let the crowd with all the money and the fancy lawyers get away with doing whatever they like to whoever they like whenever they like to do it, just so long as you get what you want, is that it?”
“I really, really, really got to go now,” Maureen said, just as missus on the PA came on again. Kent looked at Maureen like she had disappointed him. Maureen wanted to explain that there was nothing she could do, when suddenly, there was George standing between Maureen and the two cops.
“Are you suggesting Miss Brennan has done something unlawful or there is some pressing criminal reason she should not leave this province?”
“Final call for Canadian Pacific Airlines Flight 647 to Montreal. All passengers should now be on board through Gate A.”
“Well, then let it be on your head, Maureen Brennan, that this is the kind of place St. John’s is now, the kind of place where murdering scumbags are getting off, and the kind of place where the people who could do something to stop it are doing nothing.” McCarthy had to yell the last bit after Maureen and George started running toward Gate A.
“What are you doing, George?” Maureen was suspicious but also a little bit happy to see George there.
“Well, I’m going to Montreal.”
“With me?”
“Well, more near you, I guess, because you didn’t invite me for some reason.”
“No, I didn’t,” Maureen said.
“Yea. I know.”
They boarded the plane, and George, conveniently, had the seat next to Maureen.
“I guess it’s pretty foolish of me, but I’m betting that if you don’t ever allow yourself to get beaten down like that again, if you don’t let anyone treat you like that ever again, if you take care of yourself, I am feeling pretty confident that you won’t be putting poison in anyone else’s orange juice ever again—at least that’s what I’m counting on. I’ve got to tell you, though, I won’t be drinking that much orange juice in Montreal—if I drink any at all.”
Maureen punched him in the arm.
“I came along, Maureen, ’cause I got . . . feelings for you.”
Maureen rolled her eyes but smiled secretly.
“I came along to help you.”
“I don’t need any help, George. I am doing good all by myself.”
“Yea, so good. Oh, I can see that.”
“When did you get so sarcastic?” Maureen said, not at all displeased with this new, snappier George.
“Who are you going to find to lie on top of you when you get anxious, to ground you out, if I don’t do it? Who’s going to constantly remind you that you have the right to remain silent even though you are totally incapable of exercising that right? Who’s going to tell you the plot of all those movies . . .”
George had a whole list of things he was going to do for Maureen, but Maureen stopped listening. Her mind, which had been mercifully silent for so long, was back with a vengeance and was busy trying to undermine Maureen’s entire plan. What are you going to do when you get to Montreal? Even after you find the baby, he’s already almost two and a half years old now. What can you do? You got no legal rights to him. What are you going to be, his babysitter? Be the maid? Move in next door? Live down the street?
Maureen’s mind was doing its best to confuse and confound and undermine her. For its pièce de résistance, it threw up a full visual of the Sarge saying, “Oh, give your head a shake, you stupid little moron. Open up your eyes and take a fuckin’ look around. If having youngsters was the key to happiness, then wouldn’t I be cagged off on cloud nine?”
To stop her mind from going cracked altogether, Maureen said, “I don’t know what I’m going to do when I get there.”
George said, “Well, we’ll hidey-ho it on the public big car, take a powder to the—”
Maureen interrupted and said more to herself than to George, “I’ll go visit Carleen. I’ll try to see her as much as I can . . . But that’s then and this is right now. And there’s nothing I can do about what’s coming. Like they say in AA, I can only live one day at a time. So the big question is, what am I going to do about right now?” For a moment, Maureen was stumped, but then, just like that, the answer came to her. “I should put on my seat belt, I guess. Buckle up. It could be a bumpy ride.”
As the plane took off, George pretended he was the captain. “Captain George, making all the preparations to get this big bird off the ground.” He did a couple of announcements from the cockpit, and by the time he’d finished, they were laughing and already in the air, and Maureen hadn’t felt nervous at all.
Maureen looked out the window. They’d said on the radio that morning that fog was general all over the island portion of Newfoundland, and there it was, still rolling in, obscuring Bell Island, blanketing every part of the heath barrens, shrouding the treeless hills of the Avalon, concealing the vast emptiness of the interior. As she saw how the fog covered the island, Maureen felt downhearted, realizing how long she’d been living in a fog, and her usual feelings of dread and unease rose up in her as she thought of what was to come. How could she go forward? How would she know what to do with George? With her little baby?
Then the fog disappeared and they were flying above the clouds, racing across the clear blue sky, headed west, following the sun.