22.

“DO YOU SWEAR TO TELL the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?”

I had opted to swear on a book I didn’t hold sacred. The court attendant holding it out was smiling. She seemed to know the procedure was unavoidable, the question ludicrous, and my answer necessarily the first lie. The court’s interest was only in the bare bones of the truth: the “facts.” I hoped that was as far as I would have to go. The pre-trial hearing had begun.

Above and to my right sat the judge. Facing me were the two Assistant Crown attorneys, Steve Quinn, and Mr. Blair, who would have the pleasure of cross-examining me later. The rest of the courtroom was filled with high-school students, here to learn the workings of the Ontario court system.

They were dispassionate observers, a role I had given up a year ago.

Before I sat down, I glanced beyond the Crown’s bench to a glassed-in box. It was the first time I had laid eyes on Tim Brennan in almost a year. It was important to meet his eyes. I couldn’t speak in this court unless I did. That was the only thing I had any certainty about—that I had to, that I could.

He looked straight back at me. No expression on his face.

I took my seat then, out of his line of vision.

The Assistant Crown, Deanne Fortier, rose from the bench. She was blonde and petite and had a sympathetic smile and the trace of a Québecois accent.

“Ms. McGinn, I understand you are a researcher here in Ottawa?”

It was the end of class for the high-school students. They filed out of the courtroom. They weren’t drained or shaky, or anxious for the Assistant Crown’s smile of reassurance. They were looking forward to their weekend. They weren’t worried about being cross-examined on Monday.

I glanced at Tim sitting in his glassed-in box, waiting to be led away. He raised his eyebrows and adopted a sympathetic expression. I didn’t return it.

I approached Deanne Fortier. I was keeping both Steve Quinn and the defence lawyer deliberate blurs in my peripheral vision. For different reasons. But it wasn’t making any difference. I could feel their focus on me. Also for different reasons.

Deanne was in a rush. She gave me a kind look over the load of thick binders in her arms. “Technically I’m not supposed to speak with you now that I’m finished the examination. But don’t worry, you did fine.” She lowered her voice. “Don’t let Blair intimidate you on Monday. Answer only what he asks you. Don’t volunteer anything.”

I couldn’t help looking over at the defence lawyer. He was speaking in low tones to his assistant. Every few minutes they sent glances my way. They were clearly planning their strategy, confident they could expose me.

Deanne started down the aisle. “Bonne fin de semaine,” she called back over her shoulder in a teasing sing-song voice.

I sent a quick glance in the direction of the other source of attention on me. And felt my face flush when his eyes met mine. Aside from the brief phone call, it was our first contact in over six months. He hadn’t been present at my interview with the Crown.

I was too self-conscious to speak to him in the courtroom. I headed down the aisle after Deanne Fortier, all too aware of him following me.

He caught up at the door to the anteroom and held it open for me. At the second door, he took the handle but stood with the door still closed. “You look like you could use a drink. And maybe something to eat. I’ve got an hour before I have to be somewhere else. I’ll take you across the street to the Lord Elgin.”

He opened the door for the defence lawyer and his assistant to go past us. He seemed not to care if he was heard. This wasn’t, I told myself, Steve Quinn, the man who was not supposed to be interested in Ellen McGinn. This was Sergeant Quinn, the police detective concerned about a witness who had just been on the stand for two hours. His concern was legitimate. And accurate. The witness could use a drink, and an opportunity to unload the tension of the day.

At four o’clock on a Friday afternoon in April, the lobby bar at the Lord Elgin Hotel was filled with suited business people and a few casually dressed tourists. Quinn and I settled into two comfortable wingback chairs kitty corner to each other at a round table. He let me order my own drink. A few moments later the waiter set down two single malts in elegant snifters.

Quinn raised his glass to me. “You can relax those tight muscles, McGinn. You did fine. You were a wealth of information.”

His reference to my muscles made me blush. I took a swallow of the warm liquid and tried not to watch his lips on the rim of his glass. He had let his hair grow in a quarter-inch or so and had the beginnings of a trim beard. He was blonder than I would have expected. He’d also shed a few pounds. Was looking more relaxed. The strain from last summer seemed to be gone. But the chemistry was still there. Possibly more intense.

The case was the only safe topic of conversation. I sent a wry look across the table. “I’m not done yet, you know. Blair was having a field day in there, scribbling away every time I said the word ‘dream’ and ‘vision.’ And don’t you think he’s going to take me to the cleaners on the statement I gave the Sûreté? It says nothing incriminating about Tim. He’s going to make it sound like I changed everything in hindsight. God, I wish you guys had taken my statement that first week.”

“Yeah, too bad we never did. But the last thing Lundy and Roach had time for was running around getting witness statements. They were busy concentrating on Brennan. But I told you before, don’t worry about it.”

“They probably avoided taking my statement on purpose. They thought it was going to be full of hocus pocus.”

“Here we go again. Are you still apologizing for being psychic?”

“I’m not—” I stopped the automatic denial. “I’m just acutely aware that other people might be skeptical.”

Quinn met my eyes. “That’s their problem.”

And yours. The thought zinged through my brain like a bullet. For the first time, there was no doubt.

I changed the subject before he could read my mind. “I’ve been wanting to know. At least can you tell me…. Can we have one of those conversations we’re not supposed to be having?”

Quinn looked around and seemed satisfied that there was no one who knew us, no one listening. “What do you want to know?”

“A few things. About Bill Torrence and the forged cheques for one thing. And about the woman who went searching with Tim.”

Quinn stared at me. “I didn’t tell you about that last summer?”

“No, you didn’t have much time. Remember?” I looked him in the eye, feeling suddenly bold.

“Or maybe you were just asking too many questions.”

“And not getting any answers.” The Scotch was loosening my tongue. I braced myself for the rebuke.

But he grinned. “Well, you’ll get your answers soon enough in the papers. Bryn’s going to be on the stand in a few days.”

“Bryn?” My voice was sharp. “Did she have an Irish accent? Was she a private detective?”

Quinn was nodding, a question in his eyes.

“She phoned me. Sometime last May. I meant to ask you about her then, but you—I forgot.” Because you disappeared. “I was too scared to talk to her.”

“You were too scared to talk to anyone,” said Quinn.

His mocking tone pissed me off. “So, what if I was?”

Quinn raised his arms in surrender. “Easy, girl. I was just teasing. I’m not putting you down.”

You are. It was another clear thought.

I put him back on track. “So it was Bryn who was with Tim, not an undercover officer?”

“Yes, as you say, she’s a private investigator. She heard about the case and called Brennan. Offered to help him search. But then Lundy and Roach got in touch with her and convinced her to work for them. She went searching with Brennan—the few times he actually went.” He shook his head, smiling. “What a woman. You should get Lundy to tell it. I’m not familiar with all the details of how they set it up, but it’s a pretty amazing story.”

“But she was with him when they found Lucy’s remains?” I felt sick and angry whenever I thought about the little of Lucy that had remained. It must have been even worse for Bryn, to actually see it.

“Yes, she was with him.”

“Did the forensic testing ever reveal anything more?”

“No, we still have nothing except the teeth to go on.”

“So she could have drowned.”

Quinn looked at me, uncomprehending.

“You said drowning was one of the things that could account for the pink teeth.” In a dry voice I added, “In one of my visions, she’d been put in the river. Remember?”

“Masham’s a long way from the river,” said Quinn.

I spread my hands. “You see why I get embarrassed when I talk about the so-called psychic stuff.”

“But there are parallels. You don’t have to be embarrassed. We think she was strangled in the bath or the shower—that’s water. And remember you talked about her being wrapped in a synthetic material? In the first interview Lundy and Roach did with Brennan, he kept mentioning the shower curtain. Said Lucy had told him to wash it. He said it had torn to shreds in the washer and he’d had to replace it. Lundy and Roach just let him talk. They never questioned him about it, but he mentioned it about three times. Sure enough, there’s a brand spanking new shower curtain in the bathtub when the house is searched. And one or two of the shower hooks were reversed. Which seems very unlike Lucy; from what I understand she was very meticulous. It’s likely the curtain tore when he attacked her. He may well have wrapped her up in it to carry her to the car.”

I shook my head. “Don’t you remember? I got later that it was a sleeping bag she was wrapped in.” And there was no way I was confusing bath water with a river.

I looked straight at him. “She could have been taken out of the river. If they realized she had resurfaced.” I hesitated. “I heard a motorboat out on the river a couple of times—in the pitch dark.”

Quinn was shaking his head. I didn’t blame him. His theory, the cops’ theory, was so logical. So reasonable. Unbelievably reasonable.

“I’m going to be laughed out of court when Blair brings up my visions. He’ll have a field day.”

“So what?” There was impatience in his voice. “I’ve told you before, we often use psychics.”

But you don’t believe them.

It was another zinging bullet of truth.

“Well,” I said to test him, “this psychic had it as an accident.”

Quinn stared at me. His expression said, don’t be naive. But his words were: “What if I told you that on the evening before he called you, the man who is so worried about his missing girlfriend rents a video called Wolf. A video about a werewolf.”

My stomach turned. “It sounds sick.”

“Not sick,” said Quinn. “Evil. Do you know what I see when I look in Brennan’s eyes?”

I shook my head. I couldn’t look in Quinn’s eyes.

“Nothing. This guy is the most evil character I’ve ever dealt with—and I’ve dealt with a lot of bad characters.”

“Speaking of potentially bad characters. Can you tell me about Bill Torrence?” I wanted to change the subject.

“What do you want to know?”

“Well, I remember you saying he was offering Tim a big loan to pay off his debt to Lucy. Or at least Tim said he was. Was it just a lie?”

Quinn nodded. “A big fat lie about a big fat mythical loan. We’ve talked to Torrence. He was in contact with Tim at Lucy’s about the cattle transport idea, but Tim turned him down. He never offered any loan at all, let alone one for thirty-five thousand dollars.”

He told me what he knew.

*

SOME NIGHTS TIM DIDN’T COME home. When he did come in, waking her up at dawn, he was drunk or stoned. She stopped asking where he’d been. Stopped reminding him he was violating his parole. He could deal with his parole officer on his own. She wasn’t going to try to make it better.

No one could make it better for her either. There was no one to call. No one besides Trish. Kevin had all but disappeared. There was no point in calling her father or Anna: what would she say? And Ellen was keeping their relationship brutally professional. Ellen seemed to have barely heard last week when she had asked her to keep an eye out for a cottage in the Gats. Where was Bill Torrence and his money?

She kept asking Tim. And came upstairs one morning to find him talking in animated tones on the phone. When he got off, he looked ecstatic. He swung her around so fast she got dizzy.

“What? What is it? Stop!”

Tim put her down. He was beaming. “Bill’s just leaving Toronto. He’s got a cheque for thirty-five thousand smackeroos. Made out to you, baby. He’ll be here in five hours.”

She stared at him. Her heart began to pound. In five hours her troubles would be over. She could hardly believe it.

She couldn’t concentrate on work. She kept looking at the clock. Counting down the hours.

In three hours she would be celebrating. They would be celebrating. With three hours to go, with Torrence actually on the road, she could buy a bottle of Champagne. That wouldn’t jinx it. It would be perfectly chilled by the time he arrived. They could all celebrate.

She arrived back from the liquor store with her brown-paper bag. She had splurged on the real thing: Pol Roger, thirty-five dollars. One one-thousandth of the amount they were going to receive.

Tim was sitting at the kitchen table. He looked up when she came in. His face said it all. “They got as far as Kingston. His wife took sick. Real bad. She was hemorrhaging. They had to go home. She’s got cancer.”

No. He was not coming. Nothing else registered. The room began to go black at the edges. She almost dropped the bottle.

“He’s going to come as soon as he can. But he’s gotta look after his wife first. He said maybe in another week.”

Another week.

She made herself breathe.

Okay. She could wait another week. For thirty-five thousand dollars, she could wait one more week.

She put the Champagne in the fridge.

*

QUINN TOOK A LONG SWALLOW of Scotch and set the snifter down. He looked at me. “After he didn’t come, Brennan changed his story to say that Torrence was going to wire the money instead. It was probably Lucy who planted the idea in his thick head—asking why he couldn’t simply wire the money. But the wire, of course, never came either.”

“What was she planning to do after the money arrived? My sense was she was trying to leave.” I didn’t mention my sense was from one of my first dreams.

“Brennan, of course, maintains they were going to live happily ever after, that there were no problems, that he had no reason to harm her. But we found evidence that he was, in fact, going to be moving out. Probably at Lucy’s insistence.”

“Evidence? What evidence?”

Quinn grinned. “One of the neighbours had the foresight to sneak over to Lucy’s house in the middle of the night and take a green garbage bag Tim had put out for collection the week after she went missing. He brought it to the police and we sifted through it. And voila, we found the torn-up copy of a lease, signed by Tim and witnessed by Lucy. It was dated the nineteenth, the Wednesday before she went missing.”

“That’s brilliant. Amazing Tim didn’t think to burn it.”

Quinn snorted. “That would take more brains than Stupid has in his head.”

“And what about the forged cheques? Where do they fit in?”

“The cheques.” He nodded. “First there were a couple of cheques he wrote on her account in January and February. She’d taken him off her account shortly before Christmas, so he obviously stole the cheques. They were for something like seven thousand and five thousand dollars. Enough to get her line of credit up over the twenty thousand mark.”

“But what were they for?”

Quinn shrugged. “He claims his truck crapped out on him, that he needed a new one right away to keep up with his snowplowing contracts. He’s also claiming Lucy knew about them. It’s all bullshit—they’ve determined her signature was forged. Then there were the Kyle Smythe cheques. The day before Lucy went missing, the Friday, her bank called to say her account was overdrawn, that the cheque she’d received from a Kyle Smythe for a thousand dollars had non-sufficient funds. Lucy told the manager she’d never received such a cheque—didn’t even know a Kyle Smythe. But the bank manager said her signature was on the back of the cheque.”

“Tim had forged it again? But I don’t understand. Who’s Kyle Smythe?”

“A friend of Brennan’s. He had Smythe write a bogus cheque, deposited it into Lucy’s account at one machine, and withdrew six hundred dollars from another one. We’ve questioned Smythe. He says he got fifty bucks for his trouble. Lucy must have realized Tim was behind it because she told the manager she’d take care of it.” He took another sip of Scotch and continued. “She probably confronted Brennan, and he probably held the carrot of the Torrence money out to her yet again. He’d been doing it for weeks. That last week, Lucy was calling the bank every day, asking if the wire transfer had been made yet.”

Oh hi, Ellen, I’m on the other line with my bank manager and it’s taken me ages to get through.

“She didn’t know before she died that there was a second cheque from Smythe,” Quinn continued. “Also with her forged signature on the back. Brennan had taken out more money against it. That one bounced the following week. So her line of credit ended up being around the twenty-two thousand mark.” He shook his head and muttered, “I hope they hang him.

“Now,” he said, changing the subject. “I can see you’re going to stew about Blair all weekend. Believe me, he’s not worth it. All you need to do is listen to his questions carefully. Be wary any time he says, ‘May I suggest that….’ Or he may not even start a question that way, but may try to get you to agree to something that goes along with a scenario he’s trying to paint. Don’t let him get under your skin.” He smiled. “You’ll be fine. You could have a support person in the court with you, you know.”

I shrugged. “I’d prefer not to.” I didn’t want anyone else hearing me being taken to pieces and shown to be a flake.

“Well, I’ll be there. Look at me whenever you need to.”

I wasn’t sure that would help, but I gave him a smile.

Quinn’s expression changed somehow from one of professional interest to personal. “You and what’s ’is name never got back together, I hope.”

“No, what’s ’is name and I did not get back together.” I was annoyed.

“Sorry. I’m not trying to be insolent. I just can never remember his name.” His smile was cajoling. “How have you been? You haven’t got anyone new in your life, have you?” His eyes willed me to say no.

“No, I’m enjoying being on my own.” I was not going to sound like I was waiting. I was suddenly not sure I should be. It was obvious now that he had been humouring me about my dreams and visions. I was back to my confused state: attraction, repulsion, mistrust, desire. What was it with this man?

“How’s the new place?”

“I love it.”

He was shaking his head. “I still can’t believe you moved just down the road from where you found the car. I suppose you’re communing with Lucy’s ghost or something.”

“Or something.” I tried to keep my tone light.

“How’s work going?”

“Fine. I work more from home now. And I’m doing some writing on my own.”

“You must be communing with Lucy’s ghost,” he teased. “You’re sounding more and more like her.”

I started.

He seemed not to notice. “There’s one way you’re not the same though.” The teasing note was gone.

“What’s that?”

“If you got into an abusive relationship you’d leave.”

I met his eyes. “I don’t know if I would.”

Quinn glared at me.

I shrugged. “I’ve learned not to make assumptions—even about myself.”

“You wouldn’t stay. You’d fight back. You’d get out.” His vehemence took me aback.

“Well, I can say this much.” I kept my voice calm, if not my thoughts. “I believe I wouldn’t get into an abusive relationship in the first place.”

Quinn was nodding. “That I believe. You are not going to end up in a pine grove near Masham.”

His words shook me. But I kept my voice calm. “Exactly where were Lucy’s remains found, anyway?”

“You mean you’ve never gone to the site?”

“How could I? I’ve never known where it is. I’ve been wanting to go, but—”

“You and I will go. After the hearing.”

My adrenalin started pumping.

“Or.” Quinn raised his eyebrows as if struck by a sudden thought. “What are you doing this weekend? Tomorrow say?”

My pulse sped up even more. It made sense for Quinn to take me. I wanted to go. I didn’t want to go alone. He knew the spot. And he was offering.

“Sorry. Stupid of me,” Quinn was saying. “What you need this weekend is to relax—not go on a morbid hike in the woods. We’ll go after the hearing. Whenever you’re ready.”

“No,” I said, “I’d like to go tomorrow. But,” I looked directly at him. “Are you free to take me?”

Quinn met my eyes. “I’m free.” Then he looked away.

*

THE DOORBELL WAS RINGING. SHE lay in bed, spaced out from the sleeping pill, too aching to move. Let Tim get it.

Through the floorboards, she could hear voices. Male voices.

Bill. Bill Torrence had arrived.

She eased her body out of bed.

A minute later Tim was calling down from the top of the stairs. “Lu. I need you up here.”

She pulled on her housecoat. She climbed the stairs as fast as she could.

A short balding man almost skinnier than she was sat in the cold living room. Papers lay on his briefcase on the coffee table. Legal-looking papers. Relief seeped into her aching bones.

But the scene wasn’t right. It was Tim who was writing the cheques.

The man got to his feet and held out his hand. “Hi, I’m Vaughan Hendricks.”

She looked from Mr. Hendricks to Tim. Tim didn’t pause in his writing. “Mr. Hendricks is renting me the apartment. He needs you to witness the lease.”

From relief to disappointment back to relief in seconds. She eased herself into a chair in the chilly room.

She watched Tim hand over the cheques to Mr. Hendricks. She didn’t ask him if there was money in his new account to cover them. Vaughan Hendricks was here. He was real. The apartment was real. And Bill Torrence was real too. The money was coming. And then there would be more than enough money. And then she would be free.

Tim handed her the lease agreement and the pen. She signed him over to Mr. Hendricks. She signed him out of her life.

*

THERE WAS A PHONE MESSAGE waiting for me when I got home. Curtis. He’d been home for a few weeks now, he said. He’d come home to a subpoena. He assumed I had one too. He’d been trying to avoid contact, but…. “Hell, I missed you, McGinn.” I could almost see his slow smile as he said the words. “Come up for dinner tonight if you get this message in time.”

I called ahead. I let Curtis feed me a Spanish omelette and pour me a glass of wine. We assumed our usual places at each end of the lime-green couch.

“I don’t want to talk about the hearing,” I said. “I want to hear about Easter. Last Easter.”

“Easter,” Curtis repeated, with a sigh. There was a silence while he brought Easter back. Then he spoke. “She called me the Thursday before Easter. She needed a break. I invited her to come up to the cottage. She said she’d bring the wine.”

*

THEY CLIMBED UP THE LADDER to the tree-house. From under the wide canopy of pine branches the lake, still frozen white, was just barely visible. Lucy sat in the bamboo bucket swing—her seat. She wore her navy pea coat against the chill of the April air and held her wine glass in gloved hands. Curtis sat on the wide railing.

She watched his easy posture and his sexy body in his jean jacket with appreciative eyes.

She didn’t tell Curtis that Tim didn’t know where she was—exactly. She’d left a note that she was driving up to the Gatineaus to go for a walk. That she would be back by six for dinner.

“So did the money come yet?”

“No. Can you believe it?”

“Yes,” laughed Curtis.

Lucy watched his beautiful smile and ignored his skeptical reply. She didn’t want to talk about her life. She asked questions instead. About how he was doing, about his work, his family. She could see he was taken aback. Impressed that she had made some progress out of her self-absorption.

Lucy was impressed too: at the way he expressed himself, at his serenity, his confidence. Why had she given this up? She knew why. She hadn’t been able to appreciate him then. She had been too busy trying to meld him into her idea of who he should be. But the chemistry was still there—patently there. Who was to say that when Tim was out of her life…. They could take it slow this time. Maybe she could rent a cottage nearby….

No. She pressed down hard on those thoughts. There was no going back.

But couldn’t they go on?

She didn’t know. She didn’t have to know.

That was new.

Curtis was giving her a queer look. “Did you hear me?” he asked.

She started as if he had shouted. Met his eyes. And started again. They were filled with kindness and concern.

He leaned forward. “I said, are you safe?”

The expression in his eyes was suddenly irritating. Condescending.

“Yes,” she snapped. “I’m safer with Tim than I ever would be with you.”

She said it to be contrary. She knew he didn’t believe her. But in fact it was true. Tim had no power to hurt her. No power over her at all. Not anymore. Whereas Curtis … if she let him back in to her heart….

In that moment she was overcome by compassion for the man sitting across from her on the wooden platform high in the tree. There was no space. No time. Just compassion and love. For Curtis. For his honesty and integrity. For how hard he’d tried—in his own way—when they’d been together. For how frustrating he must have found it dealing with her needy, demanding ways. She did love him. Not for who he could be for her. Just for who he was. She listened to him talk. She watched the way his eyes sparkled and the way his voice warmed to his topic, and she smiled, unseen, in the deepening twilight.

It was the dusk masking his face that finally brought her around, panicking about the time. It was almost seven o’clock. It would take her the better part of an hour to get home. Shit.

Down below the tree-house, in the darkness, Curtis held her close. Something old and familiar stirred between them, and he abruptly let her go. “We should not sleep together,” he said.

“No.” Under the surface disappointment she felt a small surge of happiness. They were on the same wavelength. At last.

Curtis walked her to her car. He closed the door firmly after she got behind the wheel.

*

“I CALLED A FEW DAYS later to see how she was doing,” said Curtis. “She would have been pretty late getting home, and I had a bad feeling about Tim.”

The sternum injury.

“She didn’t tell me Tim had physically hurt her, but he had.” His fingers, which had been pressing on a trigger point on my foot, pressed harder. Then he released my foot. And looked at me. “I didn’t find out until the police told me. But I can imagine exactly how it happened. I think when she got home he confronted her about where she’d been, and knowing Lucy, she probably told him outright and he lost it.”

I closed my eyes against the image of Tim sending a powerful fist into her sternum. No wonder she had sounded so bad on the phone that day I had called her. She would have been in terrible pain. And then I remembered something from our next phone conversation. I looked at Curtis. “Lucy told me she might be in the Gatineaus the next weekend. That’s why I invited her to my ice-breaking-up party. Was she going back to your place?”

Curtis shook his head. “We talked about her coming, but we never firmed anything up. I wasn’t expecting her. But I’ve heard since then that she apparently was on her way to my place.”

“But she never arrived.”

Curtis looked up, and there was unbearable pain in his eyes. “She never arrived.”

The house was dark. I had forgotten to leave a light on in my rush to get to Curtis’s. At least it was only a few steps from the car to my door. And there was nowhere for anyone to be watching me from; I was so close to the main road. But the thoughts wouldn’t go away. Quinn spying on me. Tim hurting Lucy. Lucy lying in pain in bed. Calling the bank. Calling me. Calling how many other people, reaching out for help?

I stuck the key in the door and flicked on the hall light. I was spooked tonight, there was no question. I hadn’t told Curtis I was going to the site since I couldn’t tell him I was going with Quinn. That was definitely off the record. There was no one I could tell where I was going.

I gave myself a shake. There was no reason to worry. My unease was from hearing more about Tim’s violence. Quinn had said Lucy had ended up in the hospital with the sternum injury. The hospital again. A place she dreaded. A place that had brought back memories of her mother.

*

THE EMERGENCY WAITING ROOM WAS becoming a familiar place. In the middle of the night it was relatively quiet. And then a pregnant woman was ushered in on a stretcher. Lucy heard the words “emergency caesarian.” At the words, the woman, already in distress, became visibly distraught. Lucy tried to block out the woman’s cries, her sudden yell as a contraction hit. The woman had become her mother, crying out at the child who would not come out on her own. She was relieved when the stretcher was wheeled away. Relieved and also sorry for the woman.

Would hospitals forever be a place of horror for her? And … had her mother felt the same way?

She was absorbed in this new thought—it felt important—and didn’t hear her name called. Tim elbowed her in the arm. “That’s us.” He got up to go with her.

But the nurse wouldn’t let him into the examining room.

In the car on the way home, he demanded to know what the doctor had asked her. “What did you tell him?”

She let out a long jagged sigh that hurt her chest. “I didn’t tell him anything.” She turned her head to the window and looked out into the street-lit night. “Just take me to the drugstore so we can get the prescription filled.”

Back home, Tim headed for the sitting room. She heard the TV come on. Sounds of gunfire and screeching tires.

She eased her aching body down the stairs. Crawled into bed.

The pain ebbed with the painkillers. Where were the painkillers for the emotional pain?

She began to cry. Not her usual tantrum tears. Not hiccoughing can’t-catch-your-breath tears, but long, slow, despairing sobs. So deep, so drawn out, they were almost a relief. She had heard these sounds before. Had her mother’s pain been similar? The cancer, in the end, would have been much more painful. What really had she known of her mother’s pain? What had she tried to know?

Her father had been the one to call. Followed by Anna to stress that her father hadn’t exaggerated the seriousness of their mother’s condition. She was in hospital. It wasn’t likely she would come out.

At the word “hospital,” she balked. There should now be an opportunity for poetic justice. Her mother was the one in hospital now, wanting her. She should be able to refuse to go.

But she couldn’t. Of course she couldn’t.

She was so focused on getting herself to Toronto—huge, noisy, unbreathable Toronto—and into the beast, the hospital itself, that she was unprepared for what she found there. There was a ghost lying in the bed. A ghost who was not her mother.

She choked back the tears. No amount of preparation would have readied her for this sallow, gaunt figure with the laboured breathing, barely taking up any space in the bed. Her mother’s features were still there in the ghost face—the high cheekbones, even more prominent now, the naturally pursed lips. This was what her life had come to, at fifty-nine. The alcohol, her own dissatisfaction and unhappiness, had slowly eaten away at her insides.

She looked across the bed to Anna, whose eyes were also brimming. And then, without warning, she was filled with anger—anger she hadn’t summoned. She wasn’t sure what she’d come here to do or say—what was there to do or say?—but it wasn’t to rage. She couldn’t rage at a ghost. It would blow her mother to kingdom come. And it was meant for her father, anyway, who wasn’t there this evening. Thank God.

But her hands, which should have taken her mother’s, were clenched, and she couldn’t unclench them. To unclench them would have been to unleash the demon.

She could feel Anna looking at her in hurt and bewilderment, wondering why she wasn’t reaching out to their mother.

At that moment, her mother’s eyes opened. For an instant—an instant only—they lit up. Was it because she’d thought she’d seen Anna? Her lips parted, as if to speak.

She couldn’t bear to hear whatever the ghost mouth was going to say. Words that might haunt her forever: What are you doing here?

She bolted to the lounge.

Anna came after her. She didn’t open her eyes, but sensed her sister sitting down beside her. She kept her concentration on her breathing, not on the presence beside her. But she couldn’t block it out. It was a warm and gentle presence, completely devoid of reproach or disappointment. She scrunched her eyes tighter. How dare Anna be so forgiving when she was being so impossible?

She couldn’t will her sister away by keeping her eyes closed. There was a soft sigh, and then a hand touched hers—a feather touch. At the touch, her eyes fluttered open, and she turned to face Anna. But the seat beside her was empty.