Chapter 2

The truck’s horn was a heat wave in my back, urgent and close, pushed by the grind of a hardworking diesel. It was big, whatever it was, and I tucked and cut off the lumpy pavement, no time for a shoulder check. I’d had no warning, cruising in the sound bubble of my skateboard’s wheels on the old highway. I dropped off the lip at speed, and the board went nose-down into the sand and pebbles. I bailed, pumping my legs in a high-legged sprint to avoid a face-plant and keep out the path of the black Hummer that blew past, nearly clipping my elbow. The bag of groceries under my arm added to the challenge. I ended up in the roadside brush, no serious damage beyond a sore ankle.

It was one of the old-school, military Hummers that sits high and wide and fills every inch of the road. Bobbing heads were silhouetted in the smoked glass. Limping back to find where my board had landed, I wanted to heave a rock and let the shit-for-brains wannabe-macho fucktard know what I thought, but he was long gone, and the only people who’d hear me would probably rat me out to Jeannie for bad language. It’s that kind of town.

The rest of the way home I hugged the shoulder, dodging potholes and rocks and protecting the veggies, probably mush by now anyway. Skated past Don’s Soil Supply, past Anzac Engine Works with the Harleys out front, to my corner and its faded VIEW LOTS AND ACREAGE FOR SALE sign. I turned in and pushed the board uphill. Past the unmanned Heritage Properties security gate, just in front of our place, somebody had parked a dented F-150 pickup, two-tone brown with retreads on rusty rims. In this neighbourhood, street-parkers were there to cut the grass. Except at our place.

Home was the Templeton mansion, the “heritage” of Heritage Properties, a real-estate subdivision whose developer went bust. At one time, the mansion had stood alone on the hillside, a lord’s manor overlooking the logging town of Wallace. Now it marked the entrance to a series of looping roads that snaked up the mountain, a Disneyland of fake-historic high-end homes.

Our house wasn’t much of a mansion anymore, with a sagging porch, drunken angles, and a turret pockmarked with missing shingles. Renovation had been in the developer’s plans, along with all kinds of overblown dreams. Row after row of switchbacks zigzagged above us, with every view lot cleared for construction. Down on our level, a half-dozen homes had been built and occupied by people I’d never met. The next level uphill was where the developer had choked. Some of the homes were near completion, others had roofs and tarpaper walls, but no windows. Farther up, skeleton frames dwindled to foundations, and then the street narrowed to stump-filled lots punctuated with stakes in the ground and spray-painted arrows on the Douglas firs.

Back in the day, as they say, everything in sight had belonged to my grandfather, Everett Templeton. Pop, we called him. From his mountainside mansion, he could look down his mill, his wharves, his workers in their company homes, and the lush green forests on which he held the timber lease. When the old-growth trees ran out, Pop sold the logging rights to a conglomerate from Alabama and a few months later the mill was closed. It had been a bad time for Wallace, although by then I was a little kid in the city and had no idea. I was seven when Pop died.

Beth held the land for years. When she sold out to the developers, part of the deal was that our home would be pimped out to become the signature building of Heritage Properties. Those promises were as long gone as the backhoes and the money Beth was still owed. The roof was still moss-covered, and the rain-bleached paint was still streaked with runnels of green from the eavestroughs that overflowed every rainfall.

In all the years we lived in Vancouver, Beth never mentioned that she’d inherited Pop’s mountain, let alone that she’d sold everything but the home itself, until the day she announced that the three of us were leaving the city and moving in.

In the kitchen, I elbowed an empty nacho-chip bag off the counter (Bree was home) to make room for my bruised groceries. I slipped a Southern Comfort bottle under the counter, into my secret hole behind the drainpipe, and called out a hello. No response.

Beth was in her studio, perched ramrod straight on the edge of a paint-speckled chair, facing her canvas with an unblinking stare.

“Supper soon.”

“Not hungry, darling.”

Just what she always said. Her skin was bone-white, her eyes a watery grey that seemed to hold all its colour inside. When her hair grew back after the chemo, the wispy blond had turned a dull white with only a hint of yellow.

“Have you eaten?” I knew what she’d say to that, too.

“Yes, yes.” Her voice was flat and distracted.

“What’d you have? There’s nothing in the fridge.”

“All right.” She exhaled and pinched the bridge of her nose. “You’ve caught me.” It always felt like she was humouring me. “I should have something before it gets too late. Call me when it’s ready.”

In the art world, Elsbeth Templeton was pretty well known. Her work was in major galleries and the homes of wealthy collectors. Which didn’t mean she was rich. She used the third floor, Pop’s old bedroom, as her painting studio. It was small, what with the angled roof and the dormer windows cutting into the space, and she’d crammed it full of garage-sale tables that she covered with brushes and paint. Canvases leaned against walls — earlier, forgotten drafts of the work in progress. She’d been at this one painting for months, her second since leaving the hospital. It was a floor-to-ceiling canvas, an angle-on view of a kitchen counter, or perhaps a butcher’s counter, with a spring salmon split open, pink flesh spread wide, exposing the length of the spinal column, all the way to a dangling polyp where the head used to be. Chunks of moist flesh, painfully crimson, clung to the ladder of bones, more vibrantly pigmented than anything real. The wooden surface underneath was deeply scored with fresh knife scars and patterned with oozing liquid, translucent membranes and fish scales that sparkled in the light.

When I was a kid, her paintings had creeped me out so much that I wouldn’t approach her studio. She was scary intense, painting night and day until her hands quivered with fatigue, drifting down to eat only when the stomach pains got too bad. I learned to cook as a survival tactic. There was a time when I wished she’d devote that kind of energy to me, but I got past that. The idea was terrifying.

For a couple of years Beth painted shirts and dresses that floated in the air, marked with sweat, work stains, or other bodily fluids, empty but fully shaped as if there were a body in them. Then she switched to food, stacks of fruit and cut meat that seemed to excrete blood and juice. “Morbidly sensual,” the press called them. She was some kind of star, as painters go. When she got sick, she stopped. Didn’t paint for more than a year, and just started again recently.

I washed the lettuce in the salad bowl, keeping food from touching the old porcelain sink and whatever it was that grew in its grotty spider-webbed cracks. If that sink were in the coffee shop, the health inspectors would have a fit. I sliced a tomato, whistling as I tossed it in, whacked the end off a cucumber and chopped it up, and poured on some raspberry vinaigrette that Anatole had given me, leftover from today’s special. He’d told me to take it because it was only going to go bad. He treated me like a charity case sometimes, but I took it.

The house was enormous for three of us, a rambling warren of worn-out rooms leading off a long, narrow hallway. Depending on our moods, any of us could meet and chat, or avoid each other all day long.

I found Bree in the piano room, slumped at the computer, her T-shirt hanging loose, headphones snaking though tangled hair. She was busily typing with an index finger and thumb. There was a guy with her. The pickup outside would be his. This was new. As far as I knew, Bree hadn’t made a single friend in Wallace.

His eyes flicked up, then back to his laptop. I already didn’t like him. She was fourteen. If he drove, he was sixteen, minimum. What kind of loser is interested in a shy, friendless girl that much younger? He was trying to grow some facial hair and had a two-inch wannabe ponytail poking out behind his headphones. He and Bree were playing the same game, each with a cartoonish 3-D forest landscape with knights and castles and battlefields, and a scrolling list of friends and enemies with shields and swords and runic symbols. Bree was humming, out of tune and too loud. I had to rap on the lid of the grand piano to get her attention.

“Supper in five?”

Beth’s Bösendorfer, a nine-foot grand piano that she rarely played these days, was the only large item we had moved from the city. A wheel had broken off when her mover — some dude with a truck — and I had carried it in, and a thesaurus under one leg brought it up to more or less level. Bree gave me a quick nod.

“Is your boyfriend staying? It’s lasagna, we have lots.”

Her eyelids opened wide. She pressed a key combination, then ducked her head and pulled off the phones. She tugged my arm and nearly dragged me into the hallway. She was taller than me, and stocky.

“How could you say that?”

“I invited him for supper. What?”

“He’s not my boyfriend, all right?”

That was good news. “All right.”

“All right!”

“So is he eating here or not?”

His name was Nolan. He hunched over his meal and chewed.

“Nolan,” I said.

He froze with his fork halfway to his mouth. The pathetic fuzz on his chin made him look like a squirrel.

“You’re at ADC?” The local high school, Amor de Cosmos Secondary.

He shook his head, “Finished last year.”

Seventeen, eighteen, then.

I called upstairs to Beth, “Coming to dinner?”

No sound from above.

To Nolan, “You like Rush?” He looked like a head-banger, but shrugged like he’d never heard the name. Too young for Rush, maybe. “Mastodon? Nickelback?”

Bree chewed and waited for Nolan’s answer. She knew my routine.

“I don’t listen to music.”

Bree smiled, like she’d won. What kind of idiot doesn’t listen to music?

“The game you’re playing —”

“Knights Errant.”

“Looked like machinima. Is it a multiplayer shooter or a strategy quest, or —”

“Don’t.” Bree said.

“Warband.” Nolan said. “You fight in tourneys against live opponents, solo or in teams. Run through scenarios, battles, earn credits.”

“Collecting weapons, trading for special powers, that sort of thing?”

“We’re early in the scenario. Cleansing the woods of brigands,” Nolan said. “I’ve completed it but I’m starting again, to help Bree. Building her skill ratings.”

“Don’t talk games with Tate,” Bree said, “He’ll make you feel stupid for liking it.”

“That’s not fair, Bree,” Beth walked in and opened a cupboard, looking for a plate.

Nolan was in her chair, so I stood up and retrieved the spare from under a stack of winter coats near the side door.

“He will. First he’ll tell you he hates games, then he’ll tell you he knows one that’s so much better, but since you’re playing here are the cheats. Like the game’s stupid and easy and it’s not, not when you’re in it.” She stood up. “Come on.”

She wasn’t completely right. I like strategy games and puzzles. It’s the neural twitchers I hate — the mindless blast-everything-that-moves games. And, call me squeamish, but I’m not entertained by blood and splattering brains. I slid the spare chair into place at the end of the table for Beth.

“You can’t stay for a minute?” I asked.

“Why? I’m finished,” Bree said.

Nolan gave his empty plate a long look, then licked his knife and fork and followed her.

Holding a plate of lasagna, Beth moved out of his way and used a fork to cut off a mouthful.

“Sit down to eat. And here, that’s got to be cold by now, let me —”

“Don’t bother, darling. I don’t taste much of anything these days, you know that.” She reluctantly shovelled in a few mouthfuls, then slid the plate into the sink. “That’s much better.” She wiped her palms on paint-spattered chinos. “Back to it now, though. Things to finish up.”

Half her lasagna was still on the plate. I tried, I thought, and began to clean up.

Beth stopped at the kitchen door. “One thing, Tate — and Bree?” She gazed absently toward the piano room, one finger looping a stray hair behind an ear. “I’m off to Vancouver in the morning, just so you know. I may stay the night.”

“The gallery?” I asked, suddenly anxious. I hoped it was for her upcoming show — that’s what she was working on upstairs — but doubted it.

“Well, I’ll be staying with Eleanor, of course.” The owner of the gallery. “But I have to see the doctor.” Her eyes skated away from my questioning look. “Follow-up tests, nothing unusual. They phoned. There was a cancellation.”

The familiar fist gripped my stomach. “How long have you been waiting for them to call?”

“They’re only tests, Tate, I have to have them every so often, and they don’t mean a thing. But I can’t eat after ten, you know the rules, so I’m glad you reminded me to fill up while I can.”

She headed for the stairs, and I followed, pulling bills from my wallet.

“Here, then. For gas.” I was the wage earner.

She half-turned in the narrow stairway. “No, I’m fine. I have a job.”

“What?”

“I told you, didn’t I? Started this week.”

“Where?”

“Abbots. The greenhouse.” A shy grin cracked her face and was gone. “Georgina Abbott and I go way back. It gets me out of here, clears my head. And it’s money.”

“They paid you already?”

“Cash. The best kind of pay.” The grin flickered on again, and she turned away.

All the locals knew Beth. Some, like Jeannie, were proud that someone from Wallace had brought the place some kind of reflected fame. For others she was old Everett’s daughter, a spoiled rich kid who went to art school while the rest of the town was out of work. But they all knew she’d been sick. They didn’t necessarily know me, because I wasn’t what you’d call involved in the community, and I have my Dad’s surname — MacLane — but it seemed that everyone knew that Beth’s son had gallantly left university to help his ailing mother.

That was a lie — the university booted me out after first year — but it was the story Beth gave them, and for all I knew she believed it herself. At the coffee shop, complete strangers would sometimes nod and give me a sad, knowing smile. Or tell me how lucky I was to have such a special mom, so creative.

I’d have preferred a tip, frankly. Sometimes I wanted to grab one of them and hold my face an inch from theirs and scream, “Special? You have no idea!”