by Jaclyn Dawn
“What’s up?” I asked.
“Sorry for being a dick the other day,” Alek said.
“Apology accepted.”
“Cool.”
My cheeks felt warm, and I picked at a spot of paint on my t-shirt.
“That was pathetic,” Danika snapped. “You two don’t do anything in private, do you?”
“Nice burn,” Nathan said. Danika’s mother-hen façade faltered with a pleased look.
“Now can you reveal to us all the real reason we came?” Alek asked. Danika scowled at him and then turned to me.
“Can we go somewhere where there aren’t little ears?” she asked.
She used Benton as an excuse, but I knew she didn’t want to talk in front of Alek and Nathan, either. She set the baby carrier down beside Alek, and we walked toward the house. I thought we would sit on the porch in the shade, but Danika stopped walking once we were out of earshot. Maybe that meant it would be a short lecture.
“Why were you driving by my place last night?” she asked.
“I was showing Nathan around town.”
“Would’ve made more sense in the daylight, don’t you think?”
“That’s what I told him.”
“So he’s from Vancouver and he came all the way to Kingsley just to see you?”
I was being interrogated, except I couldn’t grasp where the questions were leading. “Nathan and I are good friends. Why are you here, Danika?”
“Mike would be furious if he knew I was here, you know.”
“Are you talking to me on his behalf again? You’re here to check out Nathan after this morning’s incident, aren’t you?”
“No. I don’t know what incident you’re talking about,” she said. She chewed on her bottom lip and looked like she was regretting her decision to come. “I’m guessing you’ve heard about Alek’s car being vandalized. Did you hear what was written on the side of it?”
“Yeah, I know,” I said. I pictured the yellow letters: MIAH’S BITCH. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt Alek, and I didn’t mean to stir trouble with Mike.”
“Mike says he had nothing to do with the car.”
“I didn’t mean to imply he did,” I said quickly, but she continued as if I hadn’t interrupted.
“I just don’t see why anyone else in Kingsley would attack Alek. I can’t think of anyone else who would write those particular words, either,” Danika said.
I was surprised she was doubting Mike. “Any idea when—”
“I fooled around with Mike,” she blurted. “It was a long, long time ago and before I had even met RC. It was after that New Year’s Eve party we all went to in Calgary. The one where you threw up under the table and passed out in the hotel bathroom before midnight. It started as a New Year’s Eve kiss between friends, but kind of escalated from there. I felt terrible, and it never happened again.”
My stomach hurt and my chest felt tight. This wasn’t just some girl who had paraded in front of Mike’s work in her sports bra. This was Danika, my best friend, we were talking about.
“Don’t look so Bambi-like,” Danika pleaded. “You were on a break. People know about your breakups, Miah.”
“What breakups?” Mike had always been a flirt, but that party had taken place in a time before the suspicions. A time when I had thought we were happy. A time I had looked back on, when things got bad, to convince myself I could be better, Mike and I could be better, if I just worked harder. I was willing myself not to cry. I felt panicky and crossed my arms over my chest as if I could hold myself together. Or maybe I was trying to hide the hole that had been punched through it.
“Mike said you were broken up, that you went to the party together because you already had the tickets. It’s not a good excuse for what we did, but …” Danika trailed off and shrugged. For once, she didn’t seem to know what else to say.
“Don’t both people in the relationship need to know for it to be considered a breakup? I didn’t know!” I raised my voice, which I never did. I didn’t care that Nathan and Alek were now staring at us. “Don’t you get it, Danika? I didn’t know, just like you and everyone else in this town didn’t know what it was really like being Mike’s Girl.”
“Yeah, well, maybe I should have said something back then. But maybe you should have spoken up about some things, too, if that’s the case.”
We stood there glaring at each other for a few minutes. Finally, Danika started walking back to her kids. I could have gone back to the house, but somehow that would have made it worse. Sitting still would have made it worse. I needed to finish painting the fence.
CHAPTER 25
MY PARENTS WERE HOME LATE SUNDAY AFTERNOON. WHILE MOM hovered, Dad shifted himself from the passenger seat to the wheelchair. Dad was lucky that Nathan was there to help Mom carry him into the house. I struggled with the wheelchair, banging it against every step and dropping it once.
After Dad’s last specialist appointment, I had silently prayed never again to see him limp into the house the way he had. Now I would have given anything to see him healthy enough to limp. What if the second doctor was wrong? What if they did need to amputate his leg? What if the infection had spread and it was too late?
In the living room, Mom fussed over fluffing pillows while Nathan praised the farm and the farmer’s daughter and the turnaround of Dad’s health and at one point I think even the weather. I nudged his arm to stop him.
“Sorry. I babble when I’m nervous.”
“Nothing to be nervous about around here,” Mom said.
“Amiah talks so highly of you both, and you’ve been through so much, and …” That time I hit Nathan’s arm to stop him. His rambling was irritating.
“What I’ve been through is an entire week of hospital food. It’s enough to make a man beg the doctor to chop his leg off for something to throw on the barbeque,” Dad said. Nathan was finally speechless, and a bit pale. Dad laughed. “I’m kidding. I can’t wait for a real meal, though.”
“We’re having steaks for supper,” Mom said.
Nathan joined me for the evening chores, which was wise. Something about my dad and his injuries made Nathan nervous, and who knew what he would have praised if left alone with my him. When we got back to the house, I followed the smell of barbeque and the sound of voices to the kitchen.
“I’m just saying I don’t think you have to worry about Nathan and Miah ever being more than just friends. That boy is playing for the other team, if you smell what I’ve stepped in,” Dad was saying. Neither of my parents noticed me step into the doorway.
“What’s the problem?” I asked. Mom jumped, her hand pressing to her heart.
“Nothing,” she said, quickly. “I was just saying that it is nice having you home, and … well … depending on who you end up with, who knows where you will settle.”
I noticed the latest issue of the Inquirer on the kitchen table. Adult or not, walking in on my parents discussing my love life, especially over a picture of me making out with a guy, was humiliating. They both knew I noticed the tabloid, but none of us mentioned it.
“Is Nathan…? Well, you know,” Mom said.
“Hard of hearing? No,” I said. Nathan stepped around the corner and gave a little wave.
Mom opened and closed her mouth like a goldfish a couple of times. “Hello, dear,” she said at last. Then she busied herself gathering plates and taking them to the dining room. We hadn’t eaten in the dining room since I had returned to Kingsley. The formality was for Nathan’s sake.
Once we were seated around the table, the Inquirer might as well have had its own chair. Everyone was thinking about the latest article, but no one was willing to be the first to mention it.
“The fence looks great,” Dad said. “Paint it yourself?”
“Alek helped,” I said, looking up through my lashes to see Mom’s reaction. She kept her eyes on the mashed potatoes she was scooping onto her plate. “Nathan watched me work yesterday.”
“I can’t
be working when I’m on vacation,” he said with a grin. He took a cob of corn but passed me the platter without choosing a steak.
“How long is this vacation?” Mom asked.
“He got a one-way ticket,” I said.
“I don’t have any definite plans. I can save money on a flight if I go back with Amiah, depending on when she plans on going home … uh, back to Vancouver,” Nathan said, rambling now that he realized everyone was staring at him. “I can get a plane ticket. So how exciting is it that Amiah finally settled on a major?”
Mom and Dad exchanged a look.
“Which major is that?” Dad asked, choosing to be the one to admit they had never bothered to ask. My parents treated my degree like a temporary infatuation, like a child with a new toy.
“Education,” I said.
“That’s a great choice,” said Mom. “You’ll have the same schedule as your own kids one day, with summers off.”
It was Nathan’s and my turn to exchange a look. Other people would have asked which grade or subjects I wanted to teach.
“Sylvia’s daughter took Education at the University of Alberta in Edmonton,” Mom continued.
“I’ve already enrolled at the University of British Columbia for September,” I said. “Unless I’m still needed around here.”
“Maybe you need to be around here,” Mom said.
“And settle down with a guy like Mike, right?” I asked.
“I’m not saying Mike, exactly, but—”
“So, Nathan, you don’t eat meat,” Dad interrupted. “How come?”
“It’s not something our team does,” said Nathan.
“Really? And is your whole team this sarcastic?”
Nathan laughed. “And I thought country folk were supposed to be simple.”
It was Dad’s turn to laugh. “Well played.”
CHAPTER 26
THE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON, MOM WAS SHOWING NATHAN MY BABY album while Dad napped on the couch. My guard was down when there was a knock on the door.
“Miah, can you get that? It’s probably the homecare nurse,” Mom said.
I was smiling to myself for no particular reason, but my smile vanished when I opened the front door. Tamara Ennis’s bright-red lips weren’t smiling either.
“You have got to be kidding,” she said.
I had often imagined what I would say or do if I ever came face to face with Tamara Ennis. People claim they know what they would do in such a situation. In most of the scenarios that had played out in my head, she would have had a bloody nose by now. Instead, I held the door open with a dumb, slack-jawed look on my face before asking the obvious.
“Are you the homecare nurse?”
She nodded, looking at me warily. “I didn’t know you’d be here.”
“My dad is in the living room. You can discuss whatever you need with my mom,” I said, pulling myself together.
Nathan and I retreated to my bedroom to work on the Inquirer under the pretext of working on homework. I was both relieved and disappointed that my parents didn’t question my having homework over the summer. I sat at the vanity, which doubled as a desk. The vanity with Tamara’s bright-red lipstick in the drawer. Nathan made himself comfortable on the bed.
My injuries felt raw, like they had happened yesterday instead of two years ago. I wanted to curl up under my quilt and sleep. Confrontations don’t sound like they do in the movies, anyway, with perfect prose and punch lines. And telling off Tamara Ennis wouldn’t help my dad.
“You okay? We don’t have to work on this now,” Nathan said.
I shook my head and opened my laptop. We had to prepare the next issue of the Inquirer. Nathan opened his laptop, too. In case Mom walked in, we didn’t want anything incriminating in plain sight, so we were sticking with screens.
In Vancouver, we met every week to review the storyboard for the upcoming issue. We shared writing the feature articles and sidebars. I took care of the regular columns, like Dear Deirdre and Mark Your Calendar. Nathan was in charge of sorting contributions, advertising, formatting, and printing. We had an efficient system in Vancouver.
We had fallen behind since I returned to Kingsley, though. I insisted on helping sort contributions so that we could get started on the storyboard. They were all in the Inquirer email inbox, whether sent directly by email or scanned from the contributions box and then sent by email. Nathan and I had a shared folder on our laptops called THE INQUIRER. Inside was a folder for each issue. JULY 17, JULY 31, AUGUST 14, AUGUST 28, and so on. The time-sensitive contributions were saved in the relevant folder. FILLER was for contributions that were usable but not time sensitive. Ongoing topics had their own folders, like THE TRULA/ROLAND AFFAIR. GARBAGE was for contributions that broke rule one. They didn’t have a grain of truth or could potentially land us in court, jail, or early graves. Nothing was ever deleted.
I opened a file, read until I knew which folder to save it in, and then moved on to the next.
‘Dear Deirdre, Our daughters’ feuding is killing my and my bestie’s friendship …’ DEIRDRE.
‘Local spellcaster sells love potions …’ FILLER.
‘Roland suspected of paying off wife’s counsellor …’ THE TRULA/ROLAND AFFAIR.
‘The mayor of Kingsley is a terrorist …’ GARBAGE.
‘Upcoming community awareness night …’ AUGUST 14.
There were no clues as to what I would find before I opened each scanned contribution. At least most of the emails had something in the subject field, but Nathan insisted on sorting the emails himself. I thought maybe because the contributions from Kingsley Grocery were only picked up and scanned once per week, so they were a week behind and there would be fewer about the recently published issue starring yours truly. I whimpered when I opened the next file.
“What is it?” Nathan asked. He seemed jumpy.
“‘Mike Hayes deserves credit for not letting his breakup with Amiah ruin their parents’ thirty-year friendship. Mike is even working at the Williams farm in their hour of need,’” I read. Didn’t anyone have anything better to do?
Nathan sighed. “Are you sure you want to go through these? It’s my job for a reason. I don’t take them personally.”
“Because they aren’t about you.”
“I do know a thing or two about being outed, you know.”
He did, obviously. Before we had met, Nathan had told his family he was gay. His sister was three years younger than Nathan. Since she had turned the legal bar age, which was nineteen in British Columbia, she frequented the Pink Rooster “to be supportive” and, I suspected, to score free drinks. Their younger brother, who was entering high school at the time of the announcement and suffered some bullying as a result, still barely spoke to Nathan, which was Nathan’s only regret as far as I knew. His parents were somewhere in between supportive and disowning.
“Maybe it’s Mike writing these things to make himself look good,” Nathan said. It was an interesting thought. Would I recognize Mike’s writing? I would recognize his signature, but like ninety percent of the contributions, this one wasn’t signed.
We had some regular contributors. Often the handwriting and diction gave them away where an alias didn’t. Everything was a clue. The subject, pictures, the paper used. We had received contributions written on letterhead, envelopes, backs of receipts, bar napkins. We usually didn’t care who sent the information. The clues helped us research articles we needed to write. For example, a picture with Mr. Smith in the background could lead me to his Facebook page, which could reveal more about the event in the article, and so on. We always kept in mind that someone may be trying to trick us, though. If people wanted to stay anonymous, they could. We knew that firsthand.
I filed the suggestion, and the three after that, in the newest folder: IT’S AMIAH.
“I seriously don’t think I can do this anymore,” I said.
“Take a break.”
“No, I mean any of it.”
Nathan was distracted by
something on his laptop. I didn’t know whether he had heard what I had said. As he read, he frowned in a way that made me nervous.
“What now?” I sat beside him to read off his screen.
From: Concerned Citizen ([email protected])
Sent: July 10, 2015 8:38:21 p.m.
To: Kingsley Inquirer ([email protected])
Subject: Amiah Williams
Am I right? Maybe now you’ll take me seriously. We need to talk. Tuesday, July 14th, the truck stop diner at 1:30 p.m. I’m assuming, of course, you will still be in town. I suggest you stay that way if you want to avoid libel charges.
“It was sent after I got here,” Nathan said. “I haven’t checked the inbox since I left. I’m sorry, Amiah. I wouldn’t have kept this one from you.”
“This one? There are more? This is a threat, Nathan.” I started to wring my hands and my chest felt tighter, like there was suddenly less air in the room.
“Of course the Inquirer gets complaints. We can’t expect to expose people and not get a few complaints. Concerned Citizen emailed us a month ago and then again two weeks ago, but I thought it was nothing, like the others.”
I now understood why Nathan didn’t want me sorting the contributions.
“How many others?” I asked.
Nathan opened our shared folder on his computer. It looked exactly like THE INQUIRER folder on my computer, except he had one extra folder inside: HATERS. When he opened it, I felt dizzy from the long list of files. He chose one titled ’86. General’.
Whoever you are, you’re an immature coward. You need to grow up and find something better to do than mess in other people’s business.
But Concerned Citizen’s email wasn’t like that general complaint.
“This is the first that was ever addressed to me by name, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but it’s probably a fluke,” Nathan said. He was trying to keep me calm, but I could tell he was worried, too. He started scrolling down the list, looking for specific complaints. “There are ones in here suspecting the mayor and Mr. Wong and—”