by Katie Tallo
“I guess so. Like I said. I sort of passed out. You were in your bed when the cops showed up. We found your great-grandmother in your mom’s address book and that’s where the police took you. My parents helped me lock up the house and took me home.”
Gus feels muddyheaded. The pungent smells of shampoo and hair spray are making her woozy. Annalee gets her a glass of water from the sink. Gus downs it as more questions than answers bubble up in her brain.
What was Shannon up to?
And how did she, Gus, end up in the car with her mother?
Maybe she wasn’t there.
“That’s everything I remember. I really hope it helped.”
GUS IS ON AUTOPILOT AS SHE PULLS OUT OF THE MALL, LEAVING Annalee waving from the window of Supercuts. Levi’s asleep beside her. Snoring. Gus takes the eastbound ramp to Ottawa. To the city. As she joins the flow of late-day traffic on the 417, she gets a call.
It’s Haley-Anne. One of her former clients drove by the house and wants to put in an offer before the listing goes up. It’s a developer friend of hers. And it’s a good offer. Enough to cover the bank loan and real estate fees. Haley-Anne says she’ll come by later with the paperwork so they can discuss.
It all happens way too fast. By nine o’clock that night, Gus is signing the real estate contract and Rose’s rambling house on Island Park Drive is officially sold. The closing date is in a month. It’s mid-July and even though Gus only showed up on Rose’s front step a month ago, she is gutted. She will miss this old house. Miss how the sun washes over the kitchen table in the morning and how the moon lights up the walls of her cozy upstairs bedroom. At first, she almost doesn’t sign because she can’t stand the thought of some family moving into the house and making it their own, as if Rose and Shannon and Levi never existed. Never walked its hallways or slept under its roof. But Haley-Anne assures her that won’t ever happen.
And now Gus must ready herself to leave. To move on. Let go of what was never really hers in the first place. Relief and sadness rinse through her in equal parts as she locks the front door when Haley-Anne leaves.
The real estate agent didn’t care about the broken backdoor screen or the red marker staining the living room wall or the lack of curb appeal. In the end, none of it mattered. The house was sold without the buyer ever stepping foot inside. It was to be torn down. The developer was starting from scratch. Building something new.
And so were Gus and Levi.
31
Pequeño Policial
MID-AUGUST, AFTER TWO MONTHS OF INHABITING HER great-grandmother’s house, Augusta moves into a small residential motel off Richmond Road, six blocks from Rose’s. She tells herself it’s temporary. Takes from Rose’s only what she arrived with. The exceptions are the dog’s dishes, Rose’s garment bag of cash, her gun and her Buick, Augusta’s childhood trunk, and the Russian nesting dolls. And, of course, Levi. The rest is off in an estate sale to cover closing costs.
On their morning walks, Gus and Levi pass by the house where Haley-Anne’s smiling face still beams from a SOLD sign on the front lawn. It’s not being demolished until the fall so Gus occasionally picks weeds from the garden or pulls up the crabgrass that spiders between the paving stones leading to the front steps. She knows her efforts are futile but does it just the same. It feels right. Mostly, though, they just walk past. She lets Levi eat a few of the neighbor’s tiger lilies, then they head back to the motel.
She doesn’t mind the dimly lit motel room. It’s got a single bed, dresser, table and two chairs, a bar fridge, hot plate, and bathroom, shower only. Reminds her of her room at Rose’s. It’s bedbug- and cockroach-free so it’ll do for now. She keeps most of her things in her blue trunk in the corner. She lines up the nesting dolls on the windowsill, stuffs a few hundred dollars in her wallet, and leaves the rest tucked away in the garment bag inside the vinyl-covered spare tire in the Buick’s trunk. She stows Rose’s gun in the glove compartment.
“Pets are tolerated. Noise is not.”
Anita Hubble gives her the lowdown. She’s the hotel manager.
“No pooping on the property and no barking after ten.”
The turkey flesh under the woman’s armpits flaps as she talks. Hubble is seventysomething with a long braid of gray hair that snakes down her back. Gold hoops hang on her sagging lobes and there’s a tattoo of Jesus on her bicep. She’s an old hippie. Walks around in a floral muumuu that drapes from her low-hanging breasts like a monk’s robe. She lives behind the office through a door with a half top that she keeps open when she’s inside watching The Price Is Right. A bell sits on the ledge of the half door in case someone needs her.
“Ring once if you need me. Twice if the place is on fire.”
Hubble likes to impart game show wisdom.
“A tube of toothpaste is cheaper than a tube of Pringle chips but pricier than a pack of chewing gum.”
There are other short-stay tenants at the motel. There’s a family from Syria who just moved to Canada, a couple whose furnace leaked oil all over their basement, and a construction worker from out east working a short-term contract. It’s a temporary stopover where people come to get their bearings. Figure out their next move.
Getting back to their new digs after a walk, Augusta sits on the bed. Levi snuggles next to her leg. She listens to the hum of the leaky air conditioner in the window. Not sure what the future holds.
Then a voice from the past calls.
Miss Santos. Only she says “Yanna” so it takes Gus a second to realize who it is. Yanna says she went by Rose’s house looking for Gus. Saw the real estate agent’s phone number on the SOLD sign and called it. Haley-Anne was the one who gave her Augusta’s cell phone number.
“I saw you in grocery in Kemptville.”
Gus remembers. This was back when she was staying with Rory.
“I’m sorry I didn’t say hello.”
Gus isn’t sorry. She had zero interest in talking to Miss Santos then and now.
“I call to make sure you okay. You be careful.”
“I’m okay.”
“No. Careful of company you keep.”
Gus doesn’t know what the woman’s going on about.
“Why did you call me, Miss Santos?”
“That night your mother die. Rose send me to collect your things.”
Gus doesn’t say a word.
“Pequeño policial. He was at your house. Looking about. Took boxes. Took things. Your mother’s things.”
“Policial, you mean police?”
“Sim. Yes.”
Gus thinks back to Rory telling her how the police took care of their own.
“They were just doing their job.”
She doesn’t feel like getting into this with her.
“Not they. He. One man. Pequeño policial. Little policeman. I talk with him that night. He let me get your things from your room. Then he tell me to go. Leave. Take nothing of your mother’s. He help me load car. Pushy little policeman. He not nice. He rush me. Want me gone. Didn’t like him. Didn’t want him in your house but not my place to say.”
Gus connects the dots. Kep goes missing and her mother dies in a car accident. Shannon’s connected to the crime so a policeman goes back to their house to get rid of anything that might implicate Shannon further. It fits but it doesn’t. Yanna cuts in.
“I see him with you. I remember face.”
“Where?”
“In grocery. You with that little policeman.”
She’s talking about Rory. Gus isn’t sure what to say, but a question lingers in the far recesses of her mind. A question she’s wanted to ask Miss Santos ever since she found her blue trunk.
“You said you got my things that night. But why didn’t you ever tell me about my blue trunk? I found it in Rose’s basement.”
“I sorry. Thought it best you move on. Forget. I stow for future. When you ready to remember and not so much a child missing mother.”
Gus is struck by Yanna’s unexpected thought
fulness. Perhaps she isn’t a black crow after all. Perhaps Augusta’s child’s-eye view of Rose’s nurse was skewed by the terrible loneliness that continues to warp many of her memories from back then. Yanna was probably right to put aside her things until she was ready to remember. Gus is ready now.
She might have said goodbye to Yanna. She might have just hung up. She’s not sure. Her mind had already moved on to Rory Rump. He was at the accident. Then later that night, he was at their house in Hintonburg. And conveniently, he was right there when she was run off the road. Always there. Helping. Protecting. Taking care of things.
She was not in her right mind, you know. Never got the help she needed.
She wasn’t herself.
She never hit the brakes.
Drove straight into that lake like she meant to.
Always there. Bringing flowers. Planting seeds.
Good old dependable Uncle Rory.
THE NEXT MORNING, AUGUSTA DRIVES TO KEMPTVILLE BEFORE the sun comes up, Levi in tow. She parks under the heavy bows in a narrow overgrown lane a few hundred yards down the road from Rory’s property. Dog’s asleep. She waits.
Right on cue. Rory’s red Honda passes by. Off to work. She gives it ten minutes just in case he forgot something. Leaves the sleeping dog behind and hikes down the lane, through the scratchy buckthorn toward the back of his property. A broken-down garage sits hidden in the bushes. So deep she’d never seen it before. Not even when she chased Levi through the property when they stayed at Rory’s. She peers inside the dirty windows. Can’t see through the grit. She pulls on the door. It swings open. Hinges creaking. There’s a car under a dusty beige tarp, a greasy lawnmower, compost bins, long-forgotten garden tools, and a collection of plastic planters full of dry soil and rotting roots. She peeks under the tarp at the car. It’s black. Gus takes a panoramic shot of the inside of the shed before heading through the bushes to Rory’s house.
No time to waste. He usually comes home for lunch.
She tries the back door. Locked. She pushes lightly on the kitchen window. Not locked. She swings it open, pops out the screen, and boosts herself over the ledge and inside, thankful that Rory’s house is hidden from prying neighbors’ eyes.
Gus scans each room quickly. Takes photos of each as she goes. One after the other, not sure what she’s looking for. In Rory’s bedroom, there’s a desk in the corner. An old computer sits on the floor, unplugged. It’s not her mother’s. A mess of bills and lottery tickets and baseball cards litter the compartments of the desk. She runs her hands under the drawers. Nothing taped to the bottom like in the movies. Next, the den. She spots the photograph he showed her. The one of him as a kid with his childhood friends. His friend, the one he said went off the rails, is a foot taller than Rory. He’s got a ball in one hand, resting against his hip. She hadn’t noticed it before. It looks like a football only with flatter ends.
Once in PE class at boarding school, they played a game with a ball like that. Rugby. Todd’s words come to her.
Junie said they were teenagers. A couple of players from the annual high school rugby tournament that was in town.
Gus checks her phone. The photo of Gracie’s gravestone. She was born in 1995. Rory would have been in high school around that time.
She runs her fingers across the yearbooks on Rory’s bookcase. Two dusty trophies prop up the books. Rugby trophies. She pulls out the yearbook for the class of ’94. Sits on the sofa and leafs through the pages of fresh-faced high school students. At the back she finds the team photos. Football, soccer, volleyball.
Rugby. The North York Lions. In block letters above the team’s name are the words 1994 Champions, McCormick Cup, Elgin, Ontario. She searches row by row and finds Rory. He’s in the back. Scrawny. So young. He’s wearing a white jersey with a green-and-gold crest on the chest. Rory Rump’s position is listed as a scrum half and assistant captain. He’s peering over the shoulder of another boy who sits front and center. This kid is bigger than the rest of them. Wide shouldered, angular face with piercing eyes and black hair.
She grabs the framed photo of Rory and his chums.
Yes. The older one is the same kid in the team photo. Only in the yearbook he’s closer to sixteen, maybe seventeen. Rory looks scrawny but his buddy has gotten bigger. He’s bulked up. But what stands out most is his ear. How had Manny described him?
Jet-black hair. Big man. Stocky. High cheekbones. He was sporting a cauliflower ear. The left one, I think. Or was it the right one?
She checks. Yep. Left ear. She looks at the row of names printed below the photo. It’s Desmond Oaks.
She didn’t see this coming. Rory knows Desmond Oaks. They were friends. Went to the same high school. Played on the same team.
She examines the team photo closer. Dezzie Oaks, as he’s listed, is the hooker and team captain. Looking at young Rory, pity catches in her throat. He’s got one hand resting on Dezzie’s shoulder. Trying to be a part of his world. But Dezzie sits center stage holding the trophy. He’s the star. Rory’s his backup. Her pity sours as she sees what else the pair of teenagers might also be.
A leader and a follower. A captain and his assistant. A rapist and his accomplice.
It all comes together as she stares at the trophy from the tournament in Elgin.
Smaller one held her while the bigger lad raped her. All she could do was stare at the green-and-gold crest on the front of his shirt.
Green-and-gold crests adorn the uniforms of the team in the photo. She sees Rory for who he really is. A background player but a player nonetheless. Always the sidekick. At Depot when her parents were cadets. Their best man. Their next-door neighbor living down the hall from the newlyweds. Even the RCMP put Rory in a supporting role as a second-rate school crossing guard.
Gus closes the yearbook. The scent of Old Spice is everywhere.
Here and back there.
* * *
She’s five. They’ve just moved to Hintonburg. Shannon is having a party. Their first Christmas in the new house. Rory arrives. Cigarette and Old Spice hugs for Gus. And a present to go under the tree. He stands at one end of the dining room table near the food, shuffling foot to foot, nibbling chips and drinking Budweiser from a can. Still works in the county so he doesn’t know any of the officers she’s invited from HQ. He’s not one of them. These are Shannon’s new colleagues. Her friends, not his.
Some have brought casseroles of layered bean dip or trays of shortbread cookies with bright green icing and sprinkles. Some kiss Shannon on both cheeks. Some squeeze her hands in theirs. The table fills with Christmas cheer. The guests get louder and more red-faced.
Gus is in charge of the buffet. Keeping it stocked with mini paper napkins and toothpicks for the olives and clearing away the dirty plates. She hears Rory tell the same bad joke to anyone who comes near the buffet. He waves from his corner if he’s introduced to a new arrival, but he never looks to Gus like he’s joined the party.
When it’s time for bed, Gus pretends to go up but instead watches from the top of the dark stairs through the railing. Watches as the wobbly guests laugh and dance and spill red wine and talk with food between their teeth and put their arms over each other’s shoulders like they’re lifelong buddies. Later they stumble as they put on their boots and coats and hats. Until the last of them leaves.
All except Rory. Gus sneaks down the stairs and peeks down the hallway. Shannon and Rory are in the kitchen. It’s a mess of dirty platters and plastic wineglasses. Wearing his winter coat, Rory’s gathering paper plates and shoving them into a green garbage bag near the sink. Shannon’s putting leftover cookies in a Tupperware container. He turns toward her. Puts his hands on her waist. Shannon jumps, spins around, and slaps him across the face with a dishcloth. She has wine eyes.
Shannon grabs the garbage bag and takes it out the side door, leaving Rory alone in the kitchen. Gus watches as he dips his finger into the icing of a half-eaten cake and licks it. His mouth is tight, like a scolded child’s. Shannon
comes back inside. Mumbles something to him, then turns her back and begins to wash the dishes in the sink. He waits for her to look at him. She doesn’t so he slips on his boots and leaves through the back door. Once he’s gone, Gus watches as her mother stops washing the dishes, turns, and leans against the sink. Drying her hands with a dishcloth. She sighs, stares up at the ceiling. Then she yells.
Why the fuck did you leave me, Charlie?
Gus runs up to bed and hides under the covers.
* * *
Rory has likely loved Shannon since the day they met in cadet training. And even with Charlie gone, she didn’t want him. Must have hurt. And if he was connected in some way to the rape of June Halladay and Shannon found out, she would have never forgiven him. Would have hated him. That thought, more than the rape, has probably haunted his nights.
Gus almost feels sorry for Rory.
The sound of gravel crunching under tires startles Gus. Lost track of time. Rory’s home for lunch. Gus darts down the hall and slips out his bedroom window as the screen door in the kitchen slams. She tumbles to the grass and races across the lawn.
As she pushes through the buckthorns, she can see the yearbook lying open on the sofa. Right where she left it. Open to the page with the rugby team photo. Lying right next to the framed picture of Rory and Dez. Childhood friends.
32
Ollie
GUS PULLS INTO THE PARKING LOT BEHIND THE LOW-RISE apartment. She parks in the same spot as before in visitor parking. She grabs the gun from the glove compartment and places it inside her satchel. Then she holds out a dog cookie for Levi. He snaps it from her fingers. She rolls her eyes. Tells him she’ll be right back. He knows what that means. He’s not invited. Levi sulks and grinds his teeth into the cookie. She locks the car doors.
Skirting the building, Gus peers around the corner and scans the pool deck. No Dez. The pool has been filled since her last visit. A half-deflated inner tube bearing a yellow smiley face floats on the murky water. The smiley face is twisted into a smirk. Dry leaves lift in mini-tornados along the walkway, circling Augusta as she walks toward the building.