Dark August

by Katie Tallo

  Gus was called as a witness at Tommy’s trial. She recounted what happened at Rory’s house right up to the moment when Tommy was handcuffed to a gurney and taken away by ambulance.

  The rest is between her and Sergeant Martina Stanton. Marty, as Augusta calls her now.

  GUS WAS SITTING IN THE PASSENGER SEAT OF STANTON’S CAR. Two RCMP officers were stretching yellow crime scene tape across Rory’s back porch. Stanton got in the car. They both stared out the front window as the team cordoned off the property. Gus was grateful, but curious.

  Why were you out here anyway?

  Stanton looked at Gus.

  It was something you said. It stuck with me. I decided to look into the 911 call from the night of your mum’s accident. It turns out it came from her number. Only there was no cell phone found at the scene. I checked the evidence box. Nothing. I tried to track down the 911 recording and the file had been deleted.

  Gus turned to look at the policewoman who saved her life.

  What did I say that stuck with you?

  That Rory told you he was there that night. He pulled her out of the vehicle. At first, I brushed it off. I thought he was trying to impress you. Only it didn’t sit right. None of the officers on the scene mentioned him being there. It felt more like a slipup than a white lie. And then you said I had a tail on you. That got my ears perked too.

  Gus nodded. Stanton continued.

  So I tracked down the department Hansel just so he could have a look-see. That’s what we call the tech guy who’s good at finding little crumbs of data. A hacker type. Long story short, he found that deleted 911 call. It came from your mom’s phone all right, but it wasn’t her voice. It was our good buddy, Constable Rump. I’d recognize that weak-ass chirp anywhere.

  No phone at the scene. Deleted call. I knew he was up to something. But I didn’t know what or how deep. I came by here to confront the SOB, then I see him lying in a pool of blood in his den and some fella’s pointing a gun at your back. First time I ever discharged my weapon. After thirty-five years on the force.

  During the trial in Ottawa, Augusta took to meeting Marty for breakfast at the Capital Diner before walking over to the courthouse together. The older woman’s graying sideburns and rumpled sweaters reminded Gus of a slightly disheveled schoolmarm. Marty helped ease Augusta’s nerves about testifying. And Gus helped Marty see the big picture. Stanton’s hard edges had definitely softened since making her decision to take early retirement after being awarded a Special Service Medal from the RCMP for her actions that day at Rory’s.

  When the trial was over and Tommy got a life sentence, both of them knew it was time they parted ways. They didn’t need each other anymore. Besides, Marty was moving to Winnipeg to be closer to her son and her grandchildren. The two women said their goodbyes and walked away from each other. Then Marty turned and chased after Gus. She gave her a big bear hug.

  I’m proud of you. And they would be too.

  46

  Augusta

  EVEN AFTER A YEAR, THE HAIR ON LEVI’S BELLY HAS NEVER quite grown back after being shaved for his surgery. He’s put on some weight. Drools a little and favors his left hip when he walks, but he’s doing pretty good for a thirteen-year-old mutt. Ninety-one in human years.

  It’s autumn and Gus has found a cozy apartment in Wellington West just a few blocks from Island Park Drive. The developer who bought Rose’s house tore it down and built a modern duplex in its place. All glass and sharp angles. Just like the one that replaced the house in Hintonburg where Gus lived with her mother. Seems that’s what happens to the old houses in her family. It’s as if they never existed. But Gus is okay with them being gone. With no one living there in her place. She can hold them in her memories and visit them anytime. There they can belong to her and her alone.

  Gus gets a job at a local pet shop selling chew toys and dog food to the neighborhood canine lovers. She knows most of the regulars by name and their dogs’ names too. Best part of the job is that she can bring Levi to work. He sits in the window watching the world go by and occasionally someone asks if he’s for sale. He’s not. When he feels up to it, he lumbers over to greet a customer. Most days he just people-watches and naps.

  Monday is her day off. If it’s sunny, Gus and Levi usually walk the neighborhood. Buy a raspberry cassis donut at Suzy Qs and a takeout coffee from Bridgehead. The baristas know how she likes her coffee and Terry at Suzy Qs always has a treat in his pocket for Levi. They head over to the Byron path to sit on their favorite bench and soak up the sun.

  On this one particularly cool Monday, Missy saunters toward them. She’s a lanky goldendoodle with a serious crush on Levi. Gus chats with Raj, her owner, while the dogs nose each other’s private parts. Raj and Gus discuss how the leaves are already turning and the nights are getting cooler. Then Raj and Missy move on down the path.

  Levi sniffs the air. Then he taps her leg with one paw. Gus knows what he wants. She pulls the raspberry donut from its bag, breaks off a morsel, and holds it out to him.

  He nips at it and she pulls her hand away before he can snap up the morsel.

  “Gentle,” she scolds. Then, ever so softly and slowly, Levi lifts his chin and brings his mouth close to the piece of donut and gently takes it from her fingers. She smiles as he gulps it down in one piece.

  “Who says you can’t teach an old dog?”

  Augusta pets the top of his furry golden head. Again, he lifts his nose and flares his graying nostrils.

  Gus smells it too. Smoke on the air. Coming from someone’s backyard. Burning leaves or maybe warming themselves on this cool fall day by their fireplace.

  The smell transports her back in time. Just over a year ago. The day after Rory and Dez were killed. When she couldn’t stop herself from jumping into her great-grandmother’s old Buick and heading out on the highway one more time. Levi couldn’t make that road trip. He was still in the hospital. So she was to go it alone. But she didn’t feel alone. Even the car seemed to know where she wanted to go.

  Back to Halladay House.

  47

  Gracie

  AUGUSTA PICKS UP THE GAS CAN AND STRIDES DOWN THE hill through the purple loosestrife, across the dusty road and up the steep incline toward the house. She takes the long gravel lane until it reaches the flagstone path. She’s deep in the shadow of the house now. She climbs the front steps. The rotting cedar planks creak. She crosses the veranda, bracing for a cave-in that doesn’t come. The front windows are boarded up. The front door is draped with ivy. Gus pushes aside the ivy and it falls away in one great swath of dead vines. She wipes dirt from a small window in the massive door and peers inside.

  Dust churns a ghostly dance in the foyer. To the left is the front parlor. Its furniture is shrouded in flammable sheets. Bird wings flutter somewhere deep inside the house. An enormous dusty staircase ascends from the foyer to a second-floor landing. It looks like no one has stepped foot on those stairs in years.

  Names swirl around Augusta’s mind. Pirouetting like the dust. The names of the places and the faces that brought her to this moment. But standing at the front door of Halladay House, one name dances above them all. Gus knocks and calls out.

  Gracie?

  She waits. She knows, even if she’s right and Gracie is here, that this isn’t the way in. She’s trying to be polite by knocking on the front door, but now she just feels ridiculous. She leaves the gas can sitting on the porch and walks around the side of the house. She knows the real way in.

  Gus heads to the back garden. She spots the trellis. Walks through it. She finds the corner by the low stone wall. Sees the hatch in the ground. She pulls it open and climbs down the ladder, then makes her way through the dark tunnel into the basement. She reaches the narrow hallway below the house. Climbs a small staircase then works her way along the passage to a door.

  Then Gus pauses.

  She knows that behind the door is the spiral staircase leading up. But the other way, down the walled passage, is where
her mother peered into the parlor that fateful night. Gus works her way down the passage toward the peephole. She examines the dusty floor at her feet, smells the musty air, and leans toward the hole, her heart beating steadily. Her mother was right here, peering in. Gus can’t see much. It’s too dim. She can only make out a few shadowy shapes in the parlor. Then Gus turns away from where her mother stood that night. She runs her fingers along the passage wall as she makes her way to the door at the far end. She opens it and climbs to the top of the staircase. Once there, she slowly opens the door to the attic and steps inside.

  Hello?

  A chill runs through her as she looks around Gracie’s room. The room her mother videotaped more than a decade earlier. Not much has changed. The small bed is neatly made. Under it is a row of plastic grocery baskets. Some are empty. Some are filled with canned beans and tuna and packages of black licorice. The licorice Levi had on his breath. On the side table by the bed are a can opener and a mason jar of fresh wildflowers. Purple loosestrife. The ceiling is still strung with small bulbs and in the corner, still there, is the large table with Gracie’s knives and jars of colored liquid. The tools of the mortuary trade.

  Taught the child all about embalming and sewing skin and covering flesh with makeup.

  Gus approaches the table. There are bits of animal hide and spools of coarse thread strewn about next to the tinted batch of liquids. She picks up one of the jars. A greenish-yellow liquid. Embalming fluid. Poison. She looks at the shelves where the collection of dead animals is displayed. Fox, squirrel, raccoon, black bird. Possum is back.

  They’re all there, except the rabbit.

  A creak startles Gus and she spins around. There’s no one there. Then she hears another soft creak. It’s coming from the corner wardrobe. She places the embalming fluid slowly back on the table and steps toward the wardrobe. The door moves ever so slightly. It’s her.

  Augusta is suddenly overwhelmed by a deep sense of shame. She feels like a child caught spying on her best friend. Without invitation, she’s thrust herself into Gracie’s very private world. Into her personal space. Without her permission.

  Shame quickly gives way to fear. There is no seven-year-old ballerina hiding in that wardrobe. There is a woman who’s been living in an attic for over five years.

  Reality dawns.

  Gus is alone with Gracie Halladay. A woman she doesn’t know. Up high in the rafters of a boarded-up mansion that no one ever visits. She could disappear without a trace. Her mind races. She wishes Levi was by her side right now. Augusta eyes the knives on the table. The wardrobe door inches open a crack. Gus almost screams, but instead she runs.

  There’s no way in hell she’s waiting around to see what’s coming out of that closet.

  Gus dives for the circular rug at the center of the room, rips it away, pulls the trapdoor open, and jumps through the opening. She lands in a heap on the floor below. She’s up fast and running down the hall. She finds the staircase leading down to the main level. She takes the stairs two by two, misjudging the last step and sprawling face-first across the dusty central foyer. She rolls onto her side. In the murky light of the parlor, she glimpses a pair of shoes sticking out from under a sheet draped over one of the large armchairs.

  She looks up the stairs. Hears no footsteps.

  Curiosity gets the better of her.

  Gus pulls herself to her feet and steps into the parlor. Slowly, she crosses the carpet toward the armchair. It sits across from the fireplace. Exactly where it was in Edgar’s model and in Shannon’s video. Kep Halladay’s chair. Gus reaches out, takes hold of one corner of the sheet covering the chair, holds her breath, and yanks. As the sheet cascades to the floor, a dust cloud wafts up. She closes her eyes, waving away the dust particles. As they dissipate, she squints, not fully processing what her eyes are seeing.

  Propped against the cushions of the armchair, wearing a suit and tie and dress shoes, sits a bizarre, desiccated, life-size mannequin. Stray hairs jut from its bald head and a ghoulish lipstick smile is painted across its ashen face. Gus can’t take her eyes off the grisly figure, the face a patchwork of stitches, the eyes black.

  Her mind flashes to Gracie’s embalming fluids, sharp knives, spools of thread, and dead animal hides. Could it be?

  She leans closer and suddenly grasps the horror of what actually sits in front of her. This is no mannequin. It’s a human cadaver. Drained, stuffed, strung together with coarse thread, and preserved by fluids. She gags. It’s him.

  It’s Kep Halladay.

  The stairs groan behind her. Gus jumps. She tears her eyes away from Gracie’s handiwork and races from the room. Without so much as a glance up the stairs, she does a sliding run across the foyer and lunges for the front door. She struggles with the dead bolt. Finally gets it to budge and wrenches open the dusty door. The oppressive August heat assaults her lungs. She lurches out the door and trips over the gas can. Both Gus and the gas can tumble down the front steps. Landing on the flagstone path, Gus rolls over, flat on her back, staring up at Halladay House. She freezes.

  A figure moves toward the front door.

  Adrenaline has Gus pinned. She wants to get up and run, but she can’t.

  The woman’s face is hidden in the shadows, but Gus can make out her arms. She’s cradling a dead rabbit. Stroking the rabbit’s head.

  The two women are just a few feet away from each other, but Gus can feel the vast expanse between them. She pictured them being kindred spirits. Orphaned sisters. Bonded by a mutual hatred for this house. She imagined they would burn it to the ground together. But this house is not what she thought it was. It’s more than a house of horrors. It’s a reliquary. A macabre shrine where the past has been carefully, almost lovingly, preserved. It is a sad and lonely prison where a little girl continues to punish herself by living among the dead.

  Gus realizes that this house is not hers to burn. And the past is no longer her burden. Gracie is not hers to save. Nor was she her mother’s. Gracie never belonged to either of them.

  Gus carefully gets to her feet. She slowly moves to turn and leave, but then she remembers the envelope in her back pocket. The letter for Gracie. The letter Lois slipped into her pocket when she hugged Gus at the bus terminal. Lois knew it could only have been Gracie who left the diary in the Buick. She knew she’d survived the fire. Maybe she always knew. For she was the one who likely chose the words on Gracie’s headstone.

  She will remain forever alive in our hearts.

  Gus is pretty sure the envelope contains some cash and a plea to come home to her family, but she hasn’t opened it. It’s addressed to Gracie Halladay. The return address on Cottonwood Crescent is clearly marked on the front.

  Gus steps cautiously toward the porch. Gracie cowers back into the shadows as Gus gently leans toward her, placing the letter on the porch steps. She rights the gas can, leaving both for Gracie.

  As Augusta crests the hill beyond the house, she looks skyward toward the puffy white clouds trimmed by golden sunlight. Gus pushes through the purple loosestrife, letting it scratch her legs. The farther she gets from Halladay House, the more the past seems to loosen its grip on her heart and a sense of peace begins to wash over her entire being. With each stride she feels herself walking toward the present, breathing in the pungent aroma of the weeds, letting her fingertips graze the purple buds, sending tiny seeds floating up behind her.

  The faint smell of smoke wafts on the August breeze.

  Real or imagined, she’s not sure.

  Acknowledgments

  WHEN I TOLD MY FAMILY I WAS WRITING A NOVEL, THEY said, Of course you are. Their belief in me, their constant support, love, and enthusiasm are my fuel. I’m lucky.

  Lucky to have Andy Sinclair by my side. He puts up with my half-listening and waving him off when I’m writing. The man never complains. In fact, he does the opposite. He’s my personal booster. He’s okay with being Mr. Tallo and he always lets me take the driver’s seat. Without him along for the ride,
this novel would never have been written and the journey wouldn’t have been half as much fun. Here’s to three more decades, my love.

  I’m lucky to have a life overflowing with strong women who inspire me to tell women’s stories and who each in her own way informed this novel. Kathleen, who was the mother I needed even if she didn’t always think she was. My multi-talented sister, Louise, who continues to love me despite the fact that I used to pull her red hair. Maggie, for her beautiful, open heart. Sue and Lori, who knew me at eight and will always be a part of my stories. Chantal, for her love and wisdom and for always being there to read pages before they’re ready. Vivi, whose unwavering faith in me means more than she’ll ever know. Jen, who devours books and was there to support me when this one was just a dream. Jamie, for lifting me up with lots of kudos when I most needed them. And LA, my writer-in-arms, for letting me have the river view, for the camaraderie, advice, writing talk, and healthy snacks. I’m immeasurably grateful to all of you.

  And I’m luckier still to have had an early champion and mentor in Tom Shoebridge. He believed in my writing before I did. His early encouragement has helped light the way, even years later.

  I want to thank Stephen Parolini, The Novel Doctor, who read my early draft, gave me great notes, and offered a discerning, reassuring glimpse at what this novel could become.

  I also want to thank my editors, Emily Taylor and Sarah Stein, for guiding this first-timer through the editing process with grace and patience, for encouraging me to retain and strengthen the heart in the story, while still embracing the creepy stuff. Thanks for loving Gus and Levi as much as I do. And to the team at HarperCollins, from design to copyediting, the creativity and talent and attention you have poured into the making of this book has been overwhelming.