The Diamond House

by Dianne Warren

  She found her glasses on her chair and put them on, and she saw that he was smoking a cigarette. Although he never touched alcohol, he liked his cigarettes.

  “You’re the one we should worry about,” she said. “You ought to give those up.”

  She draped her towel over her chair and sat down, and he got up from the steps and came to sit next to her in one of the empty chairs left by Nicholas and Hannah. He ground his smoke out in the sand, and then tucked the butt into his cigarette pack.

  “Everybody’s got a vice,” he said.

  The merganser was still there. Estella watched as it darted into a particularly reflective spot on the water and disappeared, as though the glare had made it invisible. She looked down at her bare white feet and saw that they shimmered in and out of her vision like a pair of poltergeists. It would be easy enough, she thought, to lose sight of a person, especially one as small as Lonny, in such bright light.

  “There it is, then,” she said as the merganser popped back into view.

  She had just been handed an explanation for Lonny’s disappearance from the beach, an alternative to the prevailing one, which was that she had momentarily lost her mind. When she and Peter had got back to the cottage—after he’d finally put her down and let her walk—Lydia and Mercy were both mad at her and claimed they’d found Lonny alone by the water when she was supposed to be watching him. She tried to tell them that she’d seen him go into the bush but they wouldn’t listen. While Lydia berated her, Mercy at least got her a glass of water, but she was so confused and hurt that she slapped the glass out of Mercy’s hand, and it hit the edge of the table and shattered. One of the shards hit Lonny’s wrist, and a drop of blood immediately appeared and trickled down his hand. Mercy checked and it was just a scratch, but Lydia had to say, “Now look what you’ve done,” and Estella saw the blood and she felt sick. She would never, ever have intended to hurt Lonny.

  Peter had taken charge then and sent everyone out on the deck while he got the glass cleaned up. No one spoke. Mercy dabbed Lonny’s wrist with a tissue until it stopped bleeding. Then Peter called them back inside and said, “No real harm done. Best sleep on it, eh.” As he went to leave, he patted Estella’s shoulder. It was a small thing, acknowledgement that he knew she had meant no harm and had only been trying to help when she’d gone into the trees. She tried to halt the tears that she felt coming, but once Peter was gone, she couldn’t.

  Mercy attempted to give her a hug and she wanted to lean in to her, but instead she pulled away and said, “Leave me alone,” so they did.

  In the morning, Lonny had a green and red ladybug Band-Aid on his wrist. They packed up and left right after breakfast, even though they still had a day remaining on their reservation. All the way home, Estella felt sick every time she saw Lonny run his fingers over the Band-Aid.

  No wonder they’d chosen to send him to camp this year.

  No wonder Peter Boone had said to her when she’d come out of the water, “You scare me, Missus.” The shimmering sunlight had provided an explanation for why she had not seen Lonny when he was right there, on the beach, but there was no explanation for why she’d knocked that glass out of Mercy’s hand.

  Peter stood from the chair under the umbrella and said he’d best go, he had work to do. The Caiges were in Prince Albert for the day meeting with their lawyers; they were expecting guests, and he was supposed to check them in. As he walked back to stairs by the spruce tree, Estella saw Nicholas and Hannah returning. When they stepped out of the water and joined her under the umbrella, water dripping from their hair and suits, they were surprised to see her bare legs and the T-shirt revealing a wet bathing suit underneath. She told them she was not good for much more than a quick dip.

  Nicholas dried his hair with a towel and asked, “Was that Peter Boone I saw?”

  Before Estella could answer, they were all distracted by the merganser running along the surface of the water. It took off in spectacular fashion, with wings flapping and water splashing out in all directions.

  NICHOLAS AND HANNAH barbecued burgers for supper that night. After they’d eaten, Estella got out Salina’s beads. She told them only that they were an heirloom, and had been given to her by her father. She wanted Hannah to see the figures on the beads because they were not unlike the ones she had drawn in the spruce tree. Hannah picked up the beads and ran her fingers over the tiny faces, then handed them back to Estella without saying anything. Estella put them in the velvet bag and returned them carefully to her purse.

  Not long after, Hannah said she was going to bed even though it was early. Nicholas made tea, and he and Estella sat on the deck and watched the sun setting through the trees. Estella had been wanting to ask Nicholas what he knew about Jack’s disappearance and now was a good time, with Hannah asleep.

  It had been assumed he’d drowned himself in the Bow River, but she didn’t know any details. “There must have been talk,” she said. “He’d been depressed, we all knew that, but had it gotten worse? Did the family know what he was about to do?”

  “I don’t think so,” Nicholas said. “He just walked away one day.”

  He told her that most of what he knew about Jack had come from his Uncle Don, who said Jack went to a store called Wong’s Lucky Grocery for cigarettes and didn’t come back, just like in the movies. He didn’t leave a note. He took nothing with him but his wallet. Rose remembered him sticking it in his pants pocket and saying, “Just popping out for fags,” and she told him to get a pound of butter too because she was low for baking. She saw his hat pass the kitchen window, and then she never saw him again.

  The police interviewed Eddy Wong and he confirmed that Jack had been in the store, and he’d bought cigarettes and butter and some licorice, and then he’d left with a paper grocery bag in his hand. Eddy hadn’t seen which direction he’d gone, but he remembered that he’d been whistling. He volunteered the opinion that happy people whistle. The police asked him if he could remember what the song was, because a sad one might mean the opposite. Eddy didn’t know. He wasn’t familiar with many Canadian songs. He only knew it wasn’t “O Canada” or “Happy Birthday.”

  “They kept the investigation open for a long time,” Nicholas said, “but they never came up with a shred of information that went past the moment when Eddy Wong heard him whistling his way out the door of the corner shop.”

  Estella said that she remembered her brother Andrew travelling to Calgary to help search, before he finally moved there.

  “That’s right,” Nicholas said. “Apparently Andrew would walk from Grandma Rose’s house to Wong’s, as though retracing Jack’s steps might tell him something. He took Don with him sometimes, and when they got to Wong’s, he would ask Don, ‘Which way would your father go from here if it was a nice evening and he wanted to go for a walk?’ Or, ‘Is there a bowling alley nearby? We used to go bowling in London, during the war.’ They would walk whatever route Don suggested, and he remembers Andrew rifling through the bushes along the way. He pictured them finding his father’s hat or his wallet, or even his body. He said it was terrifying. And then he remembers one time, after Andrew and Harmony moved to Calgary, when Andrew went to the house to collect him and they went to Wong’s and Andrew bought a pack of cigarettes and a bag of licorice Twizzlers. Then they walked to the Bow River and sat on the bank for an hour, smoking and eating licorice. Andrew finally said, ‘I think he must have fallen in.’ Don wanted to say ‘or jumped’ but he couldn’t bring himself to admit that his father had probably killed himself. Then Andrew said he didn’t suppose they’d ever know for sure what happened. And that was the last time Don remembered searching for his father.”

  Estella thought it was hardly fair of Andrew to take Jack’s son with him on those searches. What if they had found his body?

  When the sun was gone and it was dark, they went to bed, but when Estella got under the blankets, she found that she couldn’t sleep. She kept thinking about Jack, whistling in Wong’s Lucky Grocery
, walking into the river and leaving those two boys behind. What had been going through his head? That he was a disappointment to everyone because he had never recovered from the war? Or the opposite: that the world was a disappointment to him? Jack had become unknowable, and watching him retreat from her—long before he’d gone missing in Calgary—had been the greatest sorrow of her life.

  An hour passed and she was still awake, so she got up and put the kettle on, trying to be silent so she wouldn’t wake anyone else. Hannah’s sketchbook was on the kitchen table. She opened it again to see if she had drawn anything new, and there was a drawing of a bicycle, very carefully rendered and accurate. She thought of her own poor watercolour versions of Lake Claire. Hannah’s drawings were far superior. She closed the sketchbook and then found herself sitting at the table crying. She could not understand what was wrong with her, why the tears were so close to the surface.

  She heard the bedroom door open and Hannah came out, closing the door carefully after her. She was wearing plaid cotton pyjama bottoms and a T-shirt. She looked alarmed when she saw Estella, and Estella quickly wiped her eyes and said, “Don’t mind me. I’m just a weepy old lady.”

  “Should I get Dad?” Hannah asked.

  “No,” Estella said. “Nothing’s wrong. Nothing at all.”

  Her kettle was boiling. She went to the stove and made herself a cup of tea. Hannah went into the bathroom and closed the door. When she came out, Estella was sitting at the table, her tea in front of her, and Hannah surprised her by coming to the table and draping an arm over her shoulders.

  “I don’t much like being old,” she said.

  “I know,” Hannah said.

  How could she know? Estella wondered.

  “Will you have to go and live in a home?” Hannah asked.

  “No,” Estella said. “I’d rather throw myself down the stairs.”

  She immediately thought she shouldn’t have said that, not to a child.

  “Did I shock you?” she asked.

  “Not really,” Hannah said.

  Estella said, “Anyway, Emyflor will look after me. So that’s that.”

  Then they both went back to bed. Estella left her tea on the table.

  When she was settled again, she thought not of Jack but of Peter Boone carrying her out of the bush. She’d wrapped her arms around his neck and felt the wiry muscles in his shoulders, the heat coming off his body, and his breath against her cheek.

  It had been a long time since she’d felt another human being that close.

  She fell asleep remembering.

  THE BATHING SUITS were hanging near the deck on a line strung between two trees: Nicholas’s shorts, Estella’s old two-piece, and Hannah’s tiny orange bikini. Hannah and Nicholas had been for a swim and were now making lunch in the cottage. A hummingbird kept darting past the bikini as though it couldn’t believe it was not in the flower family. Estella was sitting on the deck watching it when Peter came around the corner carrying a bucket of steaming water and a plunger, saying that he was going to get the dent out of her car. She watched with curiosity as he drizzled hot water over the dent, and then sucked it back out again with the plunger.

  After he left, she stepped off the deck to run her hand over the place where the dent had been. There was no sign of it. When Nicholas came out carrying a plate of sandwiches, she showed him the spot where the dent had been and told him he could stop worrying about it, thanks to Peter Boone.

  Since it was their last day, Estella suggested they go for ice cream in the village. It was blistering hot, so they drove rather than walk. Nicholas was able to find a parking spot on the busy street, a bit of a miracle. Because it was Canada Day, someone had stuck little maple leaf flags on the windshields of all the cars, and the ice cream stand was offering holiday cones topped with red sprinkles and flags on toothpicks. A poster on the order counter announced an all-ages party that evening at the golf course, with fireworks after dark.

  There were a few plastic tables and chairs on the grass next to the ice cream stand and they sat in the shade with their cones. They could see that the public beach was crowded, and a steady stream of vehicles passed by on the street pulling boat trailers and golf carts. At the marina, the decommissioned paddlewheeler was still moored. It would be gone, Estella thought, if she ever made it back here again. A drip of red-and-white ice cream was running from her cone down her hand and she licked it off.

  Hannah didn’t seem to be eating her cone and was instead stabbing her Canadian flag in and out of her ice cream. Then she suddenly got up and dropped her whole cone in a garbage can by the stand, and headed down the sidewalk, back toward the cottages.

  “What was that about?” Estella asked.

  “She’s moody,” Nicholas said. “Best to let her be.” Then he added, “The separation.”

  Just then a familiar car parked illegally right in front of the stand and a man got out. It was the man who had run into them at the stop sign. Estella could see right away that she had been wrong, it wasn’t the TV weatherman after all, although there was a resemblance. She wondered if Nicholas recognized him, and when she looked at him she saw that he did, and was probably hoping she hadn’t.

  “Yeah, that’s the guy,” he said. “But let’s give him a break. It’s Canada Day, right?”

  She agreed. It was too hot for a confrontation.

  The man ordered six ice cream cones and then carried them back to his car in a cardboard holder. He pulled out right in front of a big diesel truck towing a long flatbed trailer, and the truck driver honked, which drew everyone’s attention.

  Estella said, “He’s going to get himself killed.”

  There was a police vehicle behind the truck, an SUV like Lydia’s, and Estella thought it might follow the car and ticket the driver, but instead the SUV slipped into the now-empty spot in front of the ice cream stand. A young woman officer parked and got out, and walked back to Estella’s car and had a look at the plate. Estella remembered her call from the pay phone. She hadn’t given her plate number but she supposed they had looked it up.

  “There’s free parking on the street, isn’t there?” Nicholas asked. “I didn’t see any signs.” Estella told him it wasn’t that, it was because she had called about the accident.

  “I ought to tell them not to bother,” she said.

  Nicholas looked as though he might say something, but he didn’t, and Estella waved the officer over. She explained that she was the one who had reported the accident at the three-way stop but she would like to withdraw her complaint, there was no damage, the dent had been taken care of.

  “The handyman at our rental fixed it with a plunger,” she said. “So, no harm done. Well, not yet anyway. That driver of the other car is a menace.” Another creamy drip with a red candy in it ran down her hand and once again she licked it off.

  The officer said something about the handyman earning his name, and at that moment Nicholas finished his cone and got up to drop his napkin in the garbage. The officer’s eyes followed him. He wiped his hands with another napkin and then he waited for Estella by the stand.

  “Just for my notes, though,” the officer said, “who were you were travelling with?”

  “My nephew, Nicholas,” Estella said. “And his daughter.”

  “Are you Nicholas?” the officer called to him.

  “Yes,” he said. “I was driving the car.”

  “Okay, then,” she said to Estella. “That’s all I need. We’ll cancel that report. You folks have a nice day.” She walked back toward her vehicle and got in. Estella could see her writing in her notebook before she drove off.

  When she was gone, Estella threw the last of her cone in the garbage, and Nicholas said he thought they should get back and check on Hannah. They stopped at the grocery store on the way and picked up frozen fish and chips for supper. Hannah was not in the cottage when they got there, so Nicholas went looking for her and found her sunbathing on the beach. He put on his suit and joined her.

>   Estella got out her watercolour box and sat on the deck to do her annual painting. She attempted the spruce tree, the one she had once thought of as the porter’s tree, the one Hannah had drawn so adeptly in her book, but she got the paper too wet and the tree turned into a messy green blob. She thought she was getting worse at watercolour rather than better, and she put it away in her room before Hannah could see it.

  THE FLATBED THEY had seen in town had come for the Claire de la Lune. Peter stopped by Emily Carr after supper that evening and told Estella that a man from Manitoba had bought and paid for the old boat, and was now at the bar in The Travellers.

  “Throwing himself a pretty good Canada Day party, I hear,” he said.

  The two of them were sitting on the deck. Nicholas and Hannah had walked down to the public beach hoping to see the fireworks from there. Estella had packed her bathing suit away, but Hannah’s and Nicholas’s were on the line again, damp from another swim. The sunset was peeking through the trees.

  Peter said, “He’ll be in The Travellers all night.”

  A minute later, he said, “I imagine most of the town will be up at the golf course.”

  It seemed as though he was getting at something, but Estella wasn’t sure what until he said, “What do you think about one last tour on the boat before she goes? I can’t see any harm in it.”

  Estella already knew her answer was yes, but she said, “Are you certain she won’t sink?”

  Peter assured her that the paddlewheeler was still seaworthy, and Estella retrieved her sweater from the bedroom. The two of them sat on the deck and waited for the orange sky to grow dark. Peter said this was the first night since the beginning of the season that he hadn’t gone down to the pier to turn on the patio lanterns and play music for an hour. He wondered if anyone had noticed.