“If you come near her, I’ll have you killed,” she said thinly. “Or I’ll kill you myself. I have a gun.”
Daniel smiled. “Come on, Gwen. You’re going to shoot me? The father of your daughter?”
“She has a father.”
He flinched, then his eyes seemed to draw back into his head. His lips disappeared again. Whatever he had taken was kicking in, Gwen thought.
He spoke slowly. “I was going to make amends, you know. I looked for you. You changed your name. Why’d you do that? Was it all so bad?” He let out a low moaning sound and pawed at his face.
Gwen was alarmed. Was he about to cry?
Then his hands dropped and he said, sadly, “You never looked for me.”
He was asking for her pity, she realized. This request gave her power. She stood taller. “No,” said Gwen. “I never looked for you. Not once.”
Something awoke in Daniel, an old instinct pushing through his haze. She watched it happen: he uncoiled, his neck straightened. She had forgotten how suddenly the violence would arrive. He was upon her, striking her with a fist on the chin. Her purse dropped to the ground. His arms enfolded her and shoved her body, face first, to the glass doors. She made a sound she couldn’t hear, and his hand was over her mouth, salty and hot, muffling her nose, too, cutting off her breath. Blood trickled from her forehead, warming the glass, and her face was immoveable as he held her head to the door, pressing against her backside, pinning her. Gwen tried to yell through his hand, kicking the air, her view forced to the cigarette burning near her foot, and nearby, the open purse.
In those seconds, as she writhed, she thought that all of it had long ago been decided. From the moment he was born, unwanted, he was moving toward this moment, just as she had been loosed into the world from her cold childhood at seventeen, and arrived, as expected, at this paint-peeled balcony that repeated itself for twenty floors.
And then—he let go. Gwen sputtered, taking a long gasping breath before turning to see him, standing with the gun in his hand, raised. She took it in: a gun pointed directly at her from a few feet away—a man holding a gun. She knew that in such moments, people fought to live; instinct took over, and women howled, tore the air, punched back. But finally, after all the struggle of a moment ago, she didn’t feel ferocious. Her body settled. Warmth wrapped around her: acceptance, or resignation. She had done her best, really, with what she had been given, and what she had been given was an abundance, an embarrassment of riches. Seth. Maddie. Eli. This sun-soaked day, and the one before, and the one before. Her great, good fortune. She closed her eyes and waited.
At the crack of the bullet, her heartbeat accelerated and her eyes snapped open. But she couldn’t feel the bullet, couldn’t locate any new injury in her body. Daniel was standing strangely, with his arm extended overhead and the gun in his hand, pointed at the sky. His chin rested on his chest, and his other arm dangled, boneless. Gwen’s ears rang, but she could hear him, fuzzily: “Get out.” Then he moved fast, putting one boot on the railing, then both hands, still gripping the gun. He hoisted his other leg. He pulled himself up to his full height, spine and neck straight, eyes forward, then balanced on the very top of the railing, as if he had been walking and decided to stop at this spot to take a rest. For a fraction of a second, they stayed in their places, sharing the balcony, Daniel standing and Gwen cowering. Then, without any movement, without jumping, he dropped away; no bend in the knee, no exertion, just a sudden absence.
Gwen fell to the railing, gripping to hold herself up, tasting blood in her mouth. She looked for him, but her vision was smudged, and she could only make out the block shapes of the green hedges below, and farther away, the blur of the picnickers, scrambling and screaming. She felt her way around the edge of the patio to the latch on the door, fumbling until it opened, pushing through, into the apartment. Lurching, she made it to the living room, tripping on toys, toward the sound of the front door, where people were now banging, yelling from the hallway. What’s going on in there?
Gwen looked back at the empty balcony. She shook the lock. The door opened—she had opened the door—and people charged in. “Are you okay?” The man in the tank top went past her, striding to the balcony. She fell on the woman who had been dancing, and this stranger put her arms out and held up Gwen in her collapse.
Summer
17
MADDIE
Maddie barely studied for exams. To her surprise, though, it didn’t really matter. It turned out that she knew things, most things, in fact. She had been absorbing information for years, training herself to think. When she didn’t know a question on a test, she examined it carefully, and then found a crack, and inside the crack, an answer, some kind of answer, even if not the exact right one. There were lots of answers inside her: strange ones, produced by this other brain that had somehow replaced her old one. No—it was her own mind, unsealed. She had been working so hard for so long that she hadn’t noticed it forming, the way a tree in spring is bare one day and thick with leaves the next.
On the last day of her exams, Maddie was cleaning out her locker when she saw Joshua at a distance. She had imagined this moment so often that it almost seemed predictable, although it had been many weeks: Joshua in a black T-shirt, checking his phone. He looked up and saw her, and turned away. She followed him to the end of the corridor, leaving her backpack and books strewn next to her open locker.
“Hey,” she said.
He faced her. She wanted to tell him about Daniel, and all the insanity at home; her mom’s bruised face, and her dad’s uneasy voice when he sat her down and explained what had happened. Daniel died. He had jumped off a balcony. Maybe he thought he would survive it, just three floors, or maybe he had redirected his body mid-air, meaning to hit the concrete, not the grass. Seth had scanned Maddie’s face with such concern—“I’m so sorry, Mads”—that she’d tried to summon grief for him. But her sadness was general, not specific to Daniel, or to herself. She didn’t feel any different, now that she was a girl whose orbit had been invaded by violence, by death. She didn’t feel bad for Daniel, exactly, but for any person like him. Her sadness reached past him, to all the damaged people. And still, she was angry on Gwen’s behalf, because Daniel had been something to her, a long time ago, and look what he had done. But Maddie wasn’t wounded. She hadn’t lost someone; she had never been looking.
The bruises on Gwen’s face helped Maddie see her more clearly. So that’s what her mother had endured. Her lies made a little more sense anyway, and let the air out of Maddie’s frustrations. She wanted to forget about all of it, and get on with finishing high school and becoming someone else.
“Hey,” Joshua said. “I have an exam in five.”
“How’s your mom?” This was a fake question, because, of course, Maddie knew. She had just seen his mom the night before, while Joshua was at work and Alexis at a friend’s. Mrs. Andrada was at home on bedrest, buried under blankets. They drank tea together and watched a mystery show on TV before Maddie slipped out.
The bell rang. The hall began to empty out.
“I know what you’re trying to do. I told my mom it’s crazy,” said Joshua.
Maddie jutted out her chin. She shrugged.
“Maddie, you can’t do it. You can’t do it for me.”
“It’s for your mom.”
Joshua, exasperated, lay it before her. “I don’t love you anymore. I just stopped, okay?”
But it didn’t work. She thrilled at the “anymore,” even in the negative: they had never said they loved each other, but it turned out that he had loved her once.
“I hate this white saviour part of you. I always wondered if it was the reason you went out with me.”
“No—what?” Maddie reeled. “I . . . I went out with you because you’re amazing—you’re . . . Joshua, you don’t need saving—”
“Maddie. Stop. It isn’t up to you. Just enjoy your good luck. Stop torturing yourself.”
They were the only two pe
ople left in the hall. That high school smell of industrial cleaner drifted past.
“My exam’s starting,” Joshua said.
“It’s safe,” Maddie blurted. “I swear. We’re being careful.” He nodded and began to walk away. “Joshua—” He turned back. “Please don’t tell my parents.”
He shook his head and turned down the hall to his exam.
When Joshua was out of sight, Maddie walked slowly back to her locker and emptied it out. She dumped all her binders in the garbage bin by the front doors without recycling the paper. She would skip graduation, and prom, and the adjacent house parties and yearbook signings. When Sophie and Clara were getting their nails done the afternoon before walking across the stage to get their diplomas, Maddie would be halfway around the world. She let the school doors slam behind her.
18
GWEN
Gwen and Seth sat side by side at the kitchen island, drinking coffee and reading the morning news on their tablets. He kissed the top of her head as he brought her toast, which she ate in tiny bites, her bruised jaw burning. Seth watched her chew, a stricken look on his face. She waved him off.
Later, Seth and Tom would be meeting with lawyers to examine the papers and complete the sale. A steadiness had returned to the family that hadn’t been felt since Shadow Pines. Maddie was in the last days of high school. Eli had made the select soccer team, and refused to take off his new uniform. At night, Gwen slept soundly.
Moving on would take time, Seth kept saying, bringing her tea, rubbing her feet. In the fall, Maddie would be away at school (Gwen’s stomach constricted at the thought), but not yet. They had these last months together as a family, free of threat, with the sale of the company promising future comfort. This was the agreement: to enjoy these gains, to be whole.
But Maddie broke the pact. Eli alerted them. He bounded into the kitchen, his rumpled blazer in one hand.
“Where’s Maddie? I need her headphones.”
Gwen looked up. “What do you mean?”
“She’s not in her room.”
“Maybe she had a club meeting this morning,” said Seth.
But Gwen knew her schedule. She shook her head, no, and hopped off the kitchen stool.
Maddie’s bed was made, the room tidy as ever. The blinds were up, and sun streaked in. On her desk, next to her computer, was a piece of paper.
Dear Mom and Dad,
Please don’t worry. I have gone away for a little while, NOT with Joshua. I will be back in a week or so, but if it’s more, please don’t be concerned. What I’m doing is a good thing and I’m going to be fine. You will see. I love you. M.
“Seth,” called Gwen, floating down the hall, her head ringing. “Seth, Seth, Seth . . .”
MADDIE
On her eighteenth birthday, a few hours before her parents took her on a helicopter ride, Maddie had made her pitch to the hospital ethics board. The next day, she got a call that she had been rejected as an altruistic donor, despite being of age.
As the family flew over the city that night, Maddie saw the mall below, and her determination grew. She would not be put off by the hospital’s ridiculous ruling, she decided.
“Joshua works there,” she’d said to Gwen.
Maddie began to visit Mrs. Andrada during her dialysis treatments at the hospital. Mrs. Andrada reclined in her astronaut chair, two red tubes poking out of the white gauze patch on her forearm that covered the fistula but not the bruises. The tubes rested in her open left hand, then trailed to a refrigerator of a machine, humming.
“Madeline,” she said, and turned her smile to Maddie.
From the beginning, Maddie timed her visits according to Joshua’s work schedule and Alexis’s activities, so they would never cross paths. When Maddie first came, Mrs. Andrada was suspicious. “You will call Children’s Aid?” She pinned her with yellowy eyes. Mrs. Andrada saw her as another stranger who might upset the delicate balance that kept the family safe. Maddie might alert authorities who would snatch the children, put Joshua on a plane back to the Philippines. But Maddie kept visiting. Mrs. Andrada said her hands were always cold, so Maddie brought her warm pink mittens. The next time she came, Mrs. Andrada was wearing the mittens, holding the tubes in her bright pink hand. She looked happy to see Maddie.
Maddie liked sitting in the small chair pulled up next to the big one, listening to Mrs. Andrada’s stories about being a teenager growing up on a lake in the Philippines. She could run faster than all of her brothers by the time she was eight. “Alexis is almost as fast,” she said. She looked Maddie up and down. “You should run!” she told her. “You look like a strong girl. Long distance, maybe, not sprints.”
The other patients in the clinic didn’t have visitors. One girl attached to a machine was younger even than Maddie. She sat playing on her phone with her free hand, flicking her retainer in and out of her mouth with her tongue.
When, at last, Maddie brought up altruistic donation, Mrs. Andrada laughed. “You are a silly girl. Hush.” Maddie had never been called silly before, and she kind of liked it.
When the hospital turned her down, Maddie became relentless. She did the research, like the good student she was. And soon, she had a different plan. With each return visit to the clinic, Maddie kept bringing it up, bearing emails and broker information for Mrs. Andrada. It wasn’t that crazy after all. It happened all the time, in fact, and it was the best way—the only way—to make sure that Joshua could go to university, and get his citizenship, to make sure that Alexis wasn’t taken into foster care. But it had to happen quickly. It had to happen now.
Finally, Maddie wore her down. Mrs. Andrada said, “I must speak to your parents.”
“They’re fine with it,” she lied.
“They agree to this?”
Mrs. Andrada had made a few references to the permissive ways of white parents—her job as a nanny was, essentially, to compensate for their lack of involvement—so perhaps she really did believe that this plan of taking an organ from a teenager in a hospital in Manila would sit well with a white family. But Maddie sensed something else at play: Mrs. Andrada didn’t have the luxury of worrying about Maddie’s parents. A switch had been hit. She didn’t ask for Gwen’s number. She had dropped the performance of reluctance.
“Don’t tell Joshua yet,” said Maddie.
Their eyes met, each of them knowing that Joshua opposed the plan, but there was no way forward other than to deceive him. He might be angry for a while, but his mother would be alive. Or they could acquiesce and abandon the plan, and she would die. Either way, he was done with Maddie, so what did it matter? But as the days passed, and Maddie’s mind filled with the task at hand, her ache for him subsided a little. Whenever the yearning returned (late at night, or walking through the city’s ravines), she reminded herself that she was now a person who had endured a broken heart, and that felt like an achievement.
Once the decision was made, Mrs. Andrada was ruthless in her quest to live. She and Maddie set to the labour of it (Maddie demonstrating Gwen’s propensity for organization): communicating with the hospital in Manila; finding a hotel for Maddie to stay in, after. Mrs. Andrada had decided, above all, to survive. Maddie admired it, really. If a rich person made an offer that propelled that survival, she was not so stupid as to turn it down. Maddie knew that Mrs. Andrada had faith in God, and God had delivered her, Maddie, a girl with a superfluous kidney. Now medicine would do the rest.
Maddie used Seth’s credit card to buy the tickets, the same numbers she’d plugged in to pay for her college applications. She had $24,000 American in her bank account, from her college fund. Ten thousand went right away, via wire transfer, and the other ten would be sent when they arrived. It was so easy. Maddie had worried that they would ask for cash, and she didn’t know how to obtain paper money. But Maddie was a legal adult in a digital world where money was just an idea, bytes zooming, bouncing off towers, moving through cables beneath the sea.
Susan would come to help pack, and
move in with Joshua and Alexis while they were gone. Susan owed them, Mrs. Andrada implied. Thanks to Joshua, Susan’s children would arrive from Manila in a month.
GWEN
Gwen tried Maddie’s phone and the tracking device beeped: the phone was at their house. It was, in fact, in the drawer of Maddie’s bedside table.
There was nothing the police could do. Maddie was eighteen, and she had left them a note. She wasn’t a missing person to anyone but her parents.
Frantically, Gwen told Seth to try Tom, to see if Tom could call someone in the RCMP, because he seemed like the most powerful person they knew. Seth seemed baffled by the request, but he called.
Gwen called the school. “Joshua,” Gwen said to the principal, her voice both lower and louder than usual. “Get Joshua.”
Gwen had never met Clara and Sophie, the sole social evidence of Maddie’s year at the U. Half friends. But she asked the principal to call them in. She had no phone numbers for any of these kids; they were all locked away on her daughter’s cell phone. She didn’t know their parents, their addresses, their last names.
Gwen tore up the bedroom and found nothing surprising except a box of condoms and a notebook with one unfinished line in it: “What about the girls who . . .” But in the bottom drawer of a dresser, she found the laptop, not even hidden.
“Eli . . .” Gwen called. He appeared, pale, chewing his fingernail.
“Do you know Maddie’s passwords?”
He looked sheepish, and then nodded.
Seth, clutching his phone, stood over Eli at Maddie’s desk. “Check her history,” he said.
Organ brokers. Philippines. Recent Google questions: Are transplant hospitals in the Philippines safe?
“My God, my God,” said Gwen.
“What’s in Manila?” asked Eli.
Gwen was standing, but moving side to side: one foot, the other foot.
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