Mr. Ishii tilted his head. “How long had you lived in your Edmonton house?”
“All my life.”
“Did you ever worry about it blowing up?”
Danny bit his lip. “No.”
“There really isn’t any question he did it, is there?”
“I guess not.”
“And if he did that, isn’t he capable of anything? Including murder?”
My gut tells me Mr. McMillan is one of the most dangerous men I have ever met. “I guess.” Danny speared his fingers through his hair. “But why did he do it?”
“Anger is a choice. Bullying is learned. Your dad believed your mom was worthless, and neither the law – nor society – stepped in to stop him. And he didn’t destroy just your mother. He destroyed all of you.”
“But I loved my father!”
“Every person in a family can have different relationships with the other people in that family. Your dad was kind to you, gave you opportunities to thrive. He supported you – or so it seemed. But in the end, when he couldn’t mould you into him, he threw you away.”
Suppose the blow to her head killed her instead of just knocking her unconscious. You would be here today being sentenced for murder, and you would be in jail for many, many years. Had that happened, Mr. McMillan, your children would be no better than orphans.
Danny sat thinking, then got up and quietly left the room.
Mr. Ishii reached into a drawer and pulled out a form: In the Provincial Court of Manitoba, Judicial District of Winnipeg. Report of Psychologist. He flipped to the last page, where a dozen blank lines followed Conclusions and Recommendations. He wrote, “David is a bright young man at a difficult point in his life. Like many other teenagers, he is a work in progress. I believe he will go on to live well. He has attended every counseling session. I recommend the Court consider it ‘time served’ and the charge be withdrawn.”
Chapter 26
“You told him!”
“Yes,” his mother answered. She stopped wiping the table. “Do you understand why?”
He paused. “Maybe.”
She pulled her chair beside him and reached for his hands. “When the police showed up at the door, I knew I was on the brink of losing you forever. Things were spiraling out of control – again. I know how I spent so many years lying to myself about your father that I started to believe the lies myself. And those lies nearly killed me. This time, it was you. You couldn’t seem to stop lying to yourself about your dad either. If I hadn’t done something, those lies might have killed you too. Telling Mr. Ishii was a gamble. I knew I was risking Jen’s life – and mine – but I decided it was worth it. And it was.”
He shifted his feet. “Mom…I told someone too.”
She stroked his arm. “It’s okay. We’re going to take one day at a time.”
Buddy lay down after his walk, and quiet settled over the condo. Danny’s conversation with his mom left him unsettled. He headed for his room, but suddenly angled into hers.
She’d decorated. She’d pinned up their school pictures in their cardboard frames. She’d hung a colorful scarf – a Picasso print he’d given her one year for her birthday – across the plaster holes in one wall. She’d arranged a bouquet of silk orchids on her dresser, and an amateur painting of a rose garden hung above her bed.
He knew where she kept them – on the floor in her closet. He’d seen Mom and Julia pull them out from time to time, but he’d not looked at them since they moved. He opened the closet door, and there they were – the photo albums.
Mom kept them in order, each spine numbered. He lifted the first book and flipped through it.
There he was. A chubby blue-eyed baby in a blue carriage. Standing in his crib in his duckling-yellow sleepers, both hands firmly grasping the bars. Sitting cross-legged in his first bed – a mattress on the floor – the navy blue striped duvet snuggled up under his nose. The bathtub shot, a white bubble beard hanging from his chin. He pulled out the second album. Now Julia appeared, red-faced in a rocking horse print blanket. Julia taking her first shaky steps around the coffee table. Her pink heart-shaped birthday cake with one burning candle. Danny and Julia in bathing suits in the sandbox, throwing sand with a green pail and matching shovel. The Hallowe’en when he was four and his mom had sewed the purple and green brontosaurus costume. Now he started having his own memories – Mom holding the camera and telling them to say pleeeease instead of cheese. Mom snapping pictures as they tore through gifts on Christmas morning. Mom showing off her Mother’s Day tea towels, Julia on one knee and Danny on the other. Mom demonstrating proper Hula-hoop technique in the back yard. Mom leaning over to write his name in the sand on the beach. He remembered her holding his hand.
He started the third album and leafed through the pages. Mickey Mouse towering over Julia in Disneyland. Julia skipping rope on the front lawn. Julia sticking a stone smile on a snowman. Julia with her friends, playing the game of all-hold-hands. Julia holding up a painting of a beaver she’d done at school. Danny thought about the container of rocks on his dresser, and decided he’d carry the Buddy stone in his pocket.
He didn’t need to look at the rest of the albums. He knew what they held – the history of a three-person family.
Nixxie had invited him to the lake for Canada Day. Their log cabin nestled in a snug semi-circle of evergreens and smelled of the forest. The kitchen windows faced the gray lake.
“Have a seat anywhere, David,” Mrs. Solem offered. “Don’t worry about your shoes.”
He looked about, uncertain. His hand automatically went into his pocket and he rubbed the two stones.
Nixxie rescued him. “Come n’ see my room.”
The air smelled faintly of old leather. Sunlight touched all corners of the room. She’d placed a flat-lidded red cedar chest under one window. A bentwood rocking chair with a pair of beaded moccasins on the seat waited in the corner.
Nixxie ducked her head and sat on the patchwork quilt covering the bunk bed’s bottom mattress. A jumbled zoo of stuffed animals nested on the top bunk. “Like it? My home away from home.”
Danny nodded.
“My favorite thing is the cedar chest,” she said, pointing. “We brought it back from Vancouver. It was made by a First Nations artist. It wouldn’t fit in the trunk, so I had to squeeze in beside it in the back seat for the whole drive home. Our car smelled like a hamster cage for weeks.”
The chest’s elaborate black metal hinges matched the front latch. When she went to open it, her body casually brushed up against his.
Layers of folded clothes lay inside. “I keep my favorites in here,” she said. “The cedar keeps the insects out.” She pulled out a striped sweater and pressed it against her face. Her eyes closed as she inhaled the spiced-earth smell.
Danny explored the room. She’d thumb tacked posters on the walls – 54 Ways to Lighten Up by NACM, the Native Alcohol Counselors of Manitoba, and a Don’t Worry, Be Happy photo of three tabby kittens curled into a ball. Another one of those willow hoops with the web-like sinew hung in the window. Its downy white feathers were like the ones he and Grandma had collected underneath the owl’s nest.
He was distracted by sounds from the kitchen – the murmur of voices, the slow scrape of cupboards and drawers being opened and shut, the crumpling of bags, and the monotone hum of the refrigerator now brought to life.
“Come and have a snack,” Mrs. Solem called.
Nixxie grinned. “Every time we get here, it’s the first food we have. It’s Mom’s little ritual.”
Mrs. Solem had laid two place settings – a full glass of milk beside a plate with a slice of bread, thickly buttered and spread with amber honey.
“My mom calls this the Land of Milk and Honey,” Nixxie said, pointing to the lake. Mrs. Solem laughed as she wiped her hands on her apron.
The milk was ice cold, just as he liked it. The bread was soft and white and his teeth left indentations in the butter. Honey dripped onto his fingers as he rushed
to finish it without losing a drop. They were done in minutes. Mrs. Solem cleared the table and said, “Nixxie, why don’t you show David around outside? We’ll have our Canada Day dinner later, around seven.”
“Sure, Mom.”
“Take your jackets. It gets chilly when the wind blows off the water.”
Evergreens and saskatoon bushes twice Nixxie’s height screened the Solems’ cabin from its neighbors. The branches hung low with clusters of ripe purplish-blue berries. A flagstone path led to the lake. Metamorphic rock. The name popped into his head. This was his first trip out of the city since… He pushed the thought aside.
The beach faced south, and wave-tumbled stones caught the sun’s heat. A weathered cedar plank led to a boat ramp extending into the water.
Nixxie hadn’t said much. They strolled along the water’s edge, heads down, nudging the stones with their toes. Nixxie spoke first. “Sometimes my mom – Denise, I mean – used to come here to be with me. She always told me how we’d do the same things she did when she was growing up –learning to swim, canoeing, ice fishing. About fifty times she told the story how one winter they caught so many perch it seemed like they were jumping out of the hole.”
She stopped, bent, and chose an oval stone. She used a slow, underhanded toss and watched it plop softly through the water’s surface. “But she never did.”
“And this is still your home-away-from-home?” he asked.
“If I store the sad memories here at the lake forever, I’ll never have a home-away-from-home. That’s why Mom put a dream catcher in my window.”
“Dream catcher?”
“Yeah. The circular web that hangs there. Natives have a legend that a little boy once threatened to kill a spider while she was making her web. An old woman saved the spider, and the spider thanked her by giving her a gift. The spider wove a web where moonlight would glisten on the magical silvery threads. The web snared bad dreams. Only good dreams could pass through the small middle hole. Mom says it will help me remember only the good things about Denise and leave the bad ones caught in the web.”
He reached into his pocket for the two stones. As he touched the white one, he remembered Grandma’s words: Live the best life you can live, Danny-boy.
“Do you mean in your culture the spider can give you good dreams?”
“Of course. Everything can have a good and a bad side.”
He clutched the worry stone. “I used to do a lot with my grandma and grandpa. They were always taking me outside and it seemed like Grandma never stopped talking. When she showed me things – the edible parts of a thistle, the way fish breathe in water, and why sunflowers turn their heads to the sun – I thought I was going to be a biologist just like her.”
“Do you think about your grandparents very much?”
“I – I try not to. I miss them.”
He kicked at a piece of driftwood while she threw another stone. “Whenever I was with Grandpa, he’d look at every rock as if it held a secret and he wanted to pry it loose and share it with me. He always looked at the whole world and how it worked. For him, petrified wood was more interesting than a live tree because it had been there longer and had more stories to tell. He taught me what the moon was made of, and the planets, and we’d look at the stars….” He paused a while, then sat on the beach. “So I wanted to be just like him.
“And then we stopped seeing my grandparents so much, and I spent more and more time with Dad. He taught me soccer and hockey and how to shoot a gun.” He grabbed a handful of rocks and tossed them into the water. “And then I wanted to be just like my dad.”
Nixxie tilted her chin to her chest. “I don’t know if I ever really wanted to be like Denise,” she said, raking her fingers through the pebbles at her side. “I guess what I wanted was for her to be more like Mom – my grandma – and take care of me, and love me, and be with me.” She turned to Danny. “Do you think your father loved you?”
He thought a while. “I guess so. At first,” he finally answered.
“I was never sure about Denise,” she replied. “I think she wanted to love me, but she didn’t know how, and so all sorts of other things got in the way.”
Danny considered this. “I guess it’s kinda the same for my dad. What he did to my mom got in the way – and in the end he couldn’t love me anymore.”
They sat in silence, watching the seagulls wheel lazily through the sky.
Nixxie spoke. “You’ll need a dream catcher,” she said. “You can keep the good memories and leave the other ones in the web.” She smiled. “I brought one for you.”
“You did?”
“It was Mr. Ishii’s idea.” She jumped up. “Let’s go see the town.”
The ‘town’ was a small grocery store, a gas station, and a cube van selling hot dogs and ice cream from a roll-up side. As they walked along the dusty road, Danny shifted a couple of steps toward Nixxie and intertwined his fingers with hers.
The roasted turkey smelled and tasted wonderful, and by the end of the meal Danny felt himself relax.
“Margaret?” said Mr. Solem. “That was delicious. Thank you.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Solem,” Danny said. “It was the best meal I’ve had…in a long time.”
“Glad you enjoyed it. When we’re here at the lake, we focus on the simple moments. Later, they’re the memories that keep you strong through the bad times. They’re the stories you’ll tell your family and friends. They’ll stay with you for life.” She lifted a bag from the counter. She reached in and pulled out the dream catcher. “This is for you. We hope your time here is the start of many happy memories.”
He accepted the gift with a smile. “Thank you.”
They were quiet for a moment, then Mrs. Solem said, “I think Dad and I can handle the clean up.”
Mr. Solem started piling dishes and rose. “I’ve stacked wood and kindling outside by the fire pit, Nixxie. You and David start up a bonfire, and as soon as you have good roasting coals, we’ll bring the hot chocolate and marshmallows.”
Nixxie crumpled a yellowed newspaper. She pushed a few sheets of curled birch bark over the newspaper and then methodically arranged a loose layer of twigs across the top. Danny sat on an upturned log with rings worn smooth by time. He clasped his hands. Unconsciously, he rubbed one palm across the top of his other hand and moved it in a circle, as if washing under an invisible stream of water. Nixxie tended the fire until the small, tipi-like structure started to burn from within. The birch bark sparked with a violence that seemed out of place amongst the languid flames pulsing out slowly from the fire’s heart. In time, the larger branches fed the flames, and then the entire fire settled down on itself.
Nixxie sat on a log to Danny’s left. They both stared at the fire, the sparks dancing up and disappearing, some of them seeming to go high enough to join the stars. He looked out to the dark water. Beneath the sound of the fire’s erratic crackle he could hear the waves stroking the shore, as regular as a clock counting out eternity. The fire was remarkably smokeless, burning clean and hot. The heat shimmer made the stars dance. The Milky Way showed itself, dressing the black velvet sky with a soft, white scarf stitched of stars, its pattern unchanged in a billion years. His grandfather’s words echoed soft and clear: It’s time, Danny. It’s time to go.
He rose, stepped around the fire, and began moving toward the lake. He reached the boat ramp, and jumped on the cedar planks.
Now the stars shone more brightly than ever. He moved to the end of the dock, and his feet were sure on the weathered grain of the old wood. He felt lighter now, like the times he woke up in the morning and the answer to a problem had come to him overnight.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out the two stones. He looked at them both and then slipped the Buddy stone back into his pocket.
He swept his thumb back and forth across the worry stone. Take this with you, Danny-boy. Keep it with you, and hold it when you need help. Stones are strong, and they can help you be strong too. Use it
when you need to, and when you’re ready, you can let it go.
Danny straightened and squared his shoulders. He threw back his right arm and flung the worry stone far into the lake where it dropped from the darkness of the sky into the darkness of the water.
Grandpa would approve.
Chapter 27
Two months before, Mom had planted bare-looking sticks at both ends of the tiny flower bed under their front window. “Do you expect those pathetic things to grow?” Danny had asked at the time.
“Just watch them, Davey-boy,” she’d replied. “By summer, they’ll be the most beautiful flowers in the world.”
And they were. Danny bent to smell the roses, and a ladybug flew onto his hand. It tickled up his arm and flew away. Grandma had told him an old French saying – if a ladybug lands on you while you’re sick, when it flies away it will take the sickness with it. He tugged out tendrils of chickweed that had started creeping around the corners of the bed, and smoothed the soil with his hand.
They’d just finished a long session with the Frisbee, and Buddy lay panting on the grass. “Let’s get you some water, Bud,” Danny said.
His mom had already set the table for their holiday dinner – early, just like Grandma used to. He went to his room and the dream catcher caught his eye. When he’d explained it to his mom, she’d listened eagerly and insisted on hanging it right away. They put it in the window, where the beads would catch the moonlight.
He looked through the window onto the common area. Mom was sunning herself in a lawn chair out back. Buddy had dropped into the chair’s shadow. Julia was kicking around a soccer ball. The outdoor season started in two days.
Danny retrieved a second lawn chair from the basement. He unfolded it beside his mother’s. They watched Jewel dribble the ball around the common area. “She’s pretty good,” he said.
His mom looked at him and nodded. “She’s come a long way,” she replied. “So have you.”
He observed his sister’s footwork. “Maybe I could teach her a few moves.” He swallowed. “Do you think she’d let me?” His knee jiggled up and down.
The Second Trial Page 24