She sometimes wondered if that were only because their society hadn’t given them permission to do so.
“Once everyone had gone to the movie, my mother told me to pack my things. I could take what would fit into one suitcase, nothing else. My uncle Pete came to get me. He drove me to the bus stop, leering at me the whole way. He wanted to know how it happened. He asked me if I’d liked it. What position I’d been in. He said my breasts were getting big, and he wanted a squeeze. A few years later, when I could think about that day clearly, I realized Pete, my mother’s brother, had an erection the entire time we were in the car.
“My mother had given me money for bus fare to the city and a piece of paper with the name of a home for unwed mothers. She had not said goodbye. She had not come outside with me to wait for Uncle Pete.”
Eliza dug in her purse for a tissue. She was crying now. They were both crying. The glasses of wine sat untouched on the table between them. The buzz of conversation from the bar had faded to white noise.
Margo never went back to her hometown and never saw her parents again. She didn’t even attend their funerals. Once Joanie had grown up she sought, and found, Margo. Joanie was married now, to a nice man. They lived in Toronto, in a comfortable house with three cats, too much furniture, and a big garden. No kids though. Margo and Steve had spent a delightful Christmas with them the previous year.
“I stayed in a home for unwed mothers in the city,” Margo said, and even after all these years, she shuddered.
It had been almost dark when the bus pulled in. Margo didn’t know the way to this place where she was supposed to go. She didn’t have a map, and her mother hadn’t given her money for a cab. She had one cheap suitcase and a baby in her belly. She asked directions from the woman behind the ticket counter, who sneered as she eyed Margo up and down before telling her where to find the home.
It wasn’t far. No doubt they put the home near the bus station on purpose, for all the disposable girls.
“It was during that walk,” Margo said, “through the dark streets of the strange city, when I vowed I’d do anything for this baby. It would be him and me together against the world. Indivisible. Forever.”
“Obviously, it didn’t work out that way.”
“No. That home.” Margo took a breath. “If there’s a hell on earth it was that place. I went back a few years ago. A sudden impulse. Steve was away on a fishing trip and I found myself buying a plane ticket. There and back in one day. I didn’t want to spend the night. Before I knew what was happening, I’d rented a car and driven to the bus station. It’s still there, seedier and more run down than I remember. I found where the home had been. It’s gone now, replaced by a modern office building. I expected to find a bottomless black hole steaming sulfur where nothing green and living can grow.”
“Do you keep in touch with any of the women you met there?”
Margo shook her head. “There’s an online support group of girls who’d been there. I haven’t joined. I can’t face hearing their stories. I’ve heard talk about suing the organizations that ran those homes, but I don’t care. If I could turn back the clock and have them be nice and kind, I would, but what’s over is over. I don’t need, or want, any money from them. Or their forced apologies.”
“What happened to you there?”
Margo clung to Eliza’s hand as if in a vice. Eliza did not try to pull away.
“They didn’t beat us or starve us, but they made sure we knew we were disgusting, filthy creatures, not fit to live among decent churchgoing folk. We didn’t even use our real names. They told me when I arrived my name would be Ruth. And that was that. We slept in a top floor dormitory, on narrow hard beds with little in the way of blankets. It was cold, so cold. I was there over a Prairie winter, and that might be what I remember the most. The cold. I’d left home at the end of summer, and hadn’t thought to pack winter clothes. All they gave us to wear were loose maternity dresses, when our own clothes didn’t fit any more. We worked hard, cooking, cleaning, laundry, mending. I never left the home. Not once was I allowed to go for a walk, to get a breath of fresh air. Some of the girls wanted to write home to their families, send letters. That wasn’t allowed.
“They told me not one single thing about how the pregnancy would advance, what would happen when the baby would be ready to be born. I didn’t even know how he would get out of me. We girls were forbidden to talk about it. We’d have privileges, whatever that meant, taken away if we were found to be engaged in conversation of an indecent nature. All we could do was exchange frightened whispers in the night.”
Eliza let out a long breath. Her green eyes glittered like emeralds.
“One by one girls left, never to be seen again, and new ones arrived. Then it was my turn.”
When she started labor Margo was put in a dark cold room by herself for several hours. When she was far enough along, they sent her to the hospital. Dropped off at the front door and the car sped away without so much as a goodbye or a good luck. Inside the hospital it was much the same. They, the unmarried girls, the wicked ones, weren’t given pain relief or support. She was put in a bed and there she lay, by herself, laboring all through the night. Once in a while a nurse would pop in, spread Margo’s legs, check the progress, listen to her heartbeat, and leave. Without saying a word of comfort or encouragement. The priest stopped by. The same nasty slimy creep who told them to beg forgiveness for their sins and wanted to hear every detail of the transgression at confession. One last chance to rail against the evilness of women and have a peek at her breasts.
Margo felt the ghost of a smile curling around the edges of her mouth.
Eliza noticed. “What is it?”
“Thinking of someone I met there. He did not come to a good end.” She’d read the name of that priest in the paper about ten years ago. He died in jail, where he was doing time for the rape of a ten-year-old girl. The report said there were plenty of accusations against him, but the others had not made it to court. Perhaps, Margo thought, there is some justice in the world after all.
At last the ordeal ended and a baby boy was born to her. “They didn’t give him to me to hold. They whipped him out of the delivery room before I realized it was over. I’d been told a decent churchgoing family would adopt him. I wanted him so much, I wanted to keep him with me, care for him. The world was a hard, harsh place. The only one who could be counted on to keep him safe was his mother. Me. But it was not to be.”
What could she do against the church, the courts? Margo found out much later that legally she could have prevented the adoption. She didn’t have to sign the papers. They’d told her at the home she’d be put in jail if she didn’t sign.
She’d been too stupid, too bullied, to wonder why she’d have to sign him over if the law said she had to give him up.
“I saw my baby for the last time that night. I asked the woman who came to check on me if I could see him. She was very young, just a nursing student. She was kind. She told me to get out of bed. We’d pretend I was a married woman, and she’d take me to the nursery.”
“Is everything okay?” the waitress asked.
Eliza and Margo jumped. Eliza picked up her untouched wine glass. “We’re fine. Thank you.”
“If you need anything,” the woman said, glancing from one to the other, curiosity breaking through the aura of professional disinterest.
“The bill, please,” Eliza said.
“So that’s my story. I never went back to that miserable Prairie town. I never saw my parents again. The nurse who befriended me knew of a place that took in young women boarders, and I found a simple factory job. I worked hard. I was smart, and I was able to go to secretarial school at night. I was lucky. I’ve had a good life, Eliza. I could have ended up on the streets like so many sad abandoned women. Steve’s a good man, and he’s been a good husband. Our life hasn’t been without its ups and downs, but my children turned out well and I’m blessed with a strong healthy grandchild. Before we married, I
told Steve about Jackson, that I’d had a baby. I owed him the chance to leave me, to not be tricked into marriage with a bad woman.” She felt herself smiling as she remembered. “He said he wasn’t a virgin either. He’d lost his virginity in the rec room of a high school friend’s house when the friend’s mother said he was a big boy now, and she had something secret to show him. Oh, gosh. Don’t ever tell him I told you that.”
“I won’t.”
Margo sipped at her wine. “This is good.”
“My dear, you saw that baby when he was one day old. And that was what, forty years ago?”
“Forty-five years. February 6th. Two a.m. I’ll never forget him, Eliza.”
“I don’t think you should, but…”
“I’ve contacted groups that help children locate their birth parents. Nothing. Never a trace. Yet here he is. In Trafalgar. All my dreams have been answered.”
Eliza did not smile as she placed her credit card on the table.
Chapter Twenty
John Winters spent most of the afternoon in his office, going over reports from the officers who’d been conducting interviews with Cathy Lindsay’s friends and colleagues. A great deal of shock and distress. A big fat lot of nothing useful. No one had said anything about her apparent interest in the math teacher, Mark Hamilton. Winters had not told the officers about Hamilton. He didn’t want to alert the man that the police were interested in gossip surrounding him. Not until Winters could have a chance to interview him.
He picked up the phone. “Ron, have you heard from the lab yet, anything on that cigarette butt?”
“John, I’m not going to keep it to myself, you know. When I hear, you’ll hear. I can’t give you what I don’t have.”
“Have you told them it’s urgent?”
“Are you really asking me that?” Gavin said.
“I guess not. It’s just that I have nothing. Absolutely nothing here. I need something to work with. Be nice if that butt is crawling with DNA.”
“You know the story, John. The lab’s behind, working as fast as they can. To them, every case is urgent. They’ll get to it when they can. And when they do, you can be sure I’ll let you know what’s what.”
“Thanks.”
“Good luck,” Gavin said, hanging up.
Winters tried Mark Hamilton’s number again. He’d left a message, asking the man to call him, but people didn’t always return calls from the police. The patrol cars had been told to drive past Hamilton’s house regularly, checking for signs of habitation. Nothing yet.
“Still here?” Molly Smith’s head popped around the corner. Her skin glowed with exercise and good health. Didn’t have to be a detective to tell she’d spent her day on the ski hills. Personally, he didn’t see the attraction. Plunging down the side of a mountain at the speed of a freight train and getting freezing cold to boot? No thanks.
“Still here.”
“No developments, eh?”
“Early days yet. That’s what I keep telling myself. When people go on vacation they should be required to leave contact information with their local police department. Just in case.”
“Good luck with that.”
“Did you want something?”
“No. Just saying hi. I’m about to head out.”
“Hi. Have a good night. Hope it’s Q.” Police officers could be a superstitious bunch. In the way that actors never said the name of the “Scottish Play,” cops never wished for a quiet shift. That would be sure to bring on the opposite.
He listened to the sound of Smith’s boots heading down the hallway. The office was quiet, the day staff gone home. He took off his reading glasses and rubbed his eyes. The weather forecast clear skies tomorrow. He’d asked Barb to get him tickets to Victoria. The first flight out wasn’t until eleven, and he wouldn’t get to Victoria until early afternoon. The Victoria police had made an appointment with Elizabeth Moorehouse. By the time he made his way to her place, interviewed her, it’d be too late to get a flight home. Barb had reserved a room in a hotel in downtown Victoria, overlooking the harbor. A very good hotel. If he had to be away from home, he might as well stay someplace nice. He could afford to supplement the miserly daily rate the city paid.
He logged off from the computer and pushed his chair back with a sigh. He really, really did not like this case.
***
Molly Smith made the rounds of the bars, saying hi to the bouncers, counting the numbers, sniffing the air, looking for trouble. Of which there didn’t seem to be any tonight.
She leaned against the bar at the Bishop and Nun and sipped a glass of water. TVs scattered around the room played various sports channels, the sound turned off. Mike, the bartender, was regaling her with the exploits of his three-year-old nephew, the light of his life. He was a cute enough kid but one could only hear so much about nursery school, play dates, and a future in the NHL. They didn’t usually run into much trouble at the Bishop. It was close to the center of town, meaning close to the police station, and catered for a middle-class clientele in search of a faux British pub. The accents were wood, the booths snug and private, and the papered red walls bore paintings of hunting scenes featuring unnaturally-elongated horses. A gas fireplace burned on one wall.
“I’ll drop by again later,” Smith said, finishing her water.
“See you, Molly.”
She went through the back and emerged in the alley. Wires and cables stretched overhead, an urban jungle. She took a moment to shift her gunbelt, extended her arms to give them a good stretch. The muscles in her shoulders and thighs ached like the blazes. After intense skiing of the sort she’d had today she should have gone home and had a long bubbly soak in the bath with a glass of white wine resting on the side of the tub, and later met friends for drinks beside a fireplace burning real wood.
Instead, a quick leap into the shower, towel off, pass the dryer over her head for not long enough to get her hair thoroughly dry, pull on uniform and out the door. Alphonse’s was closed and he hadn’t even left her a treat of leftover baking on the landing as he often did. She hadn’t had time to eat and the glass of water at the Bishop would hardly do for a meal. She was absolutely starving. Maybe she could get Dave Evans, who was in the car, to stop at the pizza place and pick her up something.
Yellow cat’s eyes watched her from behind a pile of garbage bags laid out at the back of a convenience store. Until she could get that pizza, a chocolate bar would have to do. She heard a whoop of laughter followed by a crash and the tinkle of breaking glass. More laughter. She rounded the corner.
Three boys, underage almost certainly, were hiding in the shadows of the loading dock behind the hardware store. A garbage can was rolling down hill, picking up speed as it went. As Smith watched one of the boys swung a plastic bag against the wall. Glass broke. The other two took swigs from bottles of beer clenched in their fists. Brown glass glittered at their feet. They were laughing so hard at their own antics, they didn’t notice her approach.
“I suggest you pour those out, guys,”
They jumped and she recognized them. Minor trouble makers. Fifteen, sixteen years old. Kids who lived with their parents in comfortable houses and went to school. Kids who’d grown tired of soccer league or church social groups, who hung around behind the bars because they weren’t allowed in. It was early, not much after eight, so they hadn’t, probably, been drinking for long. Not that their scrawny, still growing bodies had much capacity for alcohol in any event.
They turned and faced her, pushing the beer bottles behind their skinny backs, like ostriches stuffing their heads in the sand.
“Show me your hands, Kieran.”
“I don’t have anything, Smith. You can’t make me.”
“I can take you down to the station, if that’s what you want. You’re drinking in public and causing a disturbance. Think your parents want a call tonight?”
“Nah.” He produced the bottle and held it out to his side. He flipped it over. Liquid foamed on the cold gr
ound.
“You too,” she said to the other boys. They exchanged glances, then the taller one shrugged and they poured out the beer.
“Thanks. I don’t know you,” she said to the tall one. “What’s your name?”
“Who wants to know?”
“Keep up with the lip and I’ll take you in. I asked your name.”
“Rob. Rob Hardwin.”
“Thanks, Rob. Pick up that broken glass. I see you have a bag. How handy. Put it in there.”
“It’s cold. Our hands’ll freeze.”
“Cry me a river.”
Grumbling, they did as they were told, and then they tossed the bag of rubbish into the industrial garbage bin. They weren’t bad kids, just restless with too much time on their hands, too much attitude, and surging testosterone. If they’d given her any backtalk, she’d have had no problem calling Dave Evans to come and pick them all up. March them down to the station, call their parents to fetch them.
A Cold White Sun: A Constable Molly Smith Mystery (Constable Molly Smith Series) Page 15