A flock of birds rose in unison from a nearby tree, their wings flapping in the air above her head. Sunny tucked her head lower to the ground. Another movement in the grass, but this time she couldn’t pretend it was a harmless rodent. It was the sound of someone getting closer, pushing through the stalks of grass, tramping through the wet earth toward her.
She heard him laugh.
She turned her head slightly and opened her eyes a slit. His shadow blocked out the sun above her. Before she could move, his hand pulled the back of her sweater into a clump, yanking her from her hiding place and pitching her like a ragdoll onto her stomach in the grass. She scrambled forward on her hands and knees, but he was on her before she got far.
“Where’s your friend?” he hissed in her ear, the weight of him making it hard for her to breathe. He eased off his bulk and a hand reached under her and flipped her over so his face was inches from hers. He used his hands to pin down her arms on either side of her head. His eyes bore into her. “You didn’t think I’d see your footprints in the mud? Where is she?” he asked, louder this time. Spittle sprayed her face. “I owe her.”
Sunny turned her head sideways, trying to avoid his unblinking stare. She wouldn’t answer. Lily had gotten away and she would say nothing.
He ran his fingertips up and down her cheek. She closed her eyes. When his mouth was on hers, she started screaming inside her head. She tried to fight him off, but she was no match for his size and strength. The hand he’d used to touch her face was now sliding down her stomach. His breath was coming harder and he’d begun moaning. Sunny was frantic to get away but she couldn’t move. She couldn’t stop his hand from sliding between her legs.
Neither of them heard Lily’s angry lunge across the field until she was upon them. Sunny felt the man’s pressure lift from her as he heaved himself sideways. She could see Lily behind him. Her face was contorted in rage, the rock she held in her hand pounding again and again on the back of the man’s head until the weapon and her hand were both sticky with dark red blood, and still she would not stop. The man’s arms took the full brunt of his weight while the blows reigned down, but he was too late to protect himself from Lily’s fury. Finally, his breath escaped in a final whoosh as he collapsed onto Sunny like a sack of cement.
Sunny’s screams pierced the stillness of the afternoon, echoing across the water and filling every crevice and burrow in the grassy field. They penetrated Lily’s anger bringing her back to earth and out of the terrible place she’d disappeared. Lily lowered her head and looked down at what she’d done. She dropped the rock like a burning pan onto the ground and wiped her hand on the earth and leaves. Then she knelt into the grass next to Sunny, using all her strength to shove the man off her. She gathered Sunny weeping into her arms.
“It’s done,” Lily said. “Shush. Shush. He can’t hurt you.” She looked at the man’s still bulk next to them covered in blood. “I killed him.” She tossed the words into the wind as if waiting for them to come back. Her shoulders slumped forward as she hunched in on herself.
Sunny’s sobs lessened. She straightened and looked at the man lying on his side, his face turned toward them, his eyes open and blood pooling around him like a hood. She was glad she didn’t have to see the back of his head where Lily had bashed it in with the rock. “I was so scared, Lil.”
“I know,” Lily spoke gruffly. “I was scared too.”
“We’ll tell them what he did to us. They won’t blame us.” Sunny saw the worry in Lily’s frown, the hesitation in her eyes.
“We can’t tell anyone what I’ve done,” Lily said. “They’ll put me in juvie again, or worse.”
“I’ll tell them what he did.”
“No! Don’t you get it? They’ll never believe two Indian girls didn’t deserve what we got, especially us in foster care and me with a record. They won’t believe I had to kill him.”
“I’ll tell them, Lil. They’ll have to believe me.”
Lily stood up and looked down on her. “They won’t do nothing to you since you’re just ten, but I’m almost fifteen. They’ll lock me up again, and I would rather die than have them tell me when I have to get up and what I can eat and when I can leave my room. I ain’t doing that again. I’ll kill myself first.”
“Then what’ll we do?”
Lily blinked her good eye. “We’ll put rocks in his pockets and roll him into the river. The rocks will weigh him down, and if we’re lucky they’ll never find him. Nobody knows he took us out here. We’ll wash his blood out of your shirt and where it splattered your face.”
Tears dripped onto Sunny’s hand. She lowered her head.
“If you don’t want to help me, just say it,” said Lily. “You won’t be the first one or the last.” She squatted next to the body and reached into the dead man’s pockets. A brown leather wallet was tucked inside his nylon jacket. She scooped it out and flipped through the credit cards and bits of paper until she found his driver’s licence. She held it up to her good eye. “David Williams from Toronto. Look, Sun. Do you figure this is his wife and kids?” She held out a photo of the man with a blond woman and a boy and girl in their early teens.
Sunny glanced at the photo. “Probably. I wonder if they’ll miss him.”
Lily shrugged. “They might be glad to be rid of the dirty old bastard.” She picked up the bloody rock and started walking toward the river.
The fear started up again as Sunny watched Lily walk away from her. Lily was angry and shutting her out. Sunny felt a wave of loneliness and panic fill her. She couldn’t bear to have Lily mad at her. She stood and ran toward her.
“Okay, I’ll do it,” she called. “I’ll help you push him into the river.”
Lily stopped walking. She turned and faced Sunny. She looked at her for a few seconds as if weighing something. Finally, she nodded. “Then help me find some rocks. After we get rid of him and clean you up, I’ll drive his van back to town, dump it somewhere, and call Roger to come get us. I’ll just have to hope the cops don’t pull us over and figure out I’m underage. But first, I’m going to throw this rock that I hit him with as far into the river as I can where nobody will ever find it.”
Lily was waiting for Sunny when she stepped off the school bus that brought her back to Birdtail Creek reserve. It had been a month since the man’s death, and they’d kept away from each other, not wanting to draw attention to themselves or say something by mistake. Lily was dressed in a buckskin jacket and ripped blue jeans. She’d braided her hair and a beaded band encircled her head, resting low on her forehead. She flicked a glowing cigarette into the dirt as Sunny approached. They started walking toward the house, not speaking.
Lily pulled Sunny into the trees part-way up the property. There’d been a cold snap on the weekend and the leaves were starting to turn colour. Sunny craned her neck back to look at the shades of yellow in the alders and the blue sky overhead. A string of Canada geese was honking its way to the marshes south of the reserve. She waited for Lily to start talking.
Lily leaned against a pine tree. “You okay?”
Sunny nodded. “You?”
Lily shrugged. “I’m not sleeping so good. Nightmares.”
“Is Roger still mad about us being out so late and your black eye?”
“He got over it. He wanted to track down the girls I told him I’d had the fight with. Took a while to keep him from charging back to town to start hunting them down. Luckily my story kept him from figuring out we were with the city man who disappeared. Did you get into trouble coming home late?”
“I don’t think they noticed. The police still looking for that man?”
“Big mystery. They can’t figure out why he left his van and nobody’s seen him. He grew up near here. His parents still live in Miniota. Roger and I were in town two days ago and I saw that guy’s, you know that David Williams, I saw his wife yesterday sitting in the coffee shop. Well, the same woman as in that picture. She was sitting all alone having lunch.”
Sunny shivered inside her down vest. She’d tried to forget about that day and already bits of it were getting fuzzy. She wasn’t too happy to have Lily show up and remind her even if she was glad to see her.
“Anyhow,” Lily said, “the reason I’m here is because I wanted to tell you that I’m leaving. They’ve decided I need to get me a real education so I’m flying out tomorrow for Winnipeg. Some family is putting me up while I get my grade eight. It’s all arranged.”
“You never let them take you off the rez before,” Sunny said. Tears came to her eyes. She lowered her head and blinked hard so Lily wouldn’t see.
“Well, I never killed nobody before neither,” said Lily. “Things change.”
“I wish I could come with you.”
Lily’s voice softened. “Are they still treating you okay?”
Sunny shrugged. “They have six other kids. Half the time we don’t have much to eat. I think they’ve already asked for me to be moved.” She tried to smile, but it didn’t work. “If you go, I won’t have any family left.”
“I’ll always be your family, Sun. No matter where I live. I just can’t …” Lily took a deep breath, “I just got to get away from here. I can’t take knowing what I did.”
“You had to. He wasn’t going to let us go.” Sunny let her mind flit to an image of the man on the ground and all the dark blood coming from his head before she closed it off. She couldn’t think about it because thinking about it made her stomach hurt and her head fill with screams that wanted to get out. Sometimes, she woke up in the night crying. She knew she couldn’t tell anyone, especially not Lily. Lily had her own nightmares.
“Does Roger want you to go?”
Lily shrugged. “I think he hoped that if I stayed, my mother would come back. Maybe he’s starting to wake up to reality. She was only with him two years. It’s not like he owes me nothing.”
“We’ll be together again one day, won’t we Lil? You’ll get me when we’re old enough to live on our own?” Sunny moved closer until she leaned against Lily. She rested her head on Lily’s shoulder. Lily stiffened for a moment before she wrapped an arm around Sunny.
“Yeah, we’ll be together again little one. We’ll have our own house and nobody will do nothing to us that we don’t want. We’ll have good jobs and money and lots to eat.”
“And I won’t have to keep Rascal tied up outside and I’ll have my own bed.”
“Yeah, your own bed. You won’t have to share with the other kids.” Lily laughed. “Can you imagine, Sun? We’ll have real lives and people will envy us.”
“Let’s promise to find each other. Promise we’ll be together again.”
“I promise, Sunny. So help me God, I promise.”
“And I promise too.”
1
Tuesday, December 20, 10:45 p.m.
Tom Underwood looked across the room at his wife and wondered how it would feel to place his hands around her slender neck and throttle the life out of her. He imagined her sinewy veins under his fingers and the satisfaction of hearing the bones crack as he twisted in a quick motion — like putting his hand around a jar lid and applying pressure in one glorious snap. Her red lips would form a soft “o” of comprehension as he tightened his hold and her eyes would widen before freezing open in death. He’d seen people murdered in enough films to know the drill. Would it be better to get rid of her before or after Christmas? He could return the gifts he’d bought her on Boxing Day if she were to die within the week. That could be the deciding factor. The gold link bracelet he’d bought her was overpriced. He took a long swallow of Scotch, and kept his eyes on her, then blinked back the dream.
Laurel lifted her head and tossed back her ironed veil of red hair. She’d lined her violet eyes in kohl and filled in the lids with gold shadow that shimmered in the light from the chandelier. She’d seen him looking at her. Her full lips curved into an amused smile as she trailed the fingers of one hand up and down between the V of her breasts as if rubbing an ice cube across her skin to cool off her hot flesh. Her lips parted in a suggestive smile before she turned her attention back to the man standing next to her.
Tom imagined the man eying Laurel’s breasts, poor bastard probably wondering if he stood a chance of getting her somewhere alone so he could run his own hands up and down the curves outlined by her black form-fitting gown that dipped like a crescent moon in front. The thought of plunging one’s face between those twin mounds could drive a man crazy if he let it. Tom knew all about that. He felt the familiar heat in his groin and cursed himself for being weak, for still wanting her.
“You meeting Archambault tomorrow?”
Tom dropped his eyes to look down at the man in front of him. J.P. Belliveau. He couldn’t be in the same room as his partner anymore without thinking of bullfrogs — squat, round toads with oversized cheeks and bulbous eyes under heavy lids. He forced his face to relax, as if he had nothing on his mind but the deal.
“I have a call scheduled with him when I get into the office tomorrow. I’m going to fax him the contract before lunch and then head to his office in Montreal right after Christmas to finalize and pick up the signed papers.”
“For less than we offered last month?”
Tom nodded.
“How did you manage to talk Archambault down?”
“I told him we would only assume the risk if he came down in price. I knew we were his only real hope so he had to drop his bottom line.”
“I thought an American company expressed interest.”
“They didn’t have the capital to take it on this quarter. I might have also planted a seed with their point man that the design was flawed.” Tom shrugged and smiled.
“You impress me. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think we were separated at birth.”
Tom nodded again but something burned in his guts like bile on a barbecue. He’d forgotten to bring antacid tablets and would be in rolling pain by the time he pried Laurel away from the party. Maybe he would make time for the doctor’s appointment tomorrow. He’d cancelled the last two times but this ulcer was getting worse.
He felt an arm slip through his and flinched involuntarily until he looked down and saw that it was his daughter. He let his arm relax against hers. Geraldine tilted her shiny blond head and smiled up at him, a smile that softened her long, narrow face and plain features.
“Max and I are just heading out, Daddy. He’s got an early day tomorrow and I’m a bit whacked.” She patted her rounded belly for emphasis. “This baby is sapping my energy.”
“I’ll walk you out then,” said Tom. He noticed Max standing behind Geraldine, checking his BlackBerry and punching keys with his thumbs. “Something in the hopper?” Tom asked over Geraldine’s head, not sure why Max’s fiddling with the contraption unsettled him. It might have had something to do with the focused look on Max’s face that shut out everybody around him, including his pregnant wife.
Max glanced up. “Just a question about a meeting tomorrow. It could have waited until morning but you know Benny. He’s a bulldog when it comes to nailing down the details.”
“Sure.” Tom looked closer at his son-in-law. When had he added the blond streaks to his hair? His grey pinstriped suit looked tailor-made and his shoes brand new. Tom grimaced. If Geraldine hadn’t begged him to give Max Oliver a job, he never would have let the guy through the front door. Tom had Max’s number at hello — as deep as a puddle and as vain as a show horse — but Geraldine couldn’t live without him, and he couldn’t deny her. Tom felt a stab of indigestion below his rib cage. It was worse than normal tonight and that was saying a lot. At this rate, he’d have to find somewhere to lie down and curl into a ball until the pain lessened to something approaching bearable.
“You okay, Daddy?” Geraldine squeezed his forearm as they walked. “You’ve turned pale all of a sudden.”
“Just tired. I think I’ll leave right after you.”
“What about Laurel?” Geraldine’s eyes narrowed as she looked tow
ard his wife holding court. “She doesn’t look like she’s ready to leave.”
“Don’t worry about Laurel,” Tom said. He gently steered Geraldine toward the coatroom. He didn’t feel like another scene tonight. He hoped Geraldine didn’t feel his weight on her arm. The spasm of pain nearly had made him double over.
He forced himself to walk upright as they stepped outside into the welcome cold of the winter evening. The air chilled the sweat on his forehead and he felt like he might just make it home. He handed the doorman in the heavy red overcoat their two tags and watched him speak into a radio to have their cars brought around. Tom looked past him at the blue and green Christmas lights swaying on the tops of the trees in the square across from the Chateau Laurier.
“Looks like I have to go back to the office,” Max said stepping close behind them. Tom and Geraldine turned in unison to face him.
“No!” Geraldine wailed. “You promised me not tonight.”
Max frowned and his shoulders rose in a quick shrug. “Sorry angel, but it can’t be helped. Benny’s found a problem with one of the contracts. If I deal with this now, I might avoid a trip east. God knows, I have no desire to head to the coast this time of year.”
Geraldine began to say something, but whoever was driving their car approached a little too fast and it skirted to a stop, fishtailing slightly so they all took a step backwards. Her voice trailed away.
“What the hell?” said Max. He raised a fist toward the car.
A kid in his early twenties wearing a red toque and an iPod jumped out and grinned at them before he headed back to the parking lot. Max lowered his hand and cursed again. He took Geraldine by the arm and guided her to the other side of the car, walking slowly so she didn’t slip on the ice. He opened the door and lowered her onto the seat. Whatever he whispered into her ear must have been amusing because when he straightened she was smiling up at him, her eyes luminous in the overhead light of the car.
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