The Winners' Circle

by Gail Bowen

  The name stuck, but Russell and Harriet Hynd’s dream of a big family didn’t materialize. Harriet’s first pregnancy was difficult, and they had only one child, Kevin.

  In his first year at the College of Law in Saskatoon, Kevin met Blake Falconer, Zack Shreve, Chris Altieri, and, after Chris introduced her to them, Delia Wainberg. The story went that, drawn together by their thousand-megahertz minds and unshakeable confidence in themselves and their future, the five students formed what they called “The Winners’ Circle.” That name stuck too, and as soon as the members of The Winners’ Circle finished their articling year, they became law partners. They were young, brilliant, and idealistic, with a lust for justice that potential clients found appealing. From the day Falconer Shreve Altieri Wainberg and Hynd opened its doors, the firm thrived. Within five years, the young partners were all prosperous enough to build summer cottages on Lawyers’ Bay.

  Seemingly, they had the Midas touch, but as Midas discovered, the ability to turn everything to gold usually comes with a price tag. Blake Falconer became one of the top-ten corporate lawyers in Canada, but his marriage, pocked by his wife’s infidelities, ended in tragedy. The first time I saw Blake, he was standing with his daughter on the beach, watching the fireworks at the firm’s Canada Day party. We had been at Lawyers’ Bay less than a week, so my children and I were still trying to get the lay of the land. Blake’s wife, Lily, was standing alone, several metres away. She was clearly angry, and I overheard Gracie ask Blake why her mother couldn’t just see how nice everything was.

  As I came to know the Falconer family better, Gracie’s question haunted me. A member of the Standing Buffalo Dakota First Nation, Lily was a woman with great gifts, not the least of which was her husband’s passionate and undying love for her. Gracie, an only child, was a talented athlete and a bright and affectionate girl of whom any parent would be proud. Lily wasn’t a lawyer, but she managed Falconer Shreve, and the partners were always quick to explain that, as much as any of them, she was responsible for the success of the firm. She had a loving family, health, professional respect, and financial stability. In short, she appeared to have everything, but she was never able to outrun the demons that had chased her since childhood. Just weeks after the night I saw Lily angry and alone on the beach, a man she had been close to since childhood used the handgun issued to him as a police officer to end her pain and his own.

  Blake had never recovered from the loss. Before Lily died, he glowed with the ruddy physicality of a weekend sailor. His red-gold crew cut was carefully barbered; his eyes were clear; and his smile was wide. After Lily’s death, his hair turned grey; his gaze became tentative; and his smiles were fleeting. Blake’s performance as a corporate lawyer continued to be exemplary, but his personal life was empty. Always devoted to Gracie, he did everything he could to demonstrate his love, but both Blake and his daughter knew he was a shell of the man he had once been. Lily’s death had hollowed him out.

  The death of Lily Falconer was neither the first nor the only tragedy that summer. Each of the founding partners would be marked forever by the events of a few short weeks. Kevin Hynd had been in India, half a world away, when the first crushing blow came, but by one of those strange accidents of fate that mark our lives, he had unwittingly chosen me to play a key role in Christopher Altieri’s last day on earth.

  The weather for the Canada Day party had been postcard perfect: clear, sunny, and hot, with just enough of a breeze to flutter a flag. The Falconer Shreve hosts were solicitous, making certain guests were welcomed and familiarized with the array of pleasures awaiting them. By any criterion, it was a great party. But Chris, who had just returned from a trip to Japan, was withdrawn and preoccupied. In the late afternoon, when he and I were matched in a tennis tournament, he suffered a meltdown and walked away mid-game.

  Later, Chris sought me out in the gazebo where I’d escaped for a respite from the noise and heat. He apologized for his earlier behaviour and then fell silent. For a few minutes we sat across from each other listening to the small band that had been hired for the dance, watching the bonfire on the beach blaze and admiring the fairyland beauty of the tiny twinkling lights strung through the branches of the willows that dotted the shoreline. When – finally – Chris began to speak, it was clear he was ready to unburden himself. He told me he’d been in touch with Kevin, who had suggested that he talk to me. After that, the words poured out.

  He said he felt responsible for the loss of his unborn child because he had committed an act that convinced the woman who had been carrying their child not to go through with the pregnancy. Chris never explained to me what he had done; he simply said he had gone to Japan hoping to find peace. He’d learned that the Japanese have a name for a child who’s lost before birth. They call it mizuko, “water child,” because the unborn fetus is considered a being still flowing into our world. Chris had made a pilgrimage to a Buddhist temple in Tokyo where Jizo, the Bodhisattva protector of children, is worshipped. As was the custom, he left a toy for his mizuko jizo and said a prayer, but his suffering had not been assuaged. If anything, his anguish had grown even more intense. He had just begun to tell me why he believed the grace had been withdrawn from his life when Zack appeared. Chris greeted him affectionately and left.

  At the fireworks, I saw Chris again briefly. Taylor was with me and Chris taught her a riddle. We all smiled at the riddle’s answer and then Chris walked away. It was the last time I saw him alive.

  That night, the heat in the cottage was stifling. I’d carried my pillow to the couch on the screened porch where it was cooler, and I drifted off. A streak of light and the sound of tires squealing awakened me. I knew almost immediately that someone must be speeding towards the lake and that whoever was behind the wheel of the car was in trouble.

  Calling for Angus, I started running towards the road that led to the boat launch. Chris drove a red MGB. By the time I saw the car hit the boat launch, it had built up enough momentum to lift it to the underwater ledge that separates the swimming area from the sudden drop-off into the deep and treacherous water. The MGB was submerged except for the top of its roof. The bright moon lit up the waves licking the red metal and I thought there might still be time. I ran to the end of the dock, but before I could dive in, the car teetered. There was a sucking sound and then the lake swallowed the car. Angus and I took turns diving in to try to rescue Chris, but he hadn’t wanted to be rescued; he’d locked the car doors.

  The next morning, the RCMP dragged up Chris’s car. He was still in it. What followed was a seemingly endless nightmare of unanswerable questions and grief for all the partners of Falconer Shreve Altieri Wainberg and Hynd.

  Soon after Chris’s death, Kevin returned to Canada. He came straight to Lawyers’ Bay. He was certain there was something he could have done to prevent his friend from committing suicide. After an agonizing night sitting with him on the screened porch repeatedly describing everything I knew about Chris Altieri’s last day on earth, I finally persuaded Kevin that nothing he could have said or done would have saved his friend.

  The kids and I had been occupying all three of the Hynd cottage’s bedrooms. I told Kevin my family could easily double up and make room for him, but he opted to stay with Zack, who lived alone. After Kevin had slept a few hours, he met with his partners and decisions were made.

  Falconer Shreve had been planning to open its Calgary office that fall, and Chris had been slated to manage the new space. Accepting without question what he believed was his fate, Kevin agreed to move to Calgary and take Chris’s place. It was the second time that Kevin had given up the life he wanted to meet the firm’s needs.

  When Kevin and I first met, he had owned a Day-Glo–painted patisserie called Twenty Lifetimes. The shop was devoted to designer pastries, cupcakes, a delectable assortment of tarte flambés, and other monuments to hip excess. His profits went to a rehab centre called New Day. The walls of Kevin’s bakery were painted the rosy gold of peach butter, and it was impo
ssible to walk through the shop’s doors without smiling. Kevin himself had been a happy man. When I found out he’d been a lawyer in his past life, he explained his decision to leave his profession with a wry smile. “The law sharpens the mind by narrowing it. It took me a while, but I finally realized I didn’t want my mind sharpened.”

  It seemed Kevin had made his decision. Then one morning, seemingly out of nowhere, a For Sale sign sprouted among the bed of sunflowers in front of Twenty Lifetimes, and Kevin returned to his corner office at Falconer Shreve. Without explanation or complaint, he did what the firm required of him, until that summer when he went to India. Driving him to the airport, I had sensed that the trip might be the prelude to a permanent break with the firm. Chris’s suicide closed off that possibility. Kevin’s path had been chosen, but it was not the path that would take him where he wanted to go.

  Kevin was not the only one of the group with a past brighter than the future. Since that summer, Delia Wainberg had worked fourteen-hour days, fuelling her sapling-thin body with espresso, Benson & Hedges Whites, and licorice whips. Zack said she was driven by the need to block her memories of Chris and her fear that she had failed him. Isobel’s insight that the law offered her mother a safe haven from pain had been right on the money.

  Zack alone seemed to have escaped the curse. On the afternoon of the Canada Day party that ended in Chris Altieri’s death, Zack offered to open my Coke and our lives changed forever. Despite the forest of warning flags raised by our nearest and dearest, five months to the day after we met, Zack and I were married, and my children, grandchildren, and I became part of the Falconer Shreve family.

  CHAPTER

  2

  On that rainy Thanksgiving Monday, the screened porch smelled pleasantly of woodsmoke, but the rain made the room gloomy, and no one had thought to turn on a lamp. Delia was sitting on the worn, lumpy couch where during that first summer I had spent many nights curled up with a book I wasn’t reading, listening to the crickets, watching the moon’s path on the lake, and trying to understand all that had happened in the lives of my new neighbours at Lawyers’ Bay.

  Now, four years later, Blake and Kevin flanked Dee on the couch. Jacob was curled up on a sleeping bag in the corner, with Isobel sitting cross-legged beside him. Zack positioned his chair so that he was beside Blake, and I pulled over a hassock to be next to my husband. Taylor and Gracie stood facing us with their backs towards the screened windows. Outside the rain fell in sheets, creating a dramatic backdrop for the young women. They obviously had an agenda and they’d decided on their approach.

  As soon as we were settled, Isobel joined the girls. She wasted no time on preamble. “Taylor is working on a Day of the Dead project for her visual arts class,” she said. “We want to talk to you about it.”

  “I’ve always loved Frida Kahlo’s work,” Taylor said. “Some people hate all her images of death, but for me, the presence of death and decay in her work makes everything Kahlo paints more alive.”

  Taylor was typical of kids her age in every respect but one. She had inherited a prodigious talent in visual art from her birth mother, the artist Sally Love, and her life was driven by her passion for art. That morning as she talked about the famed Mexican painter, Taylor’s voice rang with intensity. “Some of Kahlo’s most amazing images were inspired by symbols from Día de los Muertos. It’s a holiday when Mexicans remember the ones they’ve lost. When I told Gracie and Isobel that I’d been reading about how Mexican culture has always recognized that dying is part of being human, we decided we wanted to learn more. Since Kevin lived in Mexico, we asked him to tell us everything.”

  Kevin grinned at Taylor. “You won’t make that mistake again,” he said. He turned so that he was speaking to the rest of us. “In a nutshell, I explained that Día de los Muertos celebrates the lives of the dead by the living reminiscing and sharing some of the things that brought their loved ones joy when they were alive.”

  Isobel picked up the thread. “That’s when we knew that the Day of the Dead offered something our families needed. We’ve all lost people we loved or people we wish we’d had the chance to love. Gracie and Taylor’s mothers both died. The sister who I never knew existed until three years ago died before I had the chance to meet her.”

  Gracie stepped forward. Physically, she was very like her father: big-boned, red-haired, and freckled. She had always struck me as a young woman who loped through life with a bounce, a grin, and a great free throw, able to shrug off the slings and arrows without breaking a sweat. That day it seemed that she, too, was suffering.

  Public speaking was not Gracie’s forte, but she was an athlete, trained to read a situation and react. When her grey-blue eyes took in our faces, she saw our uncertainty. “We know you love us, and you know we love you,” she said quickly. “That’s not the issue. But we live with you.” Gracie directed her attention to Blake. “Dad, I know how sad you are when you think I’m not watching. Last week I overheard you on the phone telling somebody that you dreaded the end of the day because that meant you had to go home and face the emptiness.”

  Blake winced. “I’m sorry, Gracie. I’d had some frustrating meetings with clients, and I was in a rotten mood. It had nothing to do with you. You’re the reason I get up in the morning.”

  Gracie’s voice was gentle. “I know that, but it shouldn’t be that way. My mother has been dead for four years. You have a life to live. So do I. Dad, it’s time for you and me to talk about Lily, and it’s time for all of us to talk about Chris. Everyone loved him, but since he died, you all try to act as if he never existed. It’s hurting us, and that’s the last thing Chris would want.”

  The sounds of the rain were everywhere – drumming steadily on the porch roof, splashing from the rainspout to the ground, slapping against the cast-iron birdbath that had been Russell Hynd’s gift to his bride decades ago. But Gracie’s words had silenced us. When the silence grew awkward, Taylor took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. Sally Love had been a long-limbed blonde with strikingly dramatic features. Taylor was dark-haired and her face was delicately sculpted, but she had inherited her mother’s generous and uncommonly expressive mouth. When Sally and I were growing up, I could always read her mood by focusing on her lips. I could do the same with Taylor, and that morning when I looked at the determined curve of our daughter’s mouth, I knew she was committed to bringing the lessons of Día de los Muertos to our families.

  “It took me a long time to find the right place for Sally in my life,” Taylor said. “I was four when she died, but she left not long after I was born, so I never really knew her. When I was young, I ached for her. I remember tracing the lines of a painting she’d made with my fingers so I could feel connected to her. After I started painting seriously, I hated her. I didn’t know if the art I was making was any good, but I knew the art she made was brilliant, and I hated her for that. And I hated her for hurting everybody who ever loved her because all she cared about was her work. Most of all I hated her for leaving me.”

  She gave Zack a quick, private glance. “Dad, I’m still afraid that someone I love will leave me.” Her voice until then had been assured and confident, but it grew small with fear, and Zack shot me a questioning look. The moment passed. Taylor shook her head as if to banish dark thoughts and carried on. “Jo and Zack helped me understand why Sally made the choices she made. It took time, but they never gave up, and the day I finally realized Sally had done the best she could with the life she’d been given, I stopped hating her.” She smiled. “It was a great feeling.”

  Isobel gave Taylor a quick hug, then focused once again on us. “Gracie and I are happy for Taylor,” she said. “But we want what she has. We want to find a place in our lives for the people we’ve lost. Taking the time to remember – really remember them – will help all of us,” Isobel said. Noah came in just as his daughter had begun to speak. “Gracie and I have spent every holiday of our lives at Lawyers’ Bay,” she said. “Chris died at the beginning of
the first summer Taylor and her family were here. Taylor and Joanne never really knew Chris, or what you guys were like before, but Gracie and I remember. We want us all to get together, just to talk and to listen. We thought that, in keeping with the spirit of the Day of the Dead, the evening of October 31st might be a good time to meet.”

  Noah embraced her. She whispered something in his ear; then he moved to the spot behind Delia and rested his fingers lightly on his wife’s thin shoulders. She didn’t appear to notice. Beside me, Zack and Blake exchanged smiles. Isobel saw the closeness between the two men and aimed her next words at them. “Every night we fell asleep to the sound of the adults laughing,” she said. “Do you remember that?”

  “I remember,” Zack said, and his voice was rough with emotion.

  “So do I,” Blake said.

  “Good times,” Kevin said.

  Tears ran unchecked down Delia Wainberg’s cheeks. “And then the good times ended,” she said. Noah handed his wife a tissue, and she mopped her eyes and blew her nose.

  Noah’s voice was strong. “I’m in for the evening of the 31st,” he said.

  The look Zack and I exchanged was quick but it was enough. “Joanne and I are in too,” he said.

  “So am I,” Kevin said. The sweatshirt Kevin was wearing that cool October morning carried a message: “Further Up & Further In.” C.S. Lewis’s words from The Last Battle had driven Kevin’s life. Of all the partners, he had aged the least. There was grey in his sandy hair but it was still thick; his smile still reached all the way to his hazel eyes; and his body had never lost its shambling grace. The boundaries of Kevin’s world were not fixed.