by Gail Bowen
CHAPTER
11
At eleven the next day, Blake Falconer and I were having an early lunch at the very crowded Robin’s Donuts on the main floor of Pasqua Hospital. Blake had caught the 8:25 flight from Calgary. I’d picked him up at the airport and we’d come straight to the hospital. Six of Gracie’s teammates from the university had just gathered en masse in her room when we arrived, so Blake and Gracie hugged each other hard and then, having reassured himself that his daughter was fine and enjoying the camaraderie of her friends, Blake promised Gracie he’d be back in twenty minutes and we went downstairs to eat.
When I met Blake my first summer at Lawyers’ Bay, his red-gold hair, like Gracie’s, seemed to draw the light to his face. He’d joined me on the raft where Rose and I were watching the girls swim. His grey eyes and ruddy complexion glowed with the vitality of a man eager to embrace life’s pleasures. He’d settled in so close on my towel that I could smell the sharp citrus of his aftershave and watch his chest rise and fall as he breathed. It was too much intimacy with a stranger and I’d moved away.
The man sitting opposite me now was no longer a stranger. Over the years, I’d come to know Blake and to respect him for managing to bridge the immense gulf between his career and his private life. In the last weeks of his marriage to Lily Falconer, his life was a shambles. After her death, Blake’s existence was the stuff of tragedy, but he was always a committed and loving father to Gracie, a consummate professional with his clients, and a loyal friend to his law partners and their families. That morning at the hospital, it was clear Blake was running on empty – a man pushing himself to get through whatever lay ahead.
“Did you sleep at all after I called last night?” I said.
Blake shrugged. “Probably not. I played Dr. Internet and went online to read about the treatment of ACL injuries.”
“Always a mistake,” I said. “Our grandmothers were right. ‘A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.’ ”
“Agreed. But in this case I was glad I had enough superficial knowledge to understand what Gracie’s orthopedic surgeon was saying when she returned my call this morning.”
“An orthopedic surgeon actually called you,” I said. “I’m impressed.”
“Astrid and I went out for a while this summer,” Blake said. His brow furrowed. “For the life of me I can’t remember why it ended. She’s a terrific woman. Anyway, Astrid waited to call until she’d seen the MRI. Gracie’s anterior cruciate ligament is so badly torn it will have to be replaced – probably with a ligament from a cadaver.”
“Wow. A cadaver. That’s an amazing thought,” I said. “I’m leaving my body to science. I always figured I’d end up at some medical school, but I like the idea of my ligament being part of a player as skilled as Gracie.”
Blake narrowed his eyes. “Are you really that cool about what happens to your body after you die?”
“No, but none of the options is appealing. That one makes the most sense for me.”
“I should probably look into it,” Blake said.
“Don’t tell me you don’t already have it in your will.”
He tried a smile. “Okay, I won’t tell you. Anyway, back to the immediate concern. Gracie has a long slog ahead of her, Jo. There are non-surgical options, but because Gracie’s an athlete who wants to return to her pre-injury level of competition, she’ll need surgery.”
“How soon can they do it?”
“Not until Gracie’s through with what Astrid called ‘pre-habilitation’ – exercises to strengthen the muscles that surround the knee. That can take up to five months. After the surgery there’s serious rehab, and that’s another six to nine months.”
“So a year without basketball,” I said.
“It will be a blow, but Gracie’s strong.” Blake lowered his eyes. “I guess she’s had to be,” he said.
“She’s a remarkable young woman,” I said.
“She’s a miracle,” Blake said. “Now why don’t you tell me exactly what happened?”
“I will, but eat something first. The soup’s actually pretty good.”
—
Like many virtues, stoicism is a two-edged sword. Given her turbulent family life and her passion for sports, Gracie’s physical and emotional toughness had served her well. But her unwillingness to discuss her feelings often made it difficult for those close to her to gauge her true state of mind. I was certain Gracie hadn’t told her father that she had become deeply ambivalent about the gathering on the Day of the Dead, so my account of the previous day’s events was detailed. When I explained Gracie’s uncertainties, Blake was surprised.
He ran his hand through his crew cut. “Maybe this Day of the Dead thing is too much,” he said. “When the girls talked about it at the lake, it seemed innocent enough. In fact, it seemed like a good idea. There’ve been too many deaths, and we haven’t dealt with them well. But if this is taking Gracie to a dark place, perhaps we should just deep six the whole idea.”
“It’s not that simple,” I said. “The girls were right that our families all have wounds that need healing. Noah and Izzie want to make remembering Abby a part of her son Jacob’s life and their own. And you heard Dee that morning at the lake. She believes embracing Chris’s spirit will bring back the laughter and reignite the fire the firm once had.” I leaned across the table. “And, Blake, Gracie believes you need this too, because it’s time you let Lily go.”
Suddenly, Blake seemed ineffably weary. “Easier said than done.” He cleared his throat. “So how does Esau Pilger figure in all this? You said Gracie’s accident happened on the path to his house on the reserve. What were you two doing out there?”
“Gracie was looking for answers, and I didn’t want her to go alone,” I said. “Blake, did Lily ever talk to you about the Ryder family’s history?”
“Outside the office, Lily and I didn’t talk about much of anything,” he said. “Lily certainly didn’t talk much about her past. She was determined to leave everything behind.”
“Yet she was fine with Gracie spending all that time on Standing Buffalo with Rose?”
“We never talked about it. To be honest, I was afraid to. I was grateful that Rose was helping Gracie understand what it meant to be part of the Dakota Nation, but I didn’t know how Lily felt about it, and I didn’t want to risk alienating her by asking.”
“Why would talking about how to raise your daughter be a problem for Lily?”
He shrugged. “It might not have been, but I never knew how Lily was going to respond to things. Whenever I pressed Lily about a decision she’d made, she’d shut me out or, worse, she’d take off. It was better for both of us if I just stayed silent.”
Blake was watching my face. “You look shocked.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Every marriage is different.”
“Jo, I don’t expect you to understand this, but right up until the end, there were times when Lily opened herself completely to me, and the two of us would be filled with such joy that all we could do was grin like kids and shake our heads at the wonder of it all. I couldn’t risk losing that.”
Blake’s naked display of emotion overwhelmed me. Lily had never hidden her serial infidelities, her disappearances, and her indifference to the needs of her husband and daughter, and I had wondered, as everyone did, why Blake stayed with her. Now I knew.
“Lily was my life,” he said softly. “She’s been dead four years now, but even the memory of how good it could be between us brings me to my knees with gratitude.” He laughed. “Maybe the curse extended to me,” he said.
My nerves twanged. “There really was a curse?”
“Before we married, Lily told me about her mother’s history with Esau Pilger and how people said Esau used bad medicine to put some sort of curse on Gloria for not marrying him.” Blake’s eyes flashed with realization. “Gracie went over to Old Man Pilger’s house because she wanted to ask him about that curse.”
“Blake, I believe that tradit
ional medicines can heal, but Gracie and I were both uneasy about the possibility of medicine being used to harm. We went to see Esau Pilger to prove to ourselves that the tragedies that happened in the Ryder family weren’t caused by bad medicine, just by human beings making decisions that turned out badly.”
“And when Gracie went to find proof that bad medicine doesn’t exist, she had an accident that will take her out of basketball for an entire year.” Blake’s face was troubled. “So what do you think, Jo?”
“I don’t know. I keep telling myself that what happened to Gracie was just an accident, but there’s part of me that wonders…”
“There’s part of me that wonders too,” Blake said. He glanced at his watch, his half-eaten soup, and his still-wrapped sandwich. “Time to go,” he said.
—
The hospital staff had done their best to brighten the public areas with Halloween decorations. But plastic jack-o’-lanterns, cardboard cut-outs of snaggle-toothed witches, and foil garlands of black cats were no match for the painfully slow promenade of the walking wounded as they dragged their IV stands down the corridor on the way to the hospital’s front doors and the opportunity to grab a smoke. The sight of Gracie, her face lit with gladness, sitting on the bed, dressed and clearly ready to blow the joint, was just the tonic Blake and I needed to lift the gloom of the past half-hour.
“You look great,” I said.
“Feeling great,” she said. “They’re fitting me with a Donjoy Drytex knee brace in four days, but until then I’m on crutches. I can live with that.”
“You’re getting out today?”
“As soon as Dr. Abramsen signs my release.”
Rose was sitting in the corner knitting. “Gracie wants to go to the university and watch her team practise.”
“If that’s what Gracie wants…” Blake said.
Gracie smiled at her father. “That’s what Gracie wants.”
“I’ll drive you,” Blake said.
I said goodbye to Blake and Rose and kissed Gracie on the forehead. “I’ll call later and see how everybody’s doing,” I said.
“Everybody will be doing just fine,” Rose said crisply, and the set of her mouth was the only guarantee I needed.
—
It was eight o’clock our time and ten Toronto time when Zack and I finally connected. We’d missed each other, left messages, called again, and missed again. Zack was triumphant when he heard my unrecorded voice. “Hey – finally,” he said. “First things first. I love you and I wish you were here.”
“Ditto,” I said. “But I’m glad I was here for Blake and Gracie.”
“How’s she doing?”
After I delivered my précis of the medical news, Zack sighed. “I guess it could be worse,” he said. “Gracie will hate being on the bench for the rest of the season.”
“She’s handling it well,” I said. “As soon as she was released from the hospital, Blake drove her to the university to watch her team practise.”
“And Blake’s hanging in?”
“Barely,” I said. “I picked him up at the airport and he and I had lunch together at the hospital. He talked about his love for Lily. Every time I think about Blake’s grief when he remembered her, my throat closes.”
“Lily grieved too,” Zack said. “She loved Blake, Jo.”
“You and she were close, weren’t you,” I said. “I remember watching you drive the boat for her when she was waterskiing. She took so many chances, but every time you did a shoulder check she just indicated you should go faster.”
“And I did. Lily and I understood each other’s demons. But that’s a topic for another day. Jo, I have news too, but I honestly don’t know what to make of it. Warren Weber gave Emmett Keating twenty-four hours to give him an answer on the job offer, but by ten o’clock this morning Warren still hadn’t heard from him. Warren tried calling and texting, but no response, so late this afternoon Warren sent someone over to Emmett’s apartment building to check out the situation. When Warren’s guy buzzed Emmett’s apartment, no one answered, so he had a little chat with the super of the building, and the super took him up to Emmett’s apartment and let him in.”
“Just like that,” I said. “That’s a little unusual, isn’t it?”
“Maybe, but it worked out. The super picked up a couple of hundred bucks and the guy Warren sent found something interesting. Here’s where it gets weird. You know that photo of Chris, Dee, Blake, Kevin, and me in the lake the summer after we opened the firm.”
“Of course. Delia says it’s ‘iconic,’ ” I said. I swallowed hard. The sight of the photograph hanging in Esau Pilger’s house still lingered in my memory, but there was no point troubling Zack about it while he was away.
“Apparently Emmett couldn’t resist being part of the icon,” Zack said. “He photoshopped himself into the picture, and the result is framed and sitting on his desk.”
“That’s bizarre,” I said.
“It is that,” Zack said. “I’m sending the picture now.”
When I saw the photo, I felt a chill. Emmett was not as young as the Falconer Shreve partners had been when the picture was taken, but he was in their age range. He’d placed himself beside Chris and, like the other freshly minted lawyers, he was wearing blue jeans, a T-shirt, and the confident smile of a person who knows the future is dazzling. I couldn’t take my eyes off Emmett’s comb-over and his hope-filled face. “That is so sad,” I said.
“Agreed,” Zack said. “It’s also frightening. What do you think was going through Emmett’s head when he sat at his computer inserting his younger self into a photo that was taken thirty years ago?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t want to know,” I said. “Zack, Emmett’s not going to accept Warren’s offer. This is his dream. He’s not done with Falconer Shreve. He wants to rewrite its history. He wants to be a part of the firm from the very beginning.”
“And all we can do is wait for his next move,” Zack said.
“No other option,” I said. The words were measured, but even I could hear the tremor in my voice.
CHAPTER
12
The dogs and I had just come back from our run when Kevin Hynd phoned. “You free for breakfast?” he said.
“In Calgary?” I said.
“Nope, right here in Pile O’ Bones. I flew in last night. Gracie’s my goddaughter, and I had to make certain all was well. She really is amazing, Jo. Losing the rest of her season has to be a blow, but she’s rolling with it. And that’s more than Emmett Keating seems to be doing.”
“Zack sent you the photo?”
“He did, and it freaked me out.”
“Us too,” I said. “Why don’t we have breakfast here? You and I can talk without worrying about being overheard, and you can say hi to Taylor and the dogs.”
“I’m not screwing up your plans?”
“I have no plans. I’m giving myself a morning off.”
“A morning off from what?”
“From everything,” I said.
—
When Taylor, late for choir practice, blew through the kitchen on her way to school, the dogs were flattened on the rug under the table. I was making waffle batter and Kevin was pouring juice. Kevin and I were both wearing blue jeans, flannel shirts, and walking boots. Taylor took one look at us and grinned. “You guys are so cute.” She cupped her ear with her hand. “Is that the seventies I hear calling?”
Kevin passed Taylor a glass of juice. “You are now officially out of my will, missy. No Led Zeppelin, no Pink Floyd, no Janis Joplin for you. I’ll have to take that trunk full of vinyl classics with me when I go.”
Taylor brushed his cheek with a kiss. “You’ll forgive me, Kev. You always do. Besides, I think you and Jo look really nice – folksy, like you’re off to chop wood or churn butter or something.”
“Now you’re out of my will,” I said.
Taylor picked up an apple from the bowl on the table. “Love you, Jo. Love you, Kev.” A
nd with that, she was gone.
I poured batter into the waffle iron.
“Want to listen to ‘Stairway to Heaven’?” Kevin said. “It’s on my playlist.”
“Best offer I’ve had all day.”
Kevin and I listened to Led Zeppelin’s rock classic, and then we read the paper while we ate our waffles. After Kevin cleared away the dishes, I poured us each a second cup of coffee. “This is nice,” Kevin said. “We should do it more often.”
“I’d like that,” I said. “But since you live in Calgary…”
“I won’t be living in Calgary any more,” he said. “Katina and I have taken a hard look at the Calgary office and we’ve made some decisions about restructuring.” He leaned towards me. “Jo, Katina’s the only person I’ve talked to about this, but she’s taking over. I’m through being a lawyer.” He touched the sleeve of his flannel shirt. “I’m through with three-piece suits and weekend meetings and business lunches. I’m through with the whole thing.”
“Finally,” I said. “Congratulations.”
“I’ve given the law my best shot,” he said. “You know that. I went to law school because that’s what my mum and dad wanted, and I loved them. I would have bailed after first year, but by that time, I had met Zack and the others and we’d become close. Except for a hiatus here and there, I’ve stayed with the firm for almost thirty years.”
“Because that’s what your partners wanted. But now it’s your turn.”
Kevin’s face lit up. “Yes, now it’s my turn. I’m fifty-three years old, and for the first time in a long time, I’m looking forward to what’s ahead. There is so much I want to see and learn and experience. I’m going to start by going back to the Jokhang Temple in Lhasa.”
“A place of peace and power,” I said. “I still use the postcard you sent me from Lhasa as a bookmark. I like to keep you close.” Kevin reached over and took my hand. It was a moment of perfect connection broken when the landline rang.