The Winners' Circle

by Gail Bowen

  Distraught when he saw Delia’s comment, Emmett went to his friend. Callow reassured Emmett that the decision did not have to be final. He told Emmett he was in possession of information about Christopher Altieri that would force Delia to back down. Ironically, Emmett never knew what the information was. He simply trusted his friend Callow and believed it existed. At the fund-raiser dinner for Zack, Callow intimated to Keating that Delia had reneged on her agreement to promote him. Then he sat back and watched as Emmett made a public spectacle of himself. When Keating confronted Delia at the dinner, he had been bluffing.

  Callow had been standing in the shadows as Emmett verbally assaulted Delia, and when Annie Weber frogmarched Emmett out of the Scarth Club, Lorne moved into place to capture the moment on his camera. He made and distributed the video and convinced the deeply humiliated Emmett Keating that he should not jump at Warren Weber’s job offer but should instead retreat to a quiet place where he could consider his options. Callow escorted Emmett to Darryl Colby’s cabin the afternoon that Warren made his job offer. On the morning of November 1, he drove back to the cabin, shot Keating, and wrote the confession note. The stage was set, and Lorne Callow had been preparing himself to play his part for thirty years. Except for the fact that Zack wasn’t at Falconer Shreve on the morning Callow exacted his revenge, the final act went off exactly as he had planned.

  However, there was a loose end. During the years he worked for Darryl Colby, Emmett Keating had made no secret of his desire to someday work for Falconer Shreve. Colby thought he was a fool and told him so, but he valued Keating’s work ethic and was willing to put up with his eccentricities. Like most experienced trial lawyers, Darryl Colby prided himself on his ability to read character, and he was convinced that whatever else he was, Keating was neither a killer nor a likely candidate for suicide. The fact that Keating had chosen Colby’s cabin as the place to end his life also nagged at him.

  Darryl Colby shared his concerns with Lorne Callow, and though Callow dismissed them, Colby’s uneasiness was not assuaged. Believing that, at the very least, Lorne Callow had been complicit in the murders, Colby had gone to Falconer Shreve the day of the firm meeting to warn Zack that he might be in danger. When Zack failed to get in touch with him, Darryl decided to approach Zack at home. Lorne had been keeping an eye on his old mentor, and when the black Lincoln pulled up in front our house, Lorne was right behind it. Gracie and I had arrived just in time.

  —

  Lorne Callow’s actions would shadow our lives forever, but that afternoon as Zack wheeled over and held out his arms to take Charlie so that Maisie and Peter could enjoy their guests without the distraction of an active little boy I felt a stirring of optimism. When I joined them, I scooped up Colin. “Brock and Noah are outside playing with the kids,” I said. “Zack, let’s take the little guys over to the window so they can watch.”

  Madeleine and Lena had been invited to a friend’s birthday party, so Mieka and Charlie D. had taken them back to the city after lunch, but the other children were out in force. The day was nippy enough for jackets and mitts, and Brock had pulled Kai’s Roughriders toque over his ears. Snug on his father’s chest in his Baby Bjorn, Kai’s expression was merry as his dad and sister threw a football around with Noah, Jacob, Angus, and Patsy. Charlie and Colin were eager spectators. They had no idea what the game was, but they were enjoying the colour and the movement, and when Pantera, Esme, and Peter and Maisie’s dog, Rowdy, joined the game, the twins cooed their delight.

  I could see Zack’s nerves unknotting. “Having fun,” I said.

  “Getting there,” he said and then his brow furrowed. “Where’s Taylor?”

  “She and Gracie and Isobel are over at the Hynds’. Taylor thought the old grey cottage needed to have some people in it – especially today.”

  “Because that’s where we’re burying Kevin’s ashes,” Zack said.

  “Right. The plan is that after everyone else leaves, the five of us will say a few words and then bury the ashes in the spot near the front door where Kevin’s mother planted that bleeding heart the first summer she and Kevin’s father were here. Taylor chose the location. She’s taken care of everything. Noah came out earlier in the week to get the earth ready.”

  Zack shook his head in amazement. “Thanksgiving weekend, Taylor called me to come into her room to remove a spider on her windowsill, and now she’s handling this.”

  “Taylor and Kevin were always close,” I said. “This isn’t easy for her, but she’s doing it.” I sniffed the air. “Zack, unless I’m mistaken we have a more immediate problem. One or both of our grandsons needs a diaper change.”

  Zack lifted Charlie cautiously and inhaled. “It’s Charlie,” he said.

  “Looks like you’re on deck,” I said.

  “I’ve never changed a diaper in my life.”

  “Everybody has to start somewhere,” I said. “And babies are forgiving.”

  —

  After all the guests at the baptism had signed the new guest book and the last car had pulled out and headed for the highway, Taylor took my hand. “It’s time,” she said.

  Zack led the way to the Hynd cottage in his wheelchair, and Zack, Noah, and I waited by the bleeding heart while Taylor went into the cottage to get the ashes. She came back with a brilliantly coloured, exotically patterned drawstring bag. “I found this online,” she said. “It’s Tibetan, and Kevin used to say he always felt at peace in Tibet.”

  “Kevin would want us to keep it simple, so that’s what we’re doing,” Isobel said. She and Gracie were doing their best to keep their tone briskly objective, but they were struggling. Isobel bit her lip and looked at Zack, Noah, and me. “Is there anything you’d like to say before we put the ashes in the earth?”

  Noah, close to breaking, shook his head. Zack was struggling too. “Joanne has something that we both thought was right,” he said.

  I took out the postcard of the Jokhang Temple that I’d used as a bookmark for years. As I told Kevin the morning we’d had breakfast in our kitchen, I’d memorized what he’d written, but that afternoon, I wanted to see his handwriting, so I read the words as I spoke them out loud. “The Tibetans used to believe their country was connected to heaven by a rope. Today the clouds are low and the mountains seem to scrape the sky. Heaven feels close.”

  I handed the postcard to our daughter. She opened the drawstrings of the silk bag, slipped the card in, then dropped to her knees, placed the silk bag in the earth, and patted it gently. Gracie, Isobel, and Noah joined her and scooped earth over the bright silk until the colours disappeared under the earth. Zack rolled his chair close, bent, picked up a handful of soil, and scattered it. He wheeled back and I dropped to my knees and smoothed the earth on the grave. “Be at peace and be held in love forever,” I said.

  Noah whispered “Peace,” and then Taylor held out her hand to me, and I stood.

  “Further up and further in…” she said. “I guess you all know what comes next. It’s what Jewel the Unicorn says in The Last Battle: ‘I have come home at last! This is my real country. I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now…. Come further up, come further in.’ ” Taylor rubbed her hands on her jeans, looked at the fresh-turned dirt, and then gave a little wave and said, “Be at peace, Kevin, and be held in love forever.”

  Noah, Isobel, and Gracie said their farewells to Kevin and to us, and then Noah and the three young women headed to Gracie’s car for the drive back to the city.

  —

  For too long Zack stared at Kevin’s grave, motionless. I placed my hands on his shoulders. “How would you feel about taking the dogs for a last run on the beach?”

  He tried a smile. “Sure, why not?”

  As always when we got to the beach, Pantera and Esme loped off in search of adventure. Most years by the twenty-ninth of November, frost, snow, and polar temperatures would have transformed Lawyers’ Bay into a world painted in the icy sil
vers, greys, and blacks of the winter palette, but this was not most years. The lake, the beach, and the trees looked just as they had when our families were together at our cottages for the last time on Thanksgiving weekend. Everything was the same, but nothing would ever be the same again.

  When Zack didn’t give his all-terrain wheelchair the usual exploratory push to check the firmness of the sand, I bent and tested the sand with my fingertip. “The beach seems navigable if you’re in the mood to navigate,” I said.

  Zack didn’t move. “Would it be all right if we just stayed here for a while?”

  “Of course,” I said.

  For an uncomfortably long time, we watched the choppy waters in silence. The depth of Zack’s despair tore at my heart. Finally, I pointed towards the yellow vinyl boat bumper that Noah had attached to the anchor line of the raft.

  “It’s still there,” I said. “Next May long weekend, you and I will give Noah a hand taking the canvas off the raft, and Noah and whoever’s around will carry the raft down to the water, and summer will begin again. Maddy and Lena will jump off the end of the dock and swim till Mieka tells them to come in because their lips are turning blue, and the girls will say their lips are not blue, and you and I will sit on the beach with a stack of towels and wrap the girls up when they finally admit defeat and come out of the water.”

  Zack still hadn’t moved. I wasn’t certain he’d even heard me, but I pushed on. “You and I have to be there with the towels, Zack. And we have to be there to keep Charlie and Colin and Jacob and Lexi and Kai from eating sand or going too far into the water. And we have to be there to tell Gracie and Isobel and Taylor that when summer’s over, they can go away to university and we’ll be all right.

  “And, Zack, we are going to be all right. It will take time, but you heard what Brock said at lunch. People are counting on you. There’s still so much to be done in this city. The day you were sworn in as mayor, you took an oath. You have to honour it. And there were other oaths – the ones we took in front of the altar of the cathedral. After the dean pronounced us husband and wife you said, ‘This is forever, Joanne. A deal’s a deal.’ I’m holding you to that, Zack.”

  After what seemed like forever, Zack turned, looked up at me, and said the words he’d said a hundred times when we knew we had to leave Lawyers’ Bay and get back to our daily lives. “Time to piss on the fire, call in the dogs, and go home?” he said.

  When he held out his arms, I felt a bloom of hope. “Yes,” I said. “It’s time to go home.”

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Thanks to:

  Kendra Ward, my editor, for her friendship, her sensitivity, and her unerring intelligence;

  Ashley Dunn, for her warmth and professionalism;

  Heather Sangster and Kelly Joseph, for the essential final polishing of the manuscript;

  Jared Bland, for bringing passion and commitment to M&S, a publishing house that has always put authors and readers first;

  Najma Kazmi, MD, for knowing the value of a gentle touch;

  Wayne Chau, BSP, for being smart, funny, and understanding;

  Hildy Bowen, Brett Bell, Max Bowen, Carrie Bowen, Nathaniel Bowen, and Jennifer Taylor, for being the family I always dreamed of having;

  Kai Langen, Madeleine Bowen-Diaz, Lena Bowen-Diaz, Chesney Langen Bell, Ben Bowen-Bell, Peyton Bowen, and Lexi Bowen, for being the sunshine of our lives;

  Ted, my love of forty-eight years, who continues to make every day a joy;

  Esme, who is faithfully by my side whether I want her there or not.

  The text from The Last Battle by C. S. Lewis excerpted on this page can be found in The Chronicles of Narnia, Omnibus Edition (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1956) on page 767.

  The text from The Last Battle by C. S. Lewis excerpted on this page can be found in The Chronicles of Narnia, Omnibus Edition (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1956) on page 760.