Here So Far Away
Page 24
Mr. Humphreys wasn’t sure, but at least a few thousand dollars, he thought. He suggested I take it to someone he knew at Noel who could help authenticate it. Rupert looked only mildly surprised when I explained this to him. “The Constable had money to spare, as it turns out. Lot of money. Most of it was in trust. He hadn’t touched it yet, but it was there, part of his grandfather’s legacy. And last year he came into a large estate after his father died.”
“I’m sorry, but are you sure? This is a guy who darned his old socks.”
“Suppose that explains his wandering around. Easier to be a free spirit when you have a big ol’ net to catch you.”
I was stunned. Francis had made passing references to his family’s business and boarding school, and he’d never made it sound like they were that rich.
“Did he tell you all this?”
“Not all of it. I spoke to his mother at length. She is a piece of something.”
But why live out here? I thought. Why birth calves in the riverbed, if he didn’t have to work at all? I hadn’t realized I’d spoken the words aloud until Rupert replied: “I suppose some people need to make their own start.”
I wrapped the book in the cardigan that I’d been using for extra protection and returned it to my bag. “You know, no matter what this is worth, it’s still a shitty substitute for good-bye.”
“Men are cowards. We’d rather face a firing squad than a woman’s tears.” He chuckled. “A firing squad doesn’t talk you into things.”
“The problem with that is, now I don’t know what he wanted me to do with it.”
“Maybe nothing.”
“You mean hang on to it, like a memento.”
“Could be. Or could have been just a loaner. Or a what’s-it. When you don’t bring enough cash to the store so you leave something behind to show you’ll come back.”
“Collateral.”
Or a promissory note.
“You know, honey, he was not a fellow to make assumptions. He gave that to you, and it’s for you to decide what you want to do with it. I, for one, think some decisions are best made when you’re older. So, if you’re asking me, I say give it a minute. Something special like that, you could let it go and then change your mind. You think the lady in the poem from way back wasn’t wishing she’d kept that fish for supper?”
I was certain then that Rupert had hidden the package to try to keep us apart. He may have thought it would be better for me in the long run to believe that Francis had left without a final word. Or maybe he was trying to buy us time and sober second thought before we worked out what he’d done. I suddenly didn’t care. That he thought Francis could let me go and then change his mind meant Rupert believed that he had gotten into his car still loving me.
Rupert was crumbling cookie down his front. His eyes were filmy. He had on one brown shoe and one black shoe. I wasn’t sure he remembered what he’d done, and I couldn’t muster anything like anger. Sitting in the afternoon sun, listening to the water rush over the rocky riverbed, I was just so relieved there was one person I could talk to about Francis. Hearing him say “the Constable” made it feel, for a fleeting moment, like Francis was in the other room. I hadn’t talked to a soul who knew him, really knew him, since he died.
Rupert went to wipe his mouth with a handkerchief and wrapped my fingers around it instead.
“Alright?”
“Alright.” I dried my eyes. “Yes, alright. Do you want me to read some of those poems to you?”
“Crystal here is not such a great fan of poetry,” Rupert said. “But I don’t think she would complain if you whistled a little tune.”
I helped Rupert back to his room and tucked him into his yellow rocker with his favorite afghan. Just as I put my hand on the doorknob to leave, Wilfred chirped in his cage—a hot, indignant little chirp, followed by a cascade of swamp water raining noisily onto the newspaper below.
“I mean, at least he’s talking to me,” I said.
“Wilfred may be a dick,” Rupert said, “but by George, George, he’s a good listener.”
So was Rupert, and I hoped I would become one too, because, for me, love is a conversation, but you have to be able to hear the subtext.
I want you.
I need you.
I’m mad at you.
I misled you.
I love you.
I love you.
I’m letting go of you.
I’ll miss you.
Forty
Dad was right: life is a bad writer. I’ve thought a lot about whether I’d rewrite my senior year given the chance. I guess this was it. But in a way, that’s what I did the first time around. Truth is, I never did tell anyone the whole story, because the facts are a bit mean and I had to work too hard to convince people that I’m alright. Unless you count dreaming of Joshua Spring’s tongue filling my mouth like a wet sausage whenever I go to bed without brushing my teeth.
I’m not a haunted person. You can’t be followed by someone who’s part of you. Though sometimes when I’m back home, especially near the edge of the great basin where the mountains begin, where you can look down at the squares of cornfields and pastures rugging the valley floor and the snatches of woodland and the villages and the sea, I think about the people who’ve come and gone from this place and I might get a little sentimental.
The punctuation mark at the end of my idiot year, as Dad once called it, wasn’t the prom. Please. I sent the others off with some dances they said brought the house down, including Serbian Disco, Seated Floor-Mopping, Speed Skater, and the soulful come-on, I Really Should Have Chewed More Before Swallowing. (Slow shuffle, hand over the heart, deep gulp, remember to maintain eye contact.) But I did go to our all-night grad party, held in an old airfield, wearing Sid’s leather jacket. He’d sent it to Bill as a birthday gift, along with three tickets to a summer Tragically Hip concert in the city for Bill, himself, and me.
“He says we need male bonding time,” Bill said, reading the card. “Someone might have told him you’ve turned into a weeper.”
Sid sounded like his same old self, but I wondered if he’d changed as much as we all had, and how much that would matter when he came back.
When I got home from the grad party at sunrise, Dad was sitting on the porch floor doing his mirror therapy. His foot was bare, pants rolled above the knee, and he had a three-foot mirror lying lengthwise between his legs so that it looked like he had both a left foot and a right one. The physiotherapist had given him a bunch of exercises to help with phantom pain, like squeezing his toes and flexing.
“You don’t look much worse for wear,” he said.
I sat with him until he finished his exercises, then told him about my final grades, which would soon be making their way to Aurora. My marks had averaged out well enough to secure my acceptance in the journalism program.
“I’m proud of you. Still sure journalism’s the thing?”
“Honestly, I have no idea what I want to do.”
“That’s what school is for. So now there is just the matter of paying for it.”
“I’m applying for a student loan,” I said. “I know that will stress Mum out, but it’ll be my debt, and I’ll get a job in the city. If that’s not enough, I’ll go to school part-time.”
This was mostly true, but I left out the other option that I’d been wrestling with for weeks, which was to sell the copy of Geography III and how I would explain where it had come from and why Constable McAdams would give me something so valuable.
“I have a better plan,” Dad said. “You’ll accept the full-time placement they’ve offered you and go live with your aunt Joanna.”
“She doesn’t have space for me.”
“She does if Junior-Junior comes and lives with us. He’s going to end up in jail or knock someone up or both, if Joanna doesn’t do something.”
“So she’s sending him to live with the Sergeant.”
“Hey, you turned out okay, didn’t you?” When I didn’t a
nswer, he said, “You did, kiddo. You’ll have your own space in the basement with a bathroom and one of those electric stove tops, and we’ll get you a bar fridge. It’s not a free ride. You’ll be expected to do some cleaning and babysitting to cover your room and board, sorry to tell you.”
It meant living under my family’s roof for a while longer, but if it let me hold on to the one thing I had left of Francis, that wasn’t a hard choice to make.
“You must really want me to leave,” I said.
I wanted him to say no.
He nodded. “You shouldn’t choose a school because it’s the closest.”
“Scary, all of a sudden.”
“Good. You should be scared. Life is scary. So is your aunt Joanna. But you won’t be there forever, and I’m sure you’ll have friends around. Miss Prissy going to Aurora?”
“Lisa? Thinking about it.”
That was where Keith was headed, but she was also still thinking about Noel and another theater program in Montreal.
Mum opened a window above our heads. Now that Dad was smoking only outdoors, she’d begun tidying their room, perhaps working up to moving back in. I had come to see my parents’ marriage as fragile; I suppose most relationships are. You just don’t know it in the beginning, when you’re tattooing someone’s name on your body.
“Dad, do you believe in love at first sight?”
“No.”
“Didn’t you stamp Mum’s name on your arm after, like, your third date?”
“That is more a reflection of my youthful stupidity.”
“So, you don’t think you ever just kind of know right away.”
“Sounds like foresight, and I don’t go for voodoo like that. If you meet someone and it doesn’t work out, you say, Oh well, I lost my head. If it does, you say, I knew all along. Only time will tell. I don’t care how smart you think you are, there’s no substitute for time.”
“So, what do you call it when you have the big feelings for someone you don’t know yet? Lust?”
He wrinkled his face at me then looked into the top corner of the porch as though the answer lived there. “Ugch,” he said. “Hope.”
Acknowledgments
The settings in this novel are similar to the Annapolis Valley, Nova Scotia, but do not exist as I portrayed them here. However, there is an Ironwood Farm on the Avon River, and I highly recommend Rupert and Heather’s blueberries.
Because the cheese never stands alone, there are a number of people to whom I owe a large debt of gratitude, including:
My family.
HarperCollins, especially Alexandra Cooper, Suzanne Sutherland, Jane Warren, Alyssa Miele, Janet Robbins Rosenberg, Alexandra Rakaczki, Stephanie Nuñez, Heather Daugherty, Jennifer Lambert, Iris Tupholme, Rosemary Brosnan, Leo MacDonald, Cory Beatty, Shamin Alli, Maeve O’Regan, Sabrina Abballe, Bess Braswell, and Olivia Russo.
Folio Literary Management, especially Emily van Beek, patron saint of patience; Estelle Laure; and Molly Cusick.
First responders Lena Coakley, Kathy Stinson, Paula Wing, and Rachael Dyer.
Michael Devlin, Ronald Sigal, and Kevin Cleary for sharing their expertise (any liberties with facts are my own).
The Cassaday family, whose generous donation of space and solitude made this book possible.
Melissa McCormack, Vikki VanSickle, Kate Blair, Amir Ocampo, Vicki Grant, Lorissa Sengara, Chad Fraser, Amy Harkness, and Andy Sheppard for the fact-checking, feedback, and inspiration.
The King’s County Advertiser and Register’s “From the Cruiser” column for being funnier than fiction.
Victor Fleury, Karl West, Nelda Humphreys, Bill Wagstaff, Leonard Diepeveen, and the many other teachers whose influences can be found throughout this story and who share some responsibility for turning me into a writer.
Please direct all complaints to the above.
About the Author
HADLEY DYER is the award-winning author of Johnny Kellock Died Today, among other books for children and young adults. She worked in the children’s book industry for more than twenty years. To learn more about her, visit her online at www.hadleydyer.com.
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Here So Far Away
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Copyright
HarperTeen is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
HERE SO FAR AWAY. Copyright © 2018 by Hadley Dyer. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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COVER PHOTO OF COUPLE BY BONNINSTUDIO,
STORMY SKY BY ILYA, FOR STOCKSY
HAND LETTERING BY MARLA MOORE
COVER DESIGN BY HEATHER DAUGHERTY
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2017951265
Digital Edition MARCH 2018 ISBN: 978-0-06-247319-6
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-247317-2
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1819202122PC/LSCH10987654321
FIRST EDITION
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