Poison. Well, she had briefly considered that. But it had never really been a possibility. She had known all along she wanted Dace’s baby if she couldn’t have him. It might be an unreasonable choice, a crazy choice, but it was the right thing for her.
Still. How wonderful she had wanted Mel, a boy so loving and so breathlessly uncomplicated. Sometimes she felt like she had come home. Especially now that he wanted her, even when he knew. But, clamoured a practical little voice, belatedly born of necessity, how long will that last?
“Something tells me you don’t want to do that.”
“Not this, no. I mean, no, although if you asked me when I was so sick …”
“So we’ll keep the kid. We’ll both be old enough. What the hell’s wrong now?”
She hesitated. “It’s just … stepfathers. You know.”
“What do you think I am, Liza? A lion?” Mel looked so indignant she nearly laughed. “Do you think I’m going to eat Dace’s kid?”
“Some do.”
“Look, anyone can see you and Dace were connected. Did you think I was blind? The thing about him was anyone who knew him was attracted to him. Even men. That was both his weakness and his strength. I don’t know why. It was just him. And I don’t know why he can’t stay out of trouble. Do you?”
“No. Well, I have some idea, but it all amounts to the same thing. He didn’t really have any choice. Maybe he was programmed. Maybe it was something innate.”
“Aw, Jesus Christ. Everybody has choices.”
“Not always good ones.”
“Well, tell me again. If he showed up right now, would you go with him?”
But he did and I didn’t, she thought. If it hadn’t been for the baby, she would never have been able to let go, to let him go alone. She wouldn’t have had the strength. Jesus. Did she get pregnant just so she would be trapped?
“Of course not!” she said out loud. “It’s not an option. Even if it were, I’ve got the baby to think about now. If he gets sent back to prison, my baby’s daddy will be in jail.”
“He will.”
“Well,” she said and sighed. “It’s not like he’s been trained for anything else. But I will not take my kid, even if it is his kid, into a prison visiting room. Some people might think they were doing the child a favour, letting him get to know his Dad, but I don’t. Dace wouldn’t either.”
“You haven’t told him?”
“No. What’s the point? He’d go nuts. Worse, he might have stayed.”
“Are you sure?” Mel asked slowly. Then his eyes widened. “Wait a minute. What do you mean he might have stayed? Did you talk to him before he left? Did you lie to the police?” He sat up, grabbing her by the shoulders and giving her a little shake.
“No, of course not,” she lied. “Let go of me!”
“They’ll get him. Extradite him if he’s gone down to the States.”
Liza shrugged. Maybe not, she thought, unless he commits another crime. And he won’t, now that he’s away. It’s only at home he wasn’t safe—where he should have been safe, where all his troubles began. “Besides, Dace and I, we’ve had our chances. Now it’s all about the baby once he’s born.”
“‘He’. So you think it’s a boy. Right. Makes sense. Dace would have a boy for sure.”
She lay on the bed, thinking. She was going to need help. She had always known that. Even if she got a job, she couldn’t work and look after the baby, too. And Mel was so dear … But she couldn’t. He didn’t deserve …
But there was somebody else who might not mind. Why hadn’t she thought of this before? All along she had wanted to help her Uncle Norm, to protect him …
“Liza?” Mel asked. He’d turned his head on the pillow and now eyed her suspiciously. “What’s happening?”
“Um, I’ve just thought of something. And you’re the reason,” she said, running her fingers down his chest, her eyes briefly alight. “If you’re willing to help me, and you’re a man …”
He flicked one eyebrow. “A mere man.”
“Oh, don’t look at me like that, you know what I mean. The thing is, I bet Uncle Norm would help me.”
“Dace’s father? Are you nuts? What’s he going to do with a baby? Jesus, don’t you think the poor bastard might need a rest?”
“But it’s his grandchild, Mel. He was never able to help Dace, which is a terrible torture for any parent. You heard me talking to him yesterday. He’s heartsick about Dace.”
“His guilt is hardly your concern. I bet he regrets leaving him at that school, though.”
“I could probably finish school while I lived at his place. It’s only twenty miles outside of Maitland. If he loaned me a car …”
“And the baby? What are you going to do, lug him to class?”
“They have those carrier things now, although I’m sure my uncle would pay his housekeeper a little extra to watch the baby while I went to school.” Dace said Uncle Norm would help me, told me to go to him for anything, she almost added.
“But if you and I got married, Liza, you wouldn’t have to rely on anyone. How about next week? We’ll go to City Hall in Maitland and tell everybody later. Face the music. Maybe we can have a little party on Valentine’s Day.”
“I’d still be relying on you,” Liza said. She tried to hug him, but he was board stiff on his back, both hands locked behind his head. She sat up and really looked at him. Oh God. This wasn’t right.
“Sweet boy, I can’t get married and live like this,” she muttered, her eyes filling with tears she tried to hide by fumbling on the floor for her clothes. “I want to. I want to, so much. I want a normal life and I’m scared, but …” She pulled a paisley granny dress over her head, a garment she now wore most of the time. She’d been able to secure the zipper of her jeans with a safety pin just last week, but after several days of three square Melville meals, she couldn’t anymore.
“Like this? What’s wrong with this?”
“It’s too … I don’t know,” she said weakly. “It’s too not me.”
For the first time, Mel looked slightly angry. “You mean it’s too easy here, I suppose,” he replied, removing one hand from behind his head. He reached towards her, looking like he couldn’t believe she would be stupid enough to let go of the lifeline he was tossing her way. “Do you think you’ll be riding a motorcycle when you have a kid?”
She shook her head. “Oh, I don’t think it would be easy living here. Not for me. What do you think would happen if your people found out more about Dace?” she asked. She came back and took his hand, holding it like a prayer book between hers.
“Well, we’d never let on it was Dace’s kid.”
“Still …”
“Okay, so you’re related to a convict. Who the fuck cares? They’ll get over it. Everybody has a few bad apples on their family tree.”
“But he’s not a bad apple, he’s not! Oh, I don’t know. People don’t know anything about him. Not really. Except that he got away with murder, or so they think,” she said softly, turning away and poking through her purse on the desk.
Mel sat up and swung his legs over the edge of the bed, his eyes intent. “It doesn’t matter what they think. I could help you, Liza. And you, you would love me in the end.”
“Probably,” she agreed, securing her hair with an elastic band. “And I’d love to have your help, but it wouldn’t be fair. Besides, your family hates me. They didn’t like me in the first place and they liked me even less after the police came,” she reminded him, tossing the rest of her clothes into the small duffel bag at the foot of the bed. She headed for her coat and boots in the front hall. “Your grandmother—”
Mel followed her, pulling a T-shirt over his head in case his mother came back. “—will probably be dead in a couple of years,” he said ruthlessly. “Liza, if you walk out now …” His expression hardened. “You’re going to find him, aren’t you? Jesus Christ, you really are a reckless girl. Reckless, reckless, just like him.” He stopped, jamming th
e heels of his fists into his eyes and watching her unlock his front door. “Liza,” he warned, “you can’t go anywhere in this storm. There’s already a foot of snow on the ground. And I’m not driving you. Jesus fucking Christ. You’re not planning to hitchhike again, are you? You were half-dead last week when you showed up here like some stray cat.”
He was never going to stop asking her. Do you still love him, Liza? Do you still love him more than you love me?
“No. Please believe me. I’m not going back to him. How the hell could I? I’m a liability to him. Jesus, I don’t even know where he is.” Not to mention he doesn’t want me, she thought, feeling a great tear rip inside her chest.
Mel folded his arms across his chest, staring down at the Oriental runner in the hall, dark and intricate, on the shiny oak floor. “But you’ll find out. You’ve romanticized your relationship with him because of the drama. That’s what you’ve done all along.”
“You’re right. It’s probably all because of those books I’ve read,” she said, awkwardly maneuvering herself and her bag out the front door and onto the snow-dusted porch.
She paused to take a deep breath, bracing herself for the terrible journey ahead. God, it was so beautiful in the open air: the bulky, cloudy sky, the fresh snow on the trees, even the dry, brown wisps of a climbing rose on the arbour at the side. Why had she stayed inside so long? Everything would bloom again, given time. Like Eliot’s lilacs out of a dead land.
And the monarchs would come back too. Because somehow they knew where they belonged. Lucky them, they didn’t care with whom. She would have to hurry, though. A door opened and closed across the street. Mel’s mother was on her way back.
“C’mon, Liza. You’re pregnant. You can’t do this by yourself,” Mel said, shoving his bare feet into boots.
“I know. I’ll stay at Uncle Norm’s for a couple of months, even a year if he lets me, and I think he will. When Dace shows up, if he shows up, I’ll be gone. Long gone. Me and the baby.” She shook her head. “No, Mel, really, it’s okay. Please don’t put your jacket on. I promise not to hitchhike. Really. The bus station’s just down the street. I’ll wait there until the storm is over,” she said, pushing her hands against his chest.
Suddenly she was glowing with so much vitality, she thought her eyes must look feverish. She distinctly felt two bright red spots burning on her cheeks. For weeks she hadn’t been cold, with the baby growing inside her, millimeters every day. All his organs were developed now, she exulted. He weighed half a pound and he could cry. Her baby. Dace, Dace’s son. Their Devereux boy.
“Maybe I should call my father,” Mel said coolly. “Get something to calm you down.”
He thinks I’m insane. Well, maybe she was. If she didn’t leave right now they would sit around all day, arguing until they were both weak and broken down—a tedious argument of insidious intent. His parents and his grandmother would get in on the act, too. How ironic that Dace, the escaped convict, had been spared all this. For a moment she felt a pang of envy so sharp for her renegade cousin that she almost stayed.
But in the end she couldn’t. She was busting to get out of this place. Looping her purse around her neck, she lifted both her bag and her coat and glided down the porch steps. She made it down the Melvilles’ recently shovelled front walk to the road, although she could tell by the look on Mel’s face that he didn’t think she would. Maybe he even hoped she would fall. He watched her go, his high forehead pressed against the frame of the open door. But when she looked back over her shoulder and smiled, he closed his eyes. The snow, big, wet flakes, had temporarily stopped, and his mother, still across the street, hung back, her expression palpably relieved.
Yes, I’ll wait again. And Dace’s baby and me, we’ll both have a life. Without you, she thought, following tire tracks in the snow down the street to the bus station. And oh my God, without Dace.
– THE END –
Karen E. Black lives in Toronto, Ontario with her family. She went to university in a small city like Maitland. She has always written and done family research. Her work as a reference librarian helped her enrich the setting and heighten the suspense of From the Chrysalis by using historical detail about the deadliest event in Canadian penal history, the Kingston Penitentiary Riot of April 1971.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
About the Author
From the Chrysalis: a novel Page 34