One Good Thing

by Rebecca Hendry

  She doesn’t answer. It all seems so foolish now that Will’s back. Everything she thought. She can’t even say it out loud.

  “You thought I hurt him?” He sounds broken. “You really thought that?”

  “Well . . . well, obviously you didn’t. But I just . . . I guess I didn’t know why you had them.”

  “I don’t know. He must have given them to me,” he says. “I don’t remember. I’ll ask him. He told me last night that he told me where he had gone. That he was going back out to look for the meteor. He said I seemed okay, that I was having a normal conversation with him. He feels bad he didn’t walk me right up. He got to the edge of the lake and told me to walk in to Andrew’s, that he was going back out. But I didn’t remember.” He laughs softly. “All that time I knew, but I couldn’t remember.”

  “Sorry,” she says, “I didn’t mean anything . . . I just . . . I didn’t know why you were fighting all the time. And he punched you. Why did he punch you?”

  He looks at her, holding her gaze. “We were working on trying to get some samples tested from that site in the Barrens,” he says, his voice hollow. “We had a . . . disagreement. About some things related to that.”

  “What things?”

  “Delilah, sometimes adults do things they shouldn’t do. They make mistakes. And sometimes they do those things because it will make a significant difference in their—”

  “What things?”

  “We stole,” he says quietly.

  “Stole? What? What do you mean?”

  “Gold.”

  “You stole gold ?”

  “From Giant. We were working the ball mill after hours. Me and Will and Muddy. Crushing up the discarded ore. We got about five ounces and then Will wanted out.”

  “You stole from the mine?” Delilah can’t believe the words she’s hearing. All the ethical stuff, the “work hard for what you believe in,” things her father has been saying to her since she was a child are void. Erased.

  “Yes. It’s not okay. I’m not excusing it, but that ore . . . it gets tossed. They don’t process it, or if they do, not for a long time. It’s not okay, but they are a massive, multi-million-dollar company. They aren’t missing it. It was five ounces. That’s all. I’ve heard stories. There are lots of guys that have done it. We needed the money. We were sitting on something very promising, and I needed the money for the down payment so your mother—”

  “Will stole?” She’s breaking apart.

  Mac rubs his forehead. “Yes. But he wanted out. He didn’t want to steal. He was never okay with it. I wasn’t either, but Muddy convinced us it would be fine. Will got panicky because he was afraid if he got caught it would ruin any chance he had of seeing Clementine again. He wanted to pull out of the whole deal, but it was tricky. We already had some people interested in checking it out. So we were trying to find a way to buy him out if it took off. But we didn’t have enough money to pay our expenses. It’s all over now. It’s done. I gave my notice at Giant, and Will never took his share. So it’s all fine. I needed it, Delilah. Your mom wants us down there, but I didn’t want to show up with nothing. Do you understand?”

  Delilah lets all of this sink in. How Mac would steal for Annie. How he would do anything to be with her. How he falls apart without her. Falls into a black hole just like one of those binary stars. Yes. She is finally understanding.

  “Dad?”

  “Yes, Lila? I’m so sorry. I’m so . . .” He has tears in his voice. She can feel his shame and desperation.

  She puts a hand over his hand on the bed. “It’s okay.”

  Martha’s voice carries across their yard and through the house. “Charrrlie . . . Charlie Boy!”

  Mac stands.

  “Dad?”

  “Yes, Lila?”

  “Do you remember what I told you about Marcel?”

  His face is pinched. “There are sometimes just . . . things that happen between adults, Delilah. It’s . . . complicated.”

  “I know,” she says. “But I don’t want to leave Old Town.”

  Mac crouches down and looks at her. He puts a gentle hand on the top of her head.

  “I know,” he says. “But we’re a family. I can’t leave you behind.” He still has tears in his eyes, somehow at odds with his ragged beard, his weather-beaten face with the crinkles by the eyes.

  “It’s okay,” she tells him gently. “Just let me finish the school year here. Please. I can stay with Maggie and Red.”

  “Delilah, I—”

  “Please? Just until June. You can go down and see her and then who knows? Maybe you can even get her to move up here instead of buying a house down there.” She’s grasping at straws, but he needs a reason to let her do this.

  “You aren’t going to let this go, are you?” He wipes his eyes. Nods. “We might be able to work that out. It’s only four months. But after that, we all live together as a family. Whether it’s there or here.”

  Delilah nods her agreement, allowing herself to feel the thrill of this small victory. If that’s really what it is. All she knows is, she isn’t going to California. She isn’t moving. At least right now.

  “Charrrlie . . .” Martha calls from outside.

  Delilah exhales. Then she reaches over and hugs her dad before getting up and walking to the front door.

  “Don’t,” Mac says, following her.

  She swings the door open to the eerie blue morning and walks out on the snow-covered porch in her socks. She can’t even feel the cold. She is burning up. Her father stands behind her and touches her shoulder.

  “He’s out for a walk!” she calls.

  Martha is on her porch in a long velour bathrobe, the edges jagged and torn. She peers at Delilah. “Who’s that?”

  “He just went for coffee at Nettie’s,” Delilah says.

  Mac tries to guide her back inside. “Come on, now. She’s a crazy old woman.”

  Delilah shakes him off. She walks closer to the edge of the porch, and Martha does the same on her own porch. “What you saying there, girl?”

  “He’s only at coffee, Martha. He’s coming back. He’s just having coffee.”

  “Who, Charlie?”

  “Yes. He’s coming back. He’s not gone.” Her voice is shaking. It’s important to her that Martha understands this. That grieving for someone who isn’t even gone is a waste of her time.

  Martha scratches the back of her head and looks up at the sky. “Gonna be sunny today,” she says.

  Delilah looks up too, feels a few loose flakes fall onto her face. There are some patches of blue breaking through. Delilah breathes in the freezing air, deep down into her lungs, and lets it out.

  Martha is watching her, standing there in her worn bathrobe, snow settling in her wild black hair. “You got any comics?” she says.

  Delilah can suddenly feel the cold burning like a hot iron up through her legs and it makes her feel alive. “Yeah,” she says. “I have some comics.”

  DELILAH FEELS LIKE SOMETHING has broken between her and her father now, but not in a bad way. More like a fever. Like all the confusion and delirium of the past few months is finally over. For the last week that he’s there she doesn’t go to her room the second he walks in the house. She says more than three words to him at dinner. She even helps him trim his hair when she found him trying to hold the mirror up to his face in the lamplight and the light kept catching and reflecting off the scissors so he couldn’t see. She knows he wants to look his best for Annie.

  ON SUNDAY, THE NIGHT that Annie calls, Mac and Delilah have just finished packing up the belongings they won’t be using and piling them into Delilah’s bedroom. He will still pay the rent until springtime, just in case he can convince Annie to come back.

  Delilah and Mac have had their dinner of beans on toast, and Mac is reading on the couch when the phone starts to ring. Usually he answers right away, but not this time. He’s absorbed in his book. Delilah is doing homework at the table and she looks up. She sets down her p
encil. Without thinking, she stands up. She walks over to the bookshelf and looks at the phone. She hasn’t spoken to her mother in nine months. Not a word. She isn’t sure what she would even say to her.

  She reaches her hand out, hovering over the receiver. She can feel her father watching her. She picks it up and holds it to her ear.

  “Hello?” she says.

  FEBRUARY

  DELILAH STANDS ON THE frozen bay looking back at Red and Maggie’s house. There is a massive bonfire lighting up the black night, engulfing the old scraps of wood and broken furniture Red is trying to get rid of. Maggie made pea soup, and people are sitting around the fire in parkas with mugs and spoons and chunks of homemade sourdough bread. City Jane is next to Will under a blanket on the front steps. Jones is over by the shed trying to harness Laska so they can go for a sled ride. Will laughs at something Red says, and it booms and echoes across the ice to Delilah.

  “Come on back now,” Maggie calls out to her from the fire. “You’ve been out there so long.”

  Delilah turns back toward the lake. The wind has died, the snow has stopped swirling and is settled at her feet. The sky is clearing, the clouds blown away. The air bites her cheeks.

  Look up, Will had told them that night at the movie.

  She does. She looks up at those millions and millions of stars, the moon a pale crescent above the bay. But this time she doesn’t feel small like he said she would. She thinks of Jones and Maggie and Red. Jethro and Mary Ellen. She thinks of how they belong to her now, and she belongs to them. How even this lake belongs to her. This town. She thinks of how Will was gone, but he came back. She thinks of Annie and Mac, who might come back too, and she feels like she’s expanding, growing every second. She feels like a giant in her red parka and Mary Ellen’s mittens, a giant down there on this vast frozen lake.

  I’m here, she thinks. I’m right here.

  She’s not small. She is something you could see for miles.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  HEARTFELT GRATITUDE TO THOSE who offered their wisdom and insight on the manuscript: Gaël Géneau, Hal Wake, Joseph Denham, Ruth Linka, Lizette Fischer, Justin Gilbert, Dana Woolliams, Mary Louise Hendry, Maria Kojic, Koree Rogers, Rochelle Fairfield and Rashmi Singh.

  To Betty Keller, who I am proud to call my mentor: This book would not exist if it weren’t for your encouragement and guidance. Thanks also to Rosella Leslie, Erin Whalen, Kim Clark, Diane Foley and the other writing group folks who helped me untie the knots.

  Fran Hurcomb, thank you for reading the manuscript as well as being such a patient resource when I asked you question after question. Also, thanks to Dave Smith, Bob Carroll, Tamara Carroll and the coffee shop guys in Yellowknife for their tips and ideas.

  Thanks to my sharp-eyed editors Kate Kennedy, Warren Layberry, and Janine Alyson Young for helping me find the cracks and repair them. And a huge thanks to Taryn Boyd, Renée Layberry, Tori Elliott and the team at Brindle & Glass for launching this book out into the world, as well as to Tree Abraham for the perfect cover.

  Thanks, as always, to my beloved kids, my family, and my friends for listening to me talk about this story for so long—and to my parents for bringing me to Yellowknife all those years ago.

  Thanks to the thousands of people who have posted on the Facebook group YK Memories for sharing their knowledge and photos about Yellowknife in the seventies. Greg Loftus, you are missed.

  And finally, thanks to the residents of Old Town, past and present, who know exactly why that unique place is worthy of having entire books written about it.

  BORN IN OTTAWA to a hippie mother and a poet father, Rebecca Hendry moved to a new city or town across Canada every year until she was eleven, when she settled on the Sunshine Coast in BC. Her first novel, Grace River, was published by Brindle & Glass in 2009, and her short fiction has appeared in the Dalhousie Review, Wascana Review, Event, Windsor Review, and other literary journals. She lives in Gibsons, BC, with her two children.

  Photo by Justin Gilbert

  Copyright © 2018 by Rebecca Hendry

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. For more information, contact the publisher at:

  Brindle & Glass

  An imprint of TouchWood Editions

  touchwoodeditions.com

  Edited by Kate Kennedy

  Cover design by Tree Abraham

  Interior design by Colin Parks

  LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

  Hendry, Rebecca, 1972-, author

  One good thing : a novel / Rebecca Hendry.

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-927366-77-6 (softcover).

  I. Title.

  PS8615.E539O54 2018C813'.6C2017-906580-7C2017-906581-5

  We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts, and of the province of British Columbia through the British Columbia Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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