by Karen Grose
Greta was exhausted. Her mother had said four houses, and so far she’d only covered three. She pinched herself to stay awake because the fourth was hers: the cabin in Ravensworth. Would Nancy Drew fall asleep with a mystery smack dab in front of her? Not a chance—and she wouldn’t either. She stifled a yawn.
“Were you happy back then?” she asked.
Her mother raised a hand to the chain around her neck, twisting the little pink bead back and forth. “Moving eighty kilometers to the boonies?”
From her tone of voice, Greta knew the answer. “Why move where you don’t want to live? It’s not like you were married. I would have kicked his butt to the curb.”
Her mother laughed. “It’s complicated. When you’re older, you’ll learn relationships have ebbs and flows.”
No, Greta thought, I won’t. And she didn’t know what ebbs and flows were, but they sounded disgusting.
“Anyway, it was immaterial. When Dad first showed me the cabin, he’d already made the down payment.”
“So just pay another.”
“It was small but well-kept for a hunting camp. He had to drive to work in Bracebridge but he was convinced we were moving on up.”
Greta mulled. “So Ian wanted this place and he got it. He wanted privacy and got that, too. Plus he could drive to work.” She waited for her to confirm. Her mother didn’t say a word. “Hello? Did you get anything out of this?”
Her mother’s jawline twitched, and she turned and looked across the table. She smiled. “Darling, I got everything I wanted. I got you.”
FOURTEEN
“M uffin?” Detective Perez nudged a white cloth bag across her desk. “I made them last night.”
The question was so unexpected it threw Greta off guard. What was taking so long? And she didn’t want a muffin. She wanted to turn her down but knew it was a bad idea, and so she reached out and took one anyway. The tiny, wet purple blobs sprinkled across the top brought to mind days spent picking wild blueberries in the shrubs at the far end of the property with her mother. She poked at the fruit.
Detective Perez frowned, reached into the bag, pulled out a knife and a container of butter, and pushed them across the desk. “Let’s get back to your father,” she said.
Greta picked up the blade like she might slice her in half. “Didn’t you hear me? I’m done with him.”
The detective sighed, watching her.
“I didn’t do anything. If I did, why would I agree to come here?”
“Unlike him, you still have the ability to make that choice.”
She thought back to the frantic moments after the candy store and the outhouse, and everything else that happened. “He’s not the victim here. Why aren’t you asking about me?”
The detective paused, the muffin poised an inch from her mouth. “You?”
Greta stabbed at the muffin. “Yes, me. I’m not telling you anything more about that asshole or what happened at the hospital until you know how I survived.”
Detective Perez sighed. “Fine. If you must.”
On the first day of Grade Three, Greta ran around the playground, desperate to find Latoya. The fact she hadn’t been picked up along the bus route hadn’t set off alarm bells; Latoya wasn’t the type of person who liked to be rushed, and her mother often had to drive her to school. After the bell rang, Greta followed the line inside and stopped, her eyes wide, her guard up. The teacher at the front of the room was a man. He had broad shoulders, dark brown hair, a blade-thin nose. Did he like to drink in the evenings like her father? When her classmates were seated, he held out a file and read names from a list.
“’Scuse me, Mr…” She hesitated as he hadn’t yet introduced himself. “Mr. Teacher, you’ve made a mistake… You forgot Latoya.”
The class giggled. She held her breath as he examined the piece of paper, watching him triple-check it. After what felt like five minutes, he looked up over the silver moon-shaped glasses balanced on the end of his nose. “What’s your name, little one?”
The giggling exploded like fireworks. Cheeks deep red, she sunk down into her desk. Who was this man and where had he come from? While the expression reminded her of the ones her mother liked, she imagined her father would think he was a dipshit, too.
“Greta,” she whispered.
“Mine is Mr. Ennis.” He pointed to the blackboard where he’d written his name in capital letters using chalk. More snickering from the class. “There’s no Latoya on the list.”
She didn’t understand it. Latoya was gone. She’d vanished; vaporized into the ether.
For the rest of the morning, Greta sulked bitterly and hoped Mr. Ennis had made the biggest mistake of his career. But then, at recess, she found out Latoya and her family had moved away during the summer—to someplace called Orillia. Her best friend hadn’t said a word. Not a whisper. Not a call when she knew they had her number. Her heart shattered into a thousand pieces, each one flung like pebbles across the playground.
With no time to grieve (she’d seen what happened to kids who played alone), Greta set out to acquire a new best friend. Secrets… Everyone had them—and she kept secrets well. They were an art form; one her family provided perfect training to master. She’d learned it technically didn’t matter whether you had a one or not; the power was in the illusion you did. Undisclosed information people didn’t know they wanted until they had it.
That afternoon, the playground pipeline flooded with juicy gossip. Principal Parthi hits Mrs. Stanton to make her obey him. The shy kids looked on from afar in wonder. Principal Parthi has handcuffs in his office for when she won’t.
The news spread like wildfire. The cool kids flocked to her side. Had anyone seen them? Someone said they had. Then somebody else confirmed they had, too. Without a word, Greta stood, letting them dig deep in the dirt as she held court to consider their speculation. A lift of an eyebrow, a perfectly placed smile, and a mischievous grin were all it took until every kid on the bus wanted to sit beside her or asked her to eat lunch with them the next day.
The following morning, Greta could feel the eyes of the teachers on her a little more closely than usual and, after Mr. Ennis talked to the class about the disturbing lies floating around the playground, he took them out into the back field to run. He pointed to the track. “Five times round.” The class stood with their mouths open. Mr. Ennis, who doubled as the school’s track couch, crossed his arms over his chest. “Get moving.”
When the class thought they’d die if they ran any farther, Mr. Ennis told them they were sufficiently warmed up to participate in a series of races. The class groaned in unison, but Greta was secretly thrilled: she’d run up and down the laneway at home as far back as she could remember. When Mr. Ennis lined them up in groups of six, she bent down on the track and listened for the signal.
“Go!” he shouted.
Greta burst ahead. Her arms flailed in the air and she ran every race as if her feet were on fire, barely touching the ground. When the heats were finished, she was the only one in the class lined up for each final race and, by the end of the afternoon, she was the fastest runner in every competition.
Back in the classroom, a boy shot brownish-green vomit from his mouth in a projectile fashion, splattering everyone in the back row, and while most of the kids slumped in their desks, exhausted, Greta still had fuel left in her. Even with her socks full of holes and her running shoes course against her soles, she could run all day long. It was what she dreamed of at night. She could run forever.
Greta was eight, and wise enough to know something at home was collapsing around her. She worked hard to be the peacemaker, yet there was only so much she could do. Ian burned with a flame of fury. His whole body shook with rage. Her mother stayed silent, and her meekness fuelled his fire. She was used to the long silences by then; her parents ignored each other for weeks. When Ian came home from work each night, Greta stayed upstairs in her room. Only suppertime was unavoidable.
“These are butt ugly,” she t
old her mother one night as she set the plates out on the table.
Emily looked over her shoulder. “They have character.”
She held one up to the light; pitted and chipped. How had she not seen that before? Had they always been that way?
“Why are they so beat up?” She examined the other two. “They’re three different colours.”
Her mother shrugged and dropped a handful of chopped carrots into a pot. “They’re all the thrift store had.”
Greta rolled her eyes. Of course. They had someone else’s cast offs. “It’s disgusting.”
She sat down at the table and ran her finger around the rim of a plate. Where did you come from? She imagined herself as a tiny unseen speck on the side, watching snippets of the lives of the people who owned them before they did. In their kitchens. In their backyards. In their main rooms. She bet their last life had been better. She imagined there had been mountains of food. Laughter. Maybe birthday parties. Maybe they’d even been part of a set. But now, all singles had been tossed out or given away. Where was the rest of their real family? Where was hers? What did her real parents look like? Did she look like her mom? Her dad? Did she have brothers and sisters? What happened? Why hadn’t they kept her either?
“Can I see my birth certificate?” she asked.
Her mother sighed. “Your timing’s not great, Greta. Your father will be home soon.”
“Later then?”
“Another day.”
“Every adoption has papers. I want to see them.”
“You’ll be ready for all that when you’re older.”
“How old?”
“Twelve.”
“No, now. What’s the big deal?”
“There isn’t one, so drop it and take your fingers off the plates. One day we’ll get new ones.”
Greta pouted. It wasn’t right. Four years was a long way away, and Ian had a job so surely they could get new plates now. He had his own parking space. New shoes. An endless supply of bottles. She pointed to the cheque made out to the church tacked up on the fridge.
“We have money.” Her face burned when she thought of her clothes. They weren’t as stylish as what the other kids wore and because her haircut was plain, she kept it wrapped up in a ponytail. Her sneakers had holes that soaked her socks in the rain and she still had the pink backpack she’d been given on the first day of school. So where was the money? What was it for? She needed some.
“Mom,” she said sweetly, “can I get an iPod?”
“Are you kidding me? We can’t even afford plates.”
All Greta heard her mother say was they had money but the money they had wasn’t for her. For things she needed. For things she wanted. She was well aware of the difference. “Fine. I’ll buy one myself.” She knew she couldn’t, but she said it anyway, just to be difficult.
“That’s a great idea.”
“What?” She hadn’t expected that as her answer.
“This is why I’ve been telling you to save your money.”
It was what her mother had told her every Sunday on the way to the candy store, and she hated when her mother was right. She always rambled on about something. What was it called? “About that dime box thing...”
When her mother turned from the soup, the look on her face made her cringe. Oh no. She lay her head on the table. Here we go with the history and it’s gonna start with those four stupid words. The dial clicked on the stove and her mom sat down at her side. “Back in the day,” her mother said.
Greta groaned.
“There were public payphones all over.”
She looked up and half-smiled, pretending to be interested.
“When they were invented in 1946, the phone company charged five cents for a call, but in the early 1950s, the phone company doubled it. People were outraged. Ten cents was a lot of money—twice what they were used to paying.”
She scoffed. So what? “The payphones in Bracebridge cost fifty cents. Ten cents is a good deal. If they didn’t want to pay, they shouldn’t have made any calls.”
Her mother frowned. “They had no choice. There were no cell phones, and some people didn’t have a phone in their house. They relied on those public payphones. To book a doctor’s appointment. To keep in touch with family.”
Would she ever get to the point? “Can we get on to the dime box thing?” she asked after she made a mental note to look up the pay phone business in the school library. It was interesting, but her mother didn’t need to know.
Her mother folded her hands on the table. “Because people never knew when they needed to make a call, they kept a box to save their dimes in. That’s why they’re called dime boxes.”
A box for dimes? What did they look like? Were they big? Were they small? How many dimes could they hold? What if there were too many and the box overflowed onto the floor? Consequences would be dealt with in her house. Ian would be sure of it.
Her mother left the kitchen and, when she returned, she was holding a red wooden box in her hands. Greta jumped up and grabbed it. “Is this a real one?” she asked, examining it.
Her mother nodded.
She opened it. There was nothing inside. She lifted it to her nose and sniffed. Musty. She shut the lid and held it high. There were designs carved into the outside and she ran her fingers slowly along the smooth ridges. Then she turned it over. “Look. Someone’s initials.”
Her mother’s face darkened. She crossed the kitchen and stood in front of the stove.
Greta pointed to the bottom. “Who’s D.S.?” she said.
“Beats me, sweetie.”
She put the dime box on the table. “Where’d you get it?”
Her mother picked up the ladle, stirred the soup, and filled two bowls on the counter. “At an antique market in Bracebridge years ago.” After she brought the soup to the table, she dug a hand into the side of her dress and pulled something out of her pocket. She handed it over.
“What this?” Greta asked.
“Your birth certificate.”
She unfolded the sheet.
Greta Giffen.
Birth date: July 16, 2000.
Birthplace: Parry Sound.
She looked up. “It’s a photocopy. Where’s the real one?”
“No more questions, Greta,” her mother said. “Your father’s late, so eat your soup and stop bugging me.”
Greta put the copy of her birth certificate in her dime box. Pleased she got one of the two things she wanted, she’d ask for the original and her adoption papers another day. If her dad wasn’t around then, maybe she’d ask her mom about her old friend Colleen and what she’d overheard the night her mother and her father were fighting.
Later that evening, she hid her dime box beneath her bed. Under her sheet with Bunny, she thought about all the money she’d spent over the years at the candy store. Had she saved some of it, she could have bought an iPod. Had she saved it all, she might’ve had enough to go to Orillia and see Latoya. The pillow damp, she swiped her palms across her cheeks. Her heart hurt. It was as if she’d been swallowed up. She still missed her.
FIFTEEN
D etective Perez picked up her phone and punched in some numbers. “Where’re Sanchez and Hatten?”
She rolled her eyes.
“Astra… Who the hell do you think it is?”
Consternation and another eye roll.
“Remind them I have next to zero background here.”
She paused as she listened to the speaker on the other end of the phone.
“They found what?” She wrote something down. “I need to see it. Are they on their way now?”
A longer pause filled the room.
“Then have them send it to me ASAP.” She punched the screen again and put the phone down. “Okay, Greta. I’ve noted what you’ve said. The lies you told to avoid becoming an outcast and the wooden box you got from your mom. Are you done?”
Greta’s cheeks burned. “No. That’s not how I got through my father’s shit.”
“We’re here to discuss what happened in that hospital room prior to your father dying.”
“Back to him already?” That figured. “I ran—and, no thanks to him, I got pretty good at it.”
Detective Perez tented her fingers in front of her. “You realize I’m only putting up with this to get to the end—”
“Back then, he gave me the same smug look he did Saturday night. But I dealt with it.”
***
“I’d like to speak to you at recess,” Mr. Ennis said shortly after Spring Break.
Greta peered out from under her bangs, not moving an inch in class all morning. What type of trouble she was in? Had Mr. Ennis heard the rumour she had started earlier that year? She hoped not.
The bell rang and her classmates filed out, leaving them alone. He cleared his throat from behind the desk. “You’re a runner,” he said.
Her shoulders relaxed but she kept her distance from the back of the room. “Kind of.”
“Interested in junior track? The other girls are older, but I think you’d do fine.”
She held her face still and worked hard not to reveal what she already knew. She’d run races with the older girls and beaten all of them. She was confident she could beat them again.
“Practices are in the back field at lunch. Three times a week.” He passed her a note. “Your parents need to sign this tonight. See you out there.”
At supper that evening, Greta waited for Ian to pour syrup on his pancakes and make his way through his favourite meal. He put his fork down and slurped his coffee. She slid the note across to him.
“No garbage on the table,” he said, shoving it back at her.
“It’s not garbage. I need you to read it. And sign it.”
“What is it?”
“Permission to run on the school cross-country and track teams.”