by Karen Grose
Dear God, Keep our hearts light and safe. Let us be strong enough to offer forgiveness. Amen.
This time, clasping her hands and kneeling down to pray was different. She had no one to look up to. No one to follow. Everything had changed.
She’d never attended a funeral before, but Greta understood mourning. Everything around her was black. Black in her heart for the secrets she kept. Black for the grief of the loss her mother. Black for the look Ian gave her when he put on his suit and black for the car that took them to service. As her mother’s casket was lowered to the ground in a wooden box in the graveyard, even the dirt she shoveled on top to say her goodbye was black, black, black. That part felt right, that and the overcast day. She couldn’t have shouldered the weight of a sunny one.
Greta walked back through the wet breeze that swept unfettered across the vast expanse of the cemetery. It unnerved her that, with so much death around them, they had to hold a party in the church basement. Murmured greetings and perfumed hugs. She felt ill from the scents. Unable to find a familiar face in the crowd, not even her mom’s old friend Colleen, she couldn’t help but wonder who all the people were. Her grief was too heavy to circulate among the mourners, to eat the mountains of food set out on white dollies beside plastic cups, paper napkins and lemon-yellow plates. A closer look at the table revealed strange little sandwiches from a different era. Cucumber and cream cheese. Something pink. Tuna. Flakes of ham with—was that relish? Cheese slices and roast beef. All had different fillings but were strangely uniform. Greta peered closer. None had crusts. What? Old people didn’t do crusts?
In the buzz of exhaustion, Greta searched for her mother’s face across the decorated church basement before she remembered why they were there. Her eyes stung as she looked up to the water-stained ceiling. If she had been there, she would have tugged at her sleeve and reminded her of the conversation they’d had on the back patio two summers ago; the one about the old lady she lived with in Lindsay; about how confused she’d got when her mother said she got spooked and it was just how the elderly were. Now she knew: old people got cranky like three years olds; they didn’t like crusts either. She slipped out of the room to the hall so she didn’t have to hold it all in.
“Mom,” she whispered, taking a deep shuddering breath. Her words came tumbling out. “Where are you? I need to tell you something. I figured the old people out. I finally get your story.”
But her mother wasn’t there to hear her. Her mother was in a closed casket, deep in the wet dirt of a lonely graveyard.
Back at home in her bedroom, all Greta thought about was her father’s meanness. It was like he’d captured it in an IV bag he kept secured under his clothes. Meanness dripped from his veins silently all day long and throughout the evenings, and when the IV bag burst and spilt all over the place, it made things unbearable. She couldn’t count the times she’d prayed the bag would burst at the most inconvenient of times, revealing his true self to his friends or to his community—or, better still, to the questioning officer. Or maybe it would have been better if it slipped down below his heart and stopped the flow of his blood. But then she could just as easily wish it had lost the capacity to hold one drop more, backwashing toxins through his body.
She’d prayed for a respite. Just for one night.
“So you made it through the funeral?” Detective Perez asked.
“Just. But I wanted to leave. I didn’t want to eat. I wanted to sleep. Everything was pissing me off. All I wanted was to be left alone. To disappear off the face of the earth.”
The detective nodded.
“You know the worst thing? Everyone bought his bullshit. When they showed up at the cabin with their stupid food, his boss said he never complained at work. They called him a pillar of the community. People talked about how he delivered things from the bakery in town to sick people—”
“A deacon. A family man.”
“It was crap. No one had my back. They repulsed me. He repulsed me. I wanted him dead.”
Detective Perez looked up sharply.
EIGHTEEN
“W hy would you say that, Greta? Again. That you wanted him dead?”
Greta hauled herself to her feet. “Did you not hear a word I said? My dad got away with murder and the cops did nothing about it. Where the fuck were you with your questions and recordings then? And now the asshole dies of cancer and you want to nail me for it?”
“Perhaps it wasn’t the best choice of words.”
“No shit,” she shouted.
Detective Perez cocked her head. “You seem very angry right now.”
“Because you suck at your job and you’ve got a big ass communication problem.”
She crossed the room and perched up on the ledge of the window. To calm down, she started to count inside her head. One. Breathe. A man stood in his office window and stretched, looking at the traffic moving on the street below. Two. A crowd milled about out on the pavement on the corner outside a restaurant and a policeman watched them, flicking through his phone. Three. A lady walked two little dogs wearing matching coats. Her breaths came slow and steady now. The sound of the clock on the wall filled the room.
Tap, tap.
She turned and glared at Detective Perez holding the pencil. She felt the urge to shove it down her throat.
The detective put it down. “There must’ve been some sort of—”
“Investigation?” Greta suggested, wide-eyed.
Detective Perez held out an arm, ushering her back to the chair, her smile measured. “Yes. You must’ve told them something. Everything you’ve told me?”
She pushed off the ledge, stepped forward, and pounded her fist on the desk. “You know what the cops did?”
“I don’t, but I’d like to.”
“Same thing as me.” Her knees buckled and she fell to her seat, her voice a whisper. “Nothing.”
A week after the funeral and the quiet in the cabin was unsettling; it’d been like it all that morning. Greta heard the rumble of a car turn into the end of the laneway outside the cabin.
“Don’t move,” Ian said. “I’ll get it.”
She was startled by his sudden appearance at her bedroom doorway. His hair was a mess and his puffy face told her how much he’d drank the night before. He descended the stairs and opened the front door.
“Good morning. Ian Giffen?”
“Yeah.”
“Deacon Ian Giffen?”
“That’s me.”
“Officer Pappas.”
Greta sat straight up in bed and sucked in her breath. Had she heard right? Pappas? On the off-chance she was right, she slid off her bed and crept to the top of the stairs; silent and hopeful.
“From the OPP,” he said. He extended his hand.
Ian looked at it but didn’t take it.
“May I come in, please?”
From the tone of the officer’s voice, Greta knew it wasn’t a question. Her father stepped back and let him through the door. A crackling sound rang out through the cabin and bounced off the walls, a voice asking to ‘Confirm arrival at location’.
Greta slid down four steps to the middle of the staircase where she could see Officer Pappas. He stood in front of her father, but he was at least a full head taller. Wider, too. He looked like he played linebacker for the CFL.
She stared at his uniform. The dark blue shirt, the navy pants, the radio on his left shoulder—they were all identical to what the community officers wore when they visited her school, but she’d never seen the bulky black vest with POLICE emblazoned across the chest in big, yellow letters. Her gaze travelled south and her eyes widened. There was a gun in his holster. A real one.
There was an awkward shuffling between Officer Pappas and her father in the hallway before they squeezed around one other and filed into the kitchen. For a moment, Officer Pappas stood there, motionless. His eyes flitted as he took a good look around. Did he see the stained linoleum and old cupboards scarred with years of use? Greta sat on
the step, willing him to look closely at the knife marks in the table and at the scuffmarks on the wall from where her father had thrown the salt and pepper shakers.
Ian gestured him towards a chair. “What can I do for you this morning, Officer?”
“I’d like to talk to you and your daughter about Emily’s death.”
Greta flinched when she heard her mother’s name. At least he hadn’t said ‘passed’, but what she hoped he’d have said was ‘murder’.
“Greta, honey,” her father’s voice rang out, “can you come down here please?”
She didn’t move until her father’s chair scraped backwards across the kitchen floor. She jumped to the bottom of the staircase as he rounded the archway from the kitchen. He held his hand out.
“There you are, sweetheart.”
She wanted to gag as he led her to a chair. Officer Pappas studied them from across the table.
“Let me start by expressing my condolences for Emily’s...” he coughed, clearing his throat, and looked directly at Greta “…for your mother’s death.”
She winced and looked away from his dark brown eyes.
Ian nodded slowly. “Thank you.”
He was such a faker.
Ian reached his hand across the kitchen table and rested it on Officer Pappas’ forearm. “Death is never easy.”
Officer Pappas looked uncomfortable with the sudden gesture. “That’s true, Deacon.” He cleared his throat again. “I’ve had the opportunity to review the responding officer’s notes back at the precinct and have a few questions.”
Ian’s covered his surprise well. “Really. How can we help?”
Officer Pappas shifted in his seat. “I’d like to speak to both of you alone. Greta first. Then you.”
“Is that really necessary, Officer? My daughter’s just lost her mother. She finds it difficult to be away from me. You must understand.”
She looked over at her father, gobsmacked by his audacity.
“It is,” Pappas told him. “If you can just step out of the kitchen, it will only take a minute.”
Ian raised himself out of the kitchen chair and, as he did, he brought his face down to Greta’s. He whispered softly in her ear. “I’ll be right there in the other room.” He straightened and gave her a faint smirk, like he was daring her to do something drastic.
When Ian left the kitchen, Officer Pappas looked right at her. “I know this is hard, Greta, but I need to ask you a question.”
She nodded.
“Is there anything you’d like to tell me about your mother’s death?”
She shrugged, but wouldn’t meet his eye.
“Take all the time you need.”
She crossed her arms. Ian could hear every word. She couldn’t say it. She couldn’t launch into every sordid little detail of their miserable lives that led up to her mother’s death. She couldn’t just say her father killed her mother. She didn’t see it happen.
“You okay?” he asked. Deep grooves appeared across the man’s forehead.
She opened her mouth to respond, but her throat was so tight she had to work hard to speak. “I’m fine.” She was trying to sound normal, but her head flooded with the image of the three strands of hair left dangling from the table. She forced herself to smile. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure, Greta. I’ll tell you whatever I can.”
“I need to know what happened to my mom. Did she crack her head open?”
Officer Pappas sputtered. “Well, yes. Kind of.”
She stared at him. “Which one is it?”
“She cracked her skull and experienced bleeding on her brain.”
She thought back to the night before. “Did you see the other injuries?” She knew there must have been.
Officer Pappas tilted his head. “Like what?”
Ian barged into the kitchen. “That’s enough,” he ordered. “Up to your room now.” He pointed to the stairs.
Officer Pappas reached into his top pocket and handed Greta a card. It had his name written on it in fancy letters. “If you change your mind or if there’s anything you want to tell me, you can call me at that number.” He pointed to the number, making sure she knew where it was.
“Sure,” she said, in as convincing a way as possible. But she knew she couldn’t call him.
It was Ian’s turn next. Greta took her familiar seat at the top of the stairs and shut her eyes tight. Tears seeped out of the corners. She could only hear pieces of the conversation, but her father was doing his best to conceal his emotion. His legs would be jiggling a mile a minute under the table. It was what happened when he was agitated. And she knew he was. He had to be. She hoped Officer Pappas noticed.
Ian sighed heavily. “It’s just one of those things,” he said, “I’m devastated. She’s devastated. We all are.”
“I understand that, Deacon, but I’m sure you understand I have to investigate when anyone comes forward with new information.”
Low mumbling followed. Greta leaned forward, straining to hear what they were saying.
“I do. It’s just such a heavy, dark time for me.”
She wasn’t sure whether Ian meant heavy because of the stress of the funeral or dark because he was hiding his guilt. The sound of chairs as they scraped on the kitchen floor made her wince and, suddenly, her father and Officer Pappas were standing back in the hallway. He’d sweated through his uniform.
“Reach out anytime,” he said after he leaned around her father and waved goodbye.
Greta raised her hand.
When the door closed behind him, she was left thinking about what he’d said.
“God damn him,” Ian muttered.
Greta’s heart lurched, and she folded her hands in her lap to stop them from shaking. From where she sat, she could hear Ian rummage beneath the kitchen sink. When he reappeared in the archway of the kitchen, he was holding a rectangular bottle with a familiar logo. Jack Daniels. He twisted the top and tipped it up to his mouth, taking a good, long drink. Then he wiped the back of his hand across his face and took another. When half the bottle of brown liquid was empty, he lowered it from his lips. This was the father she knew: angry and drunk.
He turned around to face her. “You little shit,” he snarled.
Greta’s blood ran hot. She felt his rage. But it wasn’t his rage that frightened her; it was hers. It rang through her ears and pumped through her veins so hard her body quivered. He’d killed her mother and she knew it.
She exploded. “You’re a fucking liar,” she shouted.
Ian’s throat reddened and colour spread up his cheeks. He grasped the bottle by the throat and smashed it to the floor. Shards of glass scattered, but the sounds didn’t faze her.
“You killed her. I know you did.” She jumped off the stairs and snatched a photograph from the wall—the one of her father smiling. She flung the picture straight at him as if it was a baseball. It hit him square in the head. “I hate you.”
Face dead calm, he stood motionless.
“And you’re not my real father. Where are my adoption papers anyway?”
His body tensed; he looked like a caged animal.
“I fucking hate you. Mom said she’d give them to me.”
Ian clenched his fists and his eyes narrowed. He looked down, examining the floor. Then he stooped, picking up the biggest piece of glass he could find, and took a step towards her. “Greta,” he said. His breathing grew heavier.
“Murderer. You’re a murderer. You know it. And I do, too.”
He lunged forward, the piece of glass tight in his hand. When it grazed her arm, she gasped. Was he going to slit her throat? Was he going to kill her, too? Was he going to make his promise real when he’d told her mother all those years ago that he’d slit all of their throats? She stepped backwards, regained her footing and veered around him, grateful for her training. As he lunged again, she sidestepped around him, darting down the hallway. She blew through the front door, her feet taking her as far away
as they could.
This time she was running for her life.
NINETEEN
I t was after one o’clock and Greta knew the drill. “Pappas. P-A-P-P-A-S.”
Detective Perez scribbled in her notebook. “Did you get a first name?”
She shook her head.
“I’ll look it up when we break. It’s important I hear what he has to say.”
Break? That was supposed to be an hour ago. Did the detective visit the ladies room? Eat? Drink? Check her phone? “He won’t tell you anything different from what I’ve just said.”
“You better hope not.” Detective Perez checked her watch. “One last thing before we discuss what occurred between you and your father in that hospital room prior to his death. What did you do when you left the cabin?”
She’d watched the cabin from deep in the bush. Her father’s truck was gone, but she didn’t trust that he wasn’t lying in wait for her. Legs streaked with mud, she snuck up to the front door and took a quick look inside. Pieces of glass were strewn across the hallway, their colours bouncing off the walls in the late-afternoon sun. Purple. Blue. Orange and magenta. The Jack Daniels logo glinted in a thin pool of brown. Inside, the stink of him—his blood, his breath—made her want to hurl. After searching through the cupboards in the kitchen, she found a bucket and gloves, and got down to work.
By mid-evening, when Ian’s headlights appeared at the end of the laneway, all evidence of his earlier rage had all but disappeared. She scurried upstairs and locked her bedroom door. The walls shook as the front door banged and steps thundered towards her. Did he know she was there? He’d be drunk and she wasn’t sure the knife she’d stolen from the kitchen and hid under her mattress would be enough to keep her safe. If she was forced to use it, could she do it? Could she really imagine herself plunging the blade through his chest? Dragging it across his wrists or up his arms to his elbow? Stabbing him in the top of the leg? She knew she would if she had to.