The Dime Box

by Karen Grose

  “Anyway, those were early days. By the time your mom hit her teens, she and Hannah became pretty tight. They used to sneak out and go to bars… Bet she never told you that.”

  “Never said a thing.” Greta grinned. She had no idea her mother had ever had that kind of side to her.

  “One night, she told me about when they went to The Hammer.”

  Wait. That’s where her mom said she’d met Ian for the first time. She wanted to hear this story. She needed to hear it. She leaned in.

  “It wasn’t your mom’s first time with her older sister and her fake ID.”

  She gasped. “My mother?”

  Colleen laughed. “Your mom was a lot of fun. A wild one. They’d gone to bars before.”

  Greta started to piece together the reason Grade 10 had been her favourite year. It was nothing to do with History class at all… It had everything to do with the fake ID. What had it said?

  “Hannah drove. I remember her telling me she felt so free because they were going about 120 km/h down the highway singing at the top of their lungs.”

  “That would be speeding—not driving,” Greta informed her.

  Colleen agreed.

  “What songs?”

  “Probably classics.”

  “Classic what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Which ones?” She took out her playlist, preparing to scroll through and mark them.

  “I’ll Be There for You by the Rembrandts?”

  “What?”

  “Do you know I Wish You Well? Tom Cochrane.”

  She shook her head.

  “You have to know Only Wanna Be With You? Hootie and the Blowfish.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  Colleen put her hands on her hips. “Are you kidding me? How about Seal? Kiss from a Rose?”

  She shook her head again. She’d never heard of any of them, but the last thing she wanted to explain was that they didn’t have music in the cabin when she’d grown up. Rules were rules for a reason—or consequences dealt. She shuddered.

  “What was her favourite song?”

  “Insensitive. Jann Arden”

  She smiled. Hallelujah. She was one for five.

  “Go back to the night they snuck out,” she said.

  “They went to some bar called Joey’s. It was a run-down watering hole. Cheap draught. Perfect for college crowds.”

  “Which she wasn’t.”

  “They had a great time and then, a few months later, when Hannah suggested a repeat, your mom jumped at it.”

  Again? Greta wasn’t sure how she felt about it.

  Colleen leaned across the table and held onto Greta’s wrist, sadness sweeping across her face. “I doubt she ever would have imagined that, at about the same age you are now, her perfect life would have shattered.”

  THIRTY-TWO

  G reta’s hands flew up to her mouth and knocked Colleen’s half-finished latte across the table. The barista came over and surveyed the mess. As he wiped up the table, he said, “Next time, you may want to stick with decaf.”

  Colleen shot him a look. “I’ll take a refill.”

  He looked at Greta. “And for yourself?”

  Heat rose up through her cheeks. “Hot chocolate.”

  “Whip and sprinkles?”

  “Load it on,” she mumbled.

  He walked off again behind the counter to prepare the order.

  “What happened that night?” Greta whispered. Colleen stared back at her, arranging her words in her head, as she considered the options. “I’m seventeen. The truth is better expressed than suppressed.”

  Her sharp tone didn’t go unnoticed. When Colleen shifted in her seat and put her elbows on the table, pressing her fingertips together, she could see the tension radiating between them.

  “You sound like an old lady when you say stuff like that,” Colleen said.

  Was she? She’d had a lot of life experience in the past few years alone, but nothing she was ready to tell Colleen. Was the whole idea of suppressing the truth a family gene she’d inherited? Maybe she needed to consider taking her own advice.

  Colleen cleared her throat. “You’re right. You’re nearly an adult and you deserve to know.”

  Greta leaned in. “That night, two things happened.” She paused. “And I don’t know which was worse.”

  She didn’t like the sound of that. She gripped the side of the table to stop her hands from trembling.

  “First, Ian Giffen.”

  Greta nodded for her to continue.

  “Your father had a reputation back then. He was outgoing. Good looking. A bit of a ladies’ man.”

  “Gross, but okay.” She’d never considered her father good looking. In fact, she’d never considered his looks at all. He was her father. He certainly wasn’t what she thought of as outgoing either.

  “Most people have to work hard to get what they want. And even when they do work hard, they can’t always get what they want.”

  Greta looked at Colleen perplexed.

  “Unless you’re Ian, that is. He took what he wanted when he wanted it. So, when he walked into Joey’s and saw your mother, he took her.”

  “What do you mean? Took her where?” Greta’s imagination was taking her places, too.

  “He took her heart,” Colleen said.

  Greta sighed with relief. She was aware of that. Her mother and father had fallen head over heels in love the first time they met. She knew that for a fact because it was what her mother had said—that first night in The Hammer.

  “Your mom said Hannah warned her; told her it’d end in an ugly way. But, when you’re sixteen, who’s thinking past a week into the future?”

  Greta wasn’t thinking past a second. “What happened next? To my mom, I mean?”

  The barista returned with their drinks. Colleen thanked him and waited until he was out of earshot. “They were drinking, dancing. The music was pounding, and your mom told me she was giddy with being grown up. By last call, your Auntie Hannah had faded. She was ready to go home and your mom was still wired up.”

  “But it was late,” Greta said.

  “She told Hannah she wanted to stay out, that your dad would drive her home. She walked Hannah out, hugged her goodbye, and Hannah promised she’d cover for her if she had to. Then your mom went back in, got Ian, and they left.”

  Greta frowned and took a sip of her hot chocolate. “She dumped Aunt Hannah? At one in the morning?”

  Colleen nodded.

  “Where’d my mom and dad go?”

  “I don’t know. But when your dad dropped her off in the morning, the cops were there; blue lights flashing. They thought they were coming home to a crime scene.”

  Greta froze.

  “Hannah never made it home. Her car was found mangled in a ditch on the road. When they found it, there was nothing they could do. The coroner guessed she died a couple of hours earlier.”

  Greta’s stomach lurched. She thought she was going to be sick.

  “Your mom was hysterical. She didn’t believe what the officers said. She didn’t believe it when her parents told her either.”

  Greta took a deep breath. “Was she in shock?”

  “She collapsed on the sidewalk. Had a total breakdown.”

  The lump in her throat grew. She knew exactly how her mother felt. The guilt, the self-loathing, the fear. She’d felt them all the day Mr. Parthi had pulled her out of class to tell her that her mother was dead.

  “She couldn’t eat. Sleep. She told me the worst part of it, besides missing her sister, was that, while everyone mourned her death, it felt like the two of them had died that night.”

  Tears flowed down the sides of Greta’s cheeks. No wonder it was too painful for her mother to talk about Aunt Hannah. It made so much more sense. She wanted to reach out and hug her; hold her close and tell her everything would be okay. But she couldn’t. And never would be able to again.

  “Her parents said they didn’t blame her, bu
t she figured they did. Your mother certainly blamed herself.”

  Greta sat silent.

  “Hannah’s death turned your mom’s life upside-down.”

  Afraid to ask her next question, Greta dropped her chin to her chest. “She dropped out of school, didn’t she?”

  “Not right away. But her marks slid. And her friends’ parents weren’t keen on her hanging out with them anymore. Near the end of first semester, nothing was normal anymore.”

  Greta wondered what normal even meant then. And who decided? Normal was such an elusive term—normal for who?

  “Ian was all she had so she ran away with him.”

  Greta didn’t know what to say. Actually, she did, but she didn’t want to say it. Her heart ached for her mother. Now she understood. By the time her mother realized her life would never be her own, it was too late. Sixteen years old, already with her Ian, she must have become trapped. With him. And by him. Greta wrapped her fingers around her cup. Cold, a greasy film floated on top where the whip had gathered and melted. It looked like a petroleum spill.

  “You okay?” Colleen asked. “It’s a lot to take in.”

  “I need some time to process.” What she wanted was to be alone.

  Colleen smiled gently. “I’ll text you to see if you want to meet up again in a couple of days.”

  Even though her head was spinning and her stomach was a pit of acid, she already knew that she did. She still had so many questions—more now than when she’d first arrived. But she couldn’t handle any more answers—not today.

  The walk back to Penn House was a struggle. Her legs felt rubbery and heavier than her head. When she strode through the front door and the staff waved hello, she ignored them; she didn’t even look up. She didn’t talk. She didn’t want to. She needed to be alone.

  ***

  Detective Perez tapped her pencil on the table. “Tell me more about wanting to be by yourself when you’re stressed. Is it a strategy you use to calm down?”

  Greta’s face burned. Her mouth was dry, her tongue thick. The question was not one she’d anticipated. “What?”

  Tap, tap.

  “You heard me. Do you have problems with your self-control?”

  She reached into the pocket of her jeans, fingers pressed to the coin, and counted. One. Two. Three. Then she exploded. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  “Greta,” Phil said sharply.

  She grabbed the arms of the chair. “That’s what you’re investigating? My control?”

  Detective Perez’s face flattened. “Answer my question.”

  “What about my father? What about his?” she shouted.

  “He’s not the one under investigation.”

  Greta leapt up and slammed her fist on the table. Detective Perez coiled backwards, eyes wide open.

  “We need a break,” Phil said calmly, “while I speak privately with my client.”

  Red-faced, Greta shot back, “No, I don’t.” The bottom of her sweatshirt was pulled sharply from behind.

  Her lawyer interjected. “Yes, we do.”

  Greta’s eyes travelled between her lawyer and Detective Perez. Neither moved. Neither said a word. She pulled away from the table until her back hit the door. “Screw you both.”

  Someone banged on the ladies’ washroom door.

  “I know you’re in there.” Phil’s voice bounced off the dingy walls. “You need to come out.”

  Greta sucked in a cold breath from the window she’d managed to wedge open, then she turned to the tap, splashed water on her face, and ran a finger over the length of her teeth. With her head in her hands, she slunk down the tile beside the sink.

  “Now, Greta. Come out.”

  She pulled herself up and cracked the door open. Phil’s eyes were wide.

  “What?” She half-smiled.

  He frowned. “What? No, why?” he said. “You need to chill out in there or you’ll make things worse.”

  “She’s not human. After everything I’ve just told her, she’s interested in my ability to control myself?”

  He held his hand up. “Don’t say that. She’s listening to you.”

  “She’s not listening. I already know.”

  “I understand how frustrated you are, but—”

  “She told me. The lady in the cell last night. She told me all about her.” Her lips trembled. “She’s made up her mind about me.”

  Phil paused. “Meredith’s in again?”

  “Who?”

  “Meredith. She spends most nights in the cells.”

  “You know her?”

  “Paranoid. Drunk and disorderly. She’s a shoplifter. One of our regulars.”

  Her chin dropped. “You knew about Perez’s reputation and didn’t tell me?”

  Phil sighed and pushed open the door. “Let’s get two things straight. First, you need to control that temper. You’ve got a short fuse and you’re being investigated for murder. Don’t make a case for them. Second, I don’t know what you heard last night and I don’t care if it’s true or not, but right now, Detective Perez is giving you a lot of rope to tell your side of the story. Don’t hang yourself with it.”

  She swallowed, a lump thick in her throat.

  Phil pointed to the investigation room. “Get in there. You owe her an apology. And answer her questions. If you don’t, Greta, I can’t help you.”

  She retraced her steps to the room, sat down in her chair, and took a deep breath.

  “Now,” Phil said as he resumed his seat beside her at the table.

  “Sorry about that.”

  Detective Perez rustled her papers, ready to resume. She flicked the button on the recorder. “Do I need to remind you of the question?”

  Greta’s stomach knotted as her thoughts turned back to the afternoon she’d spent with Colleen in the coffee shop. “It gives me time to think. To mull stuff over. Weigh my options. Maybe all three.”

  “Were you wondering whether to meet up with Colleen again?”

  “No. I already knew. That wasn’t the issue.”

  “What was?”

  She paused. “I don’t want you to take this the wrong way…”

  Detective Perez stopped writing. “I’m listening.”

  Was she? Was she really listening? Greta took another deep breath. “I know you’re a mom and a grandmother…”

  Detective Perez smiled oddly, encouraging her to continue.

  “My mom died when I was ten years old. She was always just my mom. I mean, not just my mom—that’s not what I mean, exactly. I loved my mom. And I still love her. But she was my mother.” She looked up, embarrassed. She was rambling. Her words weren’t coming out the way she wanted them to, and she knew how ridiculous she sounded. “What I’m trying to say is, what Colleen told me made my mom a person.”

  The detective’s eyebrows lifted.

  “Not a person-person. Someone more than my mom. She had this whole life I didn’t know about. Dreams. Goals. A sister. A family. It was all news to me. I never thought of her that way before. That day in the coffee shop, I started to see her as so much more than my mother. It was—what’s a good word for it? Overwhelming.”

  “I can imagine,” Detective Perez said.

  The comment made Greta nervous. She needed her to understand, not to judge. “I’m not sure you do,” she blurted out before her brain could stop her.

  Phil’s eyes darted in her direction. A bead of sweat trickled down her neck and pooled in the small of her back. She chose her next words carefully. “I needed to know more because, if I knew more about my mother, I’d know more about me. It was the only way I could move forward. To be whole again.”

  There. She’d said it; out loud for the first time in her life.

  Detective Perez picked up her pencil and jotted in her notebook. Whatever she wrote, Greta thought it had to be good. She prayed it was. “What did you find out?” Detective Perez asked.

  The next part came easily. She explained how she googled Hannah Strachan B
rantford car accident to learn more about it. The excerpt she’d read was short and provided no additional information.

  The Brantford Examiner:

  Last night, 20-year-old Hannah Strachan, of Brantford, Ontario, was tragically killed in a single vehicle rollover on a dark stretch of the old 403. Details of the funeral arrangements have not yet been announced.

  Next, she googled Brantford high schools. Only one came up in the search, and so Greta had reasoned it had to have been the one her mother and Hannah attended. On the school website, she scrolled through the pages, looking for pictures. The alumnae section was password-protected and, while she didn’t think her mother’s photo would be there because she was in high school before everything went digital, she still sent the link to save in her Notes app for reference. The last thing she did was google 411 Brantford and, with her dime box in front of her, typed D Strachan into the search bar. Three listings came up. She took a screenshot and saved the image in her photos.

  The detective interrupted her. “That must have been nerve-wracking. If you were overwhelmed earlier, I can only guess how scared you must have been then.”

  She thought about it; she hadn’t felt either of those things. “I can see why you might think that,” she said kindly. “But I wasn’t.” The detective’s eyes narrowed and, for a second, Greta thought she’d blown it. “For the first time I was happy. Relieved. I don’t know why, but I felt grounded.”

  “From a picture in a phonebook?”

  “A screenshot.”

  The V between the detective’s eyebrows turned into a crater. “That’s hard to believe.”

  “I know, right, but it’s true. I knew that screenshot was going to mean something. I wanted to believe it so badly.”

  Detective Perez sat silent for a moment. “And…?”

  “And I met up with Colleen again.”

  THIRTY-THREE

  G reta slid across the bumpy slats of the wooden bench and dug the toes of her running shoes into the cement.

  “So, you came back for more?” Colleen said.