The Dime Box

by Karen Grose

  He turned his head and looked up at her. No surprise. No sense of wonder.

  She inched forward. “Dad,” she said, trying to keep her voice from shaking, “we need to talk.”

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  I an nursed his drink for a couple of seconds before turning his attention back to the television; his response a rumbling grunt.

  “Dad,” she repeated, louder this time; a little firmer.

  He turned his head and gave her a cold, hard look. “Whaddaya want?”

  She was taken aback. The sound came out more like a rattling wheeze. His voice sounded terrible, and now she could see in the pale light of the television, his skin was the colour of tapioca.

  “There is a time and place for discussing this,” he said, as if reading her mind. “That would be never and nowhere.”

  Blood raced to her face and roared in her ears. Beads of moisture ran down her forehead, stinging her eyes. She dropped them to the filthy carpet. She needed her moment of truth—and that moment would be now, whether he liked it or not. Her mouth tightened and she took a step forward. “We need to have this talk,” she said, arms crossed. “I need it.”

  His eyes rolled all over her, top to bottom, looking for any signs of weakness, but when he found none, he shifted his gaze. He shook his head. “What you need is not important. I have cancer,” he rasped. “I’m dying.”

  The words were meant to pierce, and they did. Two emotions consumed her. The first was shame. He wanted nothing to do with her and time hadn’t dulled his contempt. But the feelings of rejection passed quickly and transformed into rage. Overwhelmed by the negative thoughts suddenly surfacing in her mind, she gritted her teeth. Nasty, untamed thoughts. Where had they come from? Had they been lurking in her head the whole time? Deep down in her subconscious? Under the impression she and Kanza had already dealt with them, her heart lurched. Maybe they hadn’t addressed every one of them, after all?

  A silence fell between them. A hot flush spread up through her face, and she struggled to breathe. She needed to centre. One. Two. Three. She inhaled slowly through her nose. Four, five, six. Exhaled out through her mouth.

  “You getting treatment?” she said, not unkindly.

  There. She’d done it. All her nerve endings ached, but she had managed to push her menacing thoughts aside. Her savage desires were fading.

  Again, the silence. Maybe he didn’t want to talk about it.

  “Of course I am,” he muttered. He rolled his eyes at her.

  Greta cursed herself for letting him make her feel so stupid.

  He pointed to the styrofoam cup full of ice chips. “Already had chemo. Couldn’t swallow for a week.”

  Greta considered the matter while he broke out coughing; a long, ragged cough that bounced off the walls of the room. She stood, glaring back at him, but even the grizzled wig perched haphazardly in seat of the wheelchair beside him was not going to deter her. She wasn’t moving; wasn’t going anywhere. Minute dragged into minute. When the coughing finally subsided, she straightened and told her truth. She waited for acknowledgment.

  Mouth twisted, he fixed his dark eyes on her. Her father claimed he had no memory. Countered her assertion the neighbours stayed clear with his belief they lived so far away it was unfair to have asked them to visit. Rejected her story of being forced to lower her voice so as not to provoke him as dried out on the couch from bender after bender. Dismissed the scars on her back and burns on her arms as clumsy childhood accidents. Rebutted the notion the fridge was often bare, requiring her to scavenge the brush and beg for food to feed her hunger. Laughed out loud at her insistence she put on a face by the door to disguise the lies, the violence and the horrors. Held firm her mother’s death was merely a tragic accident that had ended her pathetic little life.

  Greta looked at him. Her father never was and never would be at fault. “You’re a fucking monster,” she screamed.

  He turned away from her.

  “How did they ever let you adopt a baby?” She lunged and kicked the side of the leather chair. “Tell me. Tell me now. And give me the papers.”

  “Don’t know where they are. Never saw ’em. Didn’t need to.”

  She thrust her arm forward and squeezed his shoulder hard, her nails digging into the skin. He didn’t flinch. She wanted to scream. “Deny what you want, but you’re full of shit.” She leaned down slowly, inches from his ear, and relayed every detail she had learned the past three years.

  He sat, the blood draining from his cheeks, his skin growing paler by the second. When she stood again, he raised his face to hers and smiled. “Now who’s full of shit?”

  Then, after poking holes in her story, he went into overdrive. He insisted he didn’t understand why she had bothered to travel all the way back to the cabin to see him. He told her he didn’t care for her counseling; claimed it softened her character. Therapy was for sissies, was what he said. And her implausible memories? They were unconvincing. Disgusting. And she disgusted him, too. Fragile as a child. Pathetic as a teenager. Now weak as a woman, as he’d always predicted. He’d expected nothing less, he said, and she had lived up to every one of his expectations for as long as he’d known her.

  Detective Perez took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes. “Do you think your father believed all that?”

  Greta collected herself. “His mind and memory were tack-sharp. It was all lies.” When the detective didn’t respond—only wrote in her notebook—she continued, “When I look back on it now, I’m sure it was willful amnesia.”

  Detective Perez looked up. “Did you stay?”

  She shook her head. “I took off. With my unanswered questions. Without the truth. With the secrets that are going to stay buried for the rest of my life.”

  “The same day?”

  “That afternoon. I was done.”

  “Were you?”

  “Yes,” she confirmed, her face emotionless.

  The detective got her point.

  Greta knew it was a place she never wanted to return to. She didn’t belong there. It was a place she’d left behind a lifetime ago.

  Detective Perez glanced down and opened the top-right drawer of the table. In her hand she held the thick blue file, and inside it was a manila envelope. She pulled it out. “I guess this is as good a time as any to discuss this.”

  Phil paled again. “Now what?”

  The detective looked back and forth between them. She pointed to a box sitting against the wall behind her. “I promised I’d talk to Officer Pappas and review the ETs’ evidence.”

  Greta looked at the ceiling. ETs? Her mind raced. Evidence Techs. She leaned forward in her chair. “Did they find something?”

  Detective Perez shook her head. “I did.”

  She glanced at Phil, hopeful. Nothing was said. She turned back to the detective and waited.

  “There’s no easy way to—” the detective said.

  “Say it,” she interjected.

  The detective half-smiled, uncomfortable, and paused. “There’s no public record of your adoption, Greta.”

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “In Parry Sound?”

  “No.”

  “Bracebridge?”

  The detective shook her head.

  Greta frowned. “Ontario?”

  “I talked to Officer Pappas. He did a search, too. The techs went through every database we have. Nothing came up.”

  Her heart pounded through her sweatshirt. How could that be?

  Detective Perez pointed to the manila envelope tagged Ministry and Children and Youth Services that sat on the table. “These folks can’t find one either.”

  Greta’s hands shook as she reached for her purse, slung across the back of the plastic chair. She pulled out her wallet, pried her birth certificate from its smooth plastic case, and passed it over. “Are you sure you have the dates right?”

  Detective Perez didn’t take it; instead, she took a deep breath, letting it go with a
sigh. “There’s already a copy of that in the envelope.” Greta put it down. The detective stared at it. “It’s a fake.”

  Greta slumped in her chair, and she felt a hand gently touch her shoulder. She winced. Her throat tightened, and a trickle of sweat beaded on her chest. She knew her mother had lied, but she’d lied about this, too? How could she? How dare she? She took a shallow breath that fluttered as she exhaled.

  A pained expression crossed the detective’s face. “I’m sorry, Greta.”

  She lowered her eyes. Who the hell was she? Who was her family? Her legs trembled and she counted inside her head.

  One. Inhale. Two. Come on. Three. She looked at the floor and managed to let out one slow, steady breath.

  “However,” the detective went on, “When Officer Pappas poked around a bit, he found something else.” Greta looked up at her, expectant. Detective Perez held her hand in the air. “Let’s be clear from the start,” she warned. “There’s no evidence it’s even related.” Greta’s heart began to race. The detective reached into the blue file and took out two pieces of white paper.

  Greta gave Phil an angry nod. “Go ahead.”

  He shifted forward as the detective slid the documents toward them.

  “What?” Greta asked after they exchanged a look, Phil hunched over the desk.

  He tilted the documents towards her. Through the blur, all she could see were the words Parry Sound North Star followed by black lines of ink. She swiped at the wet with the heel of her hand, and reached out and grabbed them. The story spilled across the page.

  August 24, 2001.

  Baby girl abducted from the Parry Sound Mall.

  One month old, strapped snugly into a baby seat.

  In a shopping cart from A & P.

  The Mother said all she had done was “turn to put groceries into the back of her car.”

  Honestly, how long would that take?

  “It happened so fast. I only looked away for a second.”

  What the hell was that mother thinking?

  The mother had been hysterical, it said; she’d seen nothing.

  Nothing? Nothing at all?

  Greta read the rest of the story and turned to the police report underneath. She scanned the information and there, two-thirds of the way down the page, her finger stopped.

  Description of the baby.

  One-month-old. Female. Black hair. Blue eyes.

  Her heart lurched. Didn’t her mother say all babies were born with blue eyes? She was sure she’d said that one night they’d been out on the back patio. Every one of them. Right? She read on.

  Wrapped in a green blanket.

  She froze. She reread the sentence again. A green blanket? Bile rose up in her throat. She swallowed and continued reading. The police interviewed eight people in the Parry Sound Mall parking lot that morning, and their descriptions of the subject were consistent.

  Woman. Long, brown hair. Sunglasses. Thin build. Average height.

  A familiar face flashed before her eyes. It couldn’t be. She pushed her thoughts away.

  Well-dressed. Stylish blouse. Pressed pants.

  No.

  “From everything you’ve said, it sounds like Colleen,” Detective Perez said. “And she’s here down the hall now, so we’re going to find out.”

  Greta jammed her hands under her thighs. She couldn’t speak; she couldn’t refute anything. “But… She always seemed so innocent.”

  “Was she?”

  “My mother’s friend. Her mentor. My friend, too. I don’t know anymore.”

  Detective Perez remained silent.

  Greta’s jaw dropped. “Oh my god. My mother?”

  Her hands trembled. Ian wasn’t the only criminal in her fucked up little family. She thought back to the day in Kindergarten when she was covered in paint to her elbows and had tried to explain the picture of her family tree. At the time, she’d hoped Mrs. Harvey would make sense of what she was trying to say. Had she actually, truly understood that she’d been abducted? Surely not at four years old. Had she? If she’d been able to articulate it, what would Mrs. Harvey have said? Would she have taken her seriously? And if she had, would she have been taken from Emily and Ian and reunited with her biological parents?

  Her throat tightened. Who were they? Where were they? And who was she? She felt herself sink down into her chair and, thrusting her head in her hands, found herself unable to stop the tears that fell from her face. She let them fall unfettered.

  THIRTY-NINE

  “W as that the second last time you were with your father?” Detective Perez asked gently after they’d all taken another long and needed break.

  Greta pressed her fingers to the front pocket of her jeans. The question was rhetorical; they all knew the answer. What she didn’t know anymore was whom she’d really been with. Her father? Ian? Her mother’s abuser? Her abductor? She couldn’t speak. She didn’t trust words anymore.

  The detective looked at her. “Let’s go on, then. That was late fall. It’s April now. Tell me, what have you been doing?”

  “Trying to put everything behind me, like my grandparents said.”

  “How’s that going?”

  “I started college in January. My courses are heavy. I’ve been working on them and I visit my grandparents on weekends.” She snorted. “Everything was good. Moving along pretty well—”

  “Until?” the detective said, cutting her off sharply.

  “The phone call.”

  “From Dr. Hamid?”

  She sat still. “It changed everything.”

  ***

  It was spring. It had been raining for weeks, relentlessly coming down, darkening the sky and giving the earth back what it had taken. The waves on Lake Ontario crashed violently onto the shoreline and Toronto sunk into a gray soggy mess. Sewer grates overflowed and the Don River burst its banks. The Don Valley Parkway, the most travelled artery in and out of the city, was submerged and subsequently ended up being closed. The Toronto Islands, deluged, sat under three feet of water and the families living there had been evacuated to the main land.

  “Greta Giffen?” a man’s voice asked after the phone rang early one evening.

  She cradled it to her ear. “Who wants to know?”

  The low voice softened. “Let me try again. This is Dr. Farzad Hamid from Princess Margaret Hospital. Is this Greta?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re a hard person to track down.” She listened. “Sorry to call out of the blue. I wanted to let you know we have your father with us in palliative. I assume you know he has cancer?”

  “Yes, I’m aware.”

  “You know it’s inoperable, right? There’s nothing more we can do.” She sighed. She knew what palliative was. “And he’s here all alone?” She didn’t appreciate his salty undertone and thought about hanging up. But he had no idea of the relationship they had, so she held on. “We’ve been looking everywhere for his next of kin. One of the nurses dug around and found your name on the bottom of an old insurance form in his file. A document from a job he had in the municipality of Bracebridge. We searched you up on social.”

  They’d creeped her? Seriously? She shut her eyes, nauseated, as the doctor went on to explain they’d transported him privately two hundred kilometers from Bracebridge to Princess Margaret, Ontario’s Cancer Care Centre. She imagined him being driven down the highway like some sort of king in a carriage. What a joke. The last time she’d travelled that same route had been eight months before. She shuddered at the memory.

  “He’s been lying in a bed on the seventh floor since he got here last week. We thought you might want to know,” Dr. Hamid said.

  The detective raised her eyebrows, pausing the conversation. “How did that phone call feel?”

  Greta didn’t know how it made her feel. Back then, what she’d felt had been stillness—and that had been all. She looked down at her sneakers and said nothing.

  “Let me try again,” Detective Perez said. “What is a daugh
ter’s obligation to her parents?”

  Greta balked. To her father? Nothing. To her mother? The one who’d said she chose her? Ripped from a mother’s arms as a baby, choice wasn’t the word she’d use to describe what her mother might have done? Was she? How dare Detective Perez ask what her obligation was. After everything she’d learned, how the hell would she know?

  ***

  She’d disconnected the call and put her phone down on the table. Her mind was racing.

  Google Assistant told her the hospital was about twenty minutes away. She quickly considered who, of everyone she knew, could take her there. Latoya didn’t have a car. She dismissed the idea of her grandparents; it was already early evening and they lived too far away. While she’d opened up a little that spring, she was still protecting them from the worst of her father’s sordid history. There was no chance of asking Colleen. Plain and simple, she knew everything and hated her father, too. Last, she ruled out Kanza: had it been even slightly practical, she’d have chosen her, but she mentioned in her last text that she was on a five-day night shift at Penn. She’d be busy.

  Greta grabbed her jacket off the back of the couch, locked the apartment, and walked up the street. Rain pounded around her, and she gripped the edges of the fabric and quickened the pace up to the bus stop on Queen. The doors of the streetcar swallowed her up and closed again, and she looked past the weary faces of passengers, pale in the fluorescent light, to the middle of the car in the hope of finding a solo seat. Rain thumping the windows, the streetcar travelled the rails to the downtown corridor, the windshield wipers keeping time with her heart. Beating slow. Steady. Methodical.

  Had she dozed off? At University, she stood, nearly missing her stop. She walked north and squeezed her way through the large glass revolving doors pushed back into the shadows at the front of the hospital. Skin bumpy with the chill of the air-conditioning, she took the elevator upstairs. The doors swooshed open, filling her nostrils with the smell of stale air and antiseptic. Her eyes flitted around the corridor before quickly locating what she was looking for. She turned right, walked down the hall a few steps, and stopped in front of the nurse’s station.