Chapter 34 Rachel #2
“So we have to thread this needle of allowing our experiences to help us be good police, without letting them totally colour our view of people.” Rachel clears her throat.
“I have trouble with the parent-and-kid cases, the Children’s Aid calls.
They’re the worst for me. Worse than a murder.
Every time. But fortunately, we don’t get too many around here.
It’s one of the reasons I stay rural. In a city, there’d be too much of that.
” She inhales the scent of coffee and sugar, the bitter and the sweet.
“And yet…in some ways they’re the most satisfying.
Helping to make sure some kid gets out of a bad situation. ”
Laughter breaks out at a table ten feet away, two young women with heavily made-up faces and non-fat lattes.
Both of them have hair styled just like Jennifer Aniston’s on Friends.
They’re probably imagining they’re at Central Perk, and who could blame them for wanting a sitcom life, scripted and polished to a prime-time shine.
But there’s always darkness and mess behind the walls of a brightly coloured set.
Clutter and chaos you don’t see on screen.
“You’re a good listener, Stevens,” Rachel says. “Maybe you did inherit some of your uncle’s skill after all.”
He inclines his head modestly. “We’ll see.” He’s quiet for a moment. “Do you mind if I ask, why didn’t your grandmother ever tell you what your mom had done?”
“I’ve had a lot of time to think about that one,” Rachel says.
“And I honestly believe she thought I already had enough to think badly of my mother for, the pain she’d caused me personally.
” She pauses. “I think, on a level, Dora was trying to spare my mom some shame. But mostly it was for me. Because, unlike my mom, she was always thinking of me. She always wanted to do what was best for me.”
Stevens nods. “So, what happened with your mom…that’s why you became a cop?” He lifts his mug and looks surprised to find it empty.
“No.” Rachel eyes him. “Well…yes and no, I guess. I studied forensics in school, before the academy. It didn’t take my shrink at rehab analyzing my experiences for me to know that I was always drawn to science for answers.”
“And detecting is the same.”
“Yes.” She presses her lips together. “Since your uncle told you to follow my lead, pick my brain…something tells me you can relate.”
They meet eyes for a long moment, and Rachel searches them. He’s quiet, clearly struggling. But he’s not ready yet, to tell her whatever it is. She bails him out.
“If not for your uncle’s…intervention, I guess I’d call it, well…I’m not sure where I would have ended up.”
Stevens tilts his head a little to the side, frowns. “What intervention?”
FALL, 1987
Leaves and gravel crunched beneath the wheels of Dora’s old car as Rachel drove up the laneway and parked behind the house. She stared out at the lake for a moment. The water was choppy in the autumn wind, the whitecaps cascading over one another in their rush to crash against the cliff edge below.
She’d thought about selling the place and moving to Toronto, or even back to Windsor.
Being there might at least have encouraged her to re-enroll in school.
She knew Dora would have wanted her to complete her program, proud as she’d been about Rachel being the first university-educated person in the family.
But Rachel didn’t really see why that sort of thing mattered anymore.
The problem was, nothing at all mattered much to her anymore.
She’d gone to live with Kim’s family while the police took over the property for the investigation, and moved back in the week before she was due to return to school.
But instead of packing her bags, getting a fresh haircut and hitting the road with her tuition savings, she’d crawled beneath the quilt Dora had sewn her when she was eight and slept for nearly a week.
The first week of September came and went, and then they began to slip by in a miasma of alcohol, debilitating depression and valerian-root sleep aids ground in Dora’s mortar.
Rachel didn’t know where to go, and she didn’t know how to leave.
Kim called long distance from her sorority house in Waterloo to check up on her every few days, but Rachel didn’t say much.
And sometimes she just let the phone ring, the shrill metallic whirr echoing through the empty house as she pulled the quilt up over her ears, tried to catch up on sleep that was often elusive to her at night, when intrusive thoughts and memories washed over her in rhythm with the tide outside the window.
She didn’t leave the house anymore, except for necessities.
She had no social life—her friends were back at their respective schools now—and no family.
No goals for a future she hadn’t even considered since the day Mary pushed Dora to her death.
And Rachel didn’t suppose she’d even be able to sell the place if she wanted to.
Who wanted to buy a house where not one but two people had fallen to their death?
And so she stayed, rattling pointlessly around a house that felt dead and hollow without Dora, just like Rachel did.
But it was mid-October now, and the past two months were a blur, each day the same as the ones that came before and after.
Rachel had just come back from the grocery store, paper bags weighed down with frozen dinners and ketchup chips.
She unloaded the bags from the car and was thinking of the Irish coffee she’d make once she got inside when a police car turned into the driveway.
Her adrenaline flared at the sight of it, and her mind began to race. Had something happened to Mary in custody? Or worse, was she being released? She swallowed as the car’s engine cut and the officer stepped out. She recognized him immediately.
“Detective Stevens?”
“Hi Rachel,” he said, coming slowly around the side of his squad car and stopping five feet from her. He was tall, somewhere around fifty, with a deeply receded hairline. “Can I take one of those?” He indicated the bags.
“Uh, sure. Yeah. Thanks.” He relieved her of one, and she clutched the other tighter, as though holding a toddler who might try to squirm out of her grip. “Has something happened with the case? I thought we were still waiting on a trial date?”
“We are,” he said, looking grim. “But I wanted to come check up on you. I know you’re on your own now, and uh, I was in the neighbourhood.”
He wasn’t, though. The “neighbourhood” was just one long street of houses that backed onto the lake, surrounded by trees. And no one other than the Mackenzies had ever had reason for the cops to visit their house. Rachel averted her eyes from him. She wasn’t entirely surprised by the visit.
The day before, she’d been down at the little LCBO just off the highway to refill the liquor supply that was rapidly dwindling as empty bottles piled up against the far wall of the scullery.
She’d seen Detective Stevens there, off-duty, and she knew he’d seen her, too.
She’d tried to move her body to block his view of her purchases as she dug in her wallet for her ID.
She was getting used to the array of curious, pitying, and judgmental looks she got from people in town whenever she did venture out.
But for some reason, she didn’t want Detective Stevens to know how much she was drinking, didn’t want to disappoint him.
“How about we bring these in, and I’ll make some coffee?” he said now.
“Uh.” Rachel was taken aback, but felt a distinct pressure to agree. “Sure. Yeah.”
She led him toward the back of house and through the wooden screen door into the kitchen. She set her grocery bag down on the table and he followed suit, cleared his throat.
“Go ahead and make yourself comfortable. I can make the coffee,” she said, turning away and busying herself with the coffee maker.
She was suddenly very aware of the state of the place.
Dishes were stacked in the sink and beginning to smell.
Mail and flyers were piled on the table amid a clutter of general detritus, and she hadn’t washed her hair in at least three days.
She couldn’t recall the last time she’d swept and mopped.
Possibly before everything went to hell.
The air was stagnant, and she wrenched opened the kitchen window to tempt in a breeze.
She watched him look around a little at the photos on the walls. His eyes swept over the mail on the table, then stopped on one of the envelopes. He picked it up and studied it.
“When did you get this?” he asked gently.
Rachel’s stomach squirmed. “A few weeks ago, I think.”
“She isn’t supposed to be in contact with you.”
“No?”
“No. Not while the trial is pending. You’re a witness.
” He scoffed. “Jesus. I’ll report that. She’s left your name off, I guess that’s why it got missed.
But they need to monitor her outgoing mail.
I can’t believe this.” He paused, ran a finger over the back of the envelope, which was still sealed. “You haven’t opened it?”
Rachel shook her head. She’d meant to toss Mary’s unopened letter right into the recycling bin, but for some reason, she hadn’t yet.
Detective Stevens watched her, waited, and just as she had on the porch the night of the murder, she found herself compelled to talk to him.
Other than Kim’s occasional calls, and brief “thank-you”s to cashiers, she hadn’t spoken to another human being in two months.
“I…” Her eyes pricked and she blinked hard as the coffee maker began to drip behind her. “I don’t think there’s anything she could say that I would want to hear. It’ll just be lies, like always. I don’t think she even knows how to tell the truth.”
Detective Stevens nodded slowly, didn’t press for more. His mouth stretched into a small, kind smile. The sort you give to a skittish stray. The smell of coffee filled the kitchen, which felt warmer with him here. When it was ready, Rachel poured two mugs and handed him one.
“How about we take these out to the porch,” he said, gesturing to the back door. “A bit of fresh air.”
Rachel nodded and followed him. They settled down in the creaky Muskoka chairs, a foot apart. The breeze blew softly. It was a cool fall day, but the sun was still warm. Crispy leaves swished in the trees overhead. They sat in silence again, sipping.
“You saw my cart at the liquor store, didn’t you?” Rachel finally asked, blowing across the surface of her drink, watching it ripple.
“Yup.”
“And that’s why you’re here?”
“Yup.”
She glanced at him, but he was staring out at the water. She drank her coffee, felt the warmth trickle down through her core. He chewed on his lip a bit, then seemed to come to a decision about something.
“Between you, me, and the lake…I had a problem once, too. Had to take a long leave from the job and everything. My chief at the time insisted, or he woulda had my badge.”
Her eyebrows raise.
“I won’t uh…I won’t get into why, but I went down fast. No one ever talks about how steep the slope is, eh?
The dependency can come on real quick.” Rachel felt a swell in her throat at the words.
It had only taken about three weeks for her to wake up in the morning wanting a drink.
To need one to get to sleep at night, and most of the time in between.
She’d begun mixing the booze with a high dose of the antidepressants she’d been on since she was sixteen.
When she’d poured this coffee, she had to remember not to spike it out of habit.
“It’s the desperation that gets us,” the detective said. “You just want to smother the pain, and aside from actually killing yourself, this is the quickest route to numb.”
She squinted her eyes against the threatening tears, the accuracy of what he’d said. He understood.
“You need to put up a fence over there,” he said then, matter-of-fact.
“I know.” Rachel watched the weeds on the cliff edge bend over, flutter in the wind.
With what she knew now, she couldn’t figure out why Dora never had one installed.
That was just one of the many riddles and mysteries she was now stuck with.
“But I don’t think it would have stopped Mary from killing her.
It was clear she wanted my grandmother dead. ”
“You could be right,” he said. “But still. You should get it done.”
“I will.”
They were quiet, both draining the last of their drinks.
“So how did you pull yourself out of it?” Rachel finally asked.
He sighed, set his mug down on the arm of the chair. “There’s a rehab place called Pineview, just outside of Guelph. They had good therapists, too. Helped me get through a lot, figure some stuff out.”
“And have you been sober since?” she asked.
“Yup. The rehab was even harder than the addiction and depression. But worth every fucking minute of effort.”
She swallowed. “Can I ask why you’re helping me?”
He meets her eyes square on. “Because I don’t know where I’d be if my chief hadn’t pushed me to get help.
He saved my life. I see you stranded in the same boat, and you’re too young to let your life get derailed.
” He paused. “And if I may, I’m sure your grandmother would never have wanted to see you like this. ”
Rachel broke down then, gasped at the cool air through the sobs.
Sometimes all it takes to pull us back from the brink is for a good person to just give a shit.
To see you struggling from the shore, and throw out a life preserver, to offer a bit of thankless, genuine compassion, make sure you don’t drown.
Detective Stevens reached out a hand. Without hesitation, Rachel grasped it, felt the unfamiliar sensation of fatherly support course through her as she gripped the rough skin, calloused with experience. Those hands had helped people, she knew. And maybe they could help her, too.