Thirty-seven
When Nadine walked into the kitchen for lunch after a wearisome morning rechecking the house, Wes saw she was in dire need of a break. Her hair was pulled up in a bun that fell half down in the back, and her mouth had a small pout he wanted to kiss away.
So he did.
“We only have two days left.” Nadine sagged against him, and he lugged her to the sink to wash her hands.
“I know,” he said. “You’ll feel better after you eat. I used the last of the Camembert for sandwiches, and the tomatoes in the salad are warm from the garden.”
That perked her up the way he knew it would. For a change, he’d set lunch on the island instead of the table near the window. Nadine bit into the sandwich, and a chunk of cheese slid out, off her plate, and onto the floor.
“Erma, get away from that.” Nadine hopped down from the stool to fight the cat for the cheese.
When she didn’t come up, Wes bent over to see what was happening. “You okay?”
She was running her hand up and down the side of the island. “I feel a draft.”
He stretched his hand out. “I feel it too.”
Nadine started to get to her feet, and Wes reached over to pull her up. “How do we get in here?” she asked. “There are no cabinet doors.”
Wes circled the island as Nadine watched, hands on her hips. Then she followed him, running her fingertips under the edge of the counter. She halted, and Wes looked back, then put his fingers beside hers. There was a thin bulge. “A hinge?” he asked.
They cleared off the island and went to the far end, each taking a corner. At Nadine’s nod, they lifted.
The entire marble countertop rose in the air, so suddenly and smoothly that they lost their grip. “What the hell!” yelped Nadine as it dropped. “Did you see that?”
Wes had. Under the counter was an abyss. “Lift it again,” he said.
This time, they went slower, and two rods lowered to hold the counter in place. With one hand over their heads in case the heavy slab fell, they peered over the edge.
“Wow,” said Nadine. “Wow.”
Wes wasn’t sure wow was adequate for this discovery and stayed staring into the stygian gloom as Nadine ran to fetch the flashlight. She shone it down to reveal a flight of stairs.
“We found the basement door,” she announced.
There was no discussion of next steps, because of course they were going down. After a few minutes to lock the curious and protesting Erma in the games room with the other cats, Wes felt around and found a latch that opened the side of the island, then propped the doors in place with the kitchen stools. Nadine texted Lisanne a photo of the gaping counter and a request to send help if she didn’t hear back within two hours.
I don’t know how you get into these situations, but give my regards to Dracula , replied Lisanne.
Safety covered, and after a brief fight over who would go first, Wes took Nadine’s hand, and they headed down the stairs to the long-sought basement. “Are you nervous?” he asked.
“No, why?”
“You’re using my hand like a stress ball.”
She squeezed tighter. “Expectant. Hopeful. A little freaked out.”
“All valid.” Wes’s own astonishment had settled into a spiky excitement that grew with each step. The stairs were surprisingly code-compliant, complete with handrails and anti-slip tape along the edges.
Happily, there were no coffins, corpses, or other spooky scaries.
Nadine’s hand clung to his as she swung the flashlight back and forth from their position at the base of the stairs. Wes thought the space would be as big as the attic, but it only seemed to stretch as far as the library. “Doesn’t look like there’s anything here but those boxes I saw on the video from the dumbwaiter,” she said.
“Did you phrase it like that to point out that you saw the boxes first?”
“Yes.”
He leaned down to kiss her cheek. “Nice.”
She didn’t move. “This could be it, you know. Whatever Dot wanted us to learn could be in that corner.”
Nadine was right. The entire mystery could be solved in minutes. All they had to do was walk across the concrete floor and open up those boxes. It could be anything. Dot’s journal. A handwritten confession. Photographs of John Wilson so compromising that not even the sharkiest lawyer could deny their veracity. Yet they didn’t move.
“Hey,” said Nadine. Her voice was low under the weight of the basement air. “I want to say there’s no one else I’d rather be in a creepy basement with than you.”
“Ditto.” He didn’t say more because his throat had tightened up.
“And that this has been the best three weeks of my life.” She looked into his face. “No matter what we find in those boxes.”
She kissed him, her mouth slotting into his so naturally it was like they had always belonged to each other. Then she pulled away and whacked him on the ass. “Come on.”
They took the last step together, the flashlight holding steady on the boxes ahead.
***
It was in the last box.
They went back upstairs and replaced the counter before they sat down to marvel over their find. “Don’t forget Lisanne,” said Wes as Nadine washed her hands. Basement grime tinted the suds brown.
“Got it.” She shot Lisanne a proof of life photo of her and Wes and got a thumbs-up in reply. “I still don’t know how Erma managed to get into the dumbwaiter,” she said.
“A mystery we might never solve.” Wes spread the piece of paper on the table, and she bent over it, hands feeling shaky.
“It’s a staff newsletter from 1977,” said Nadine. “From John Wilson’s office when he was a member of Parliament.” The faded purple mimeographed sheet was like a time capsule, filled with inside jokes about coffee breaks and an open invitation to the upcoming Christmas party. It was only a page, and in the bottom corner was a small caricature of a young woman smiling with her face covered by a pair of huge glasses and holding a pen and folder to her chest. “The irreplaceable Milly Cross,” read the caption.
“There was no mention of Milly Cross in any of the obits or the files we found,” said Wes.
Nadine knew there was no need to check. Wes’s memory was a steel trap.
“Milly Cross.” She repeated the name thoughtfully. “That looks a bit like Dot, doesn’t?”
“Hold on.” Wes jolted up. “Those photos in the dress room.”
They released the cats as they went to the west wing.
Wes stood in front of the wall, checking the names. “One was named Cross, I’m sure of it. There. Mildred Cross.”
He pointed, and Nadine saw one of the young women in the photos resembled Dot. It was also the image of the woman in the porcelain photo frame taken in an Ottawa studio. “Dot was Milly?” she said aloud as if to test the theory connecting the images of the women. “She could be. We know almost nothing about her early life.”
“Everyone floats over it as if being a teacher in small-town Manitoba isn’t worthy of investigation, and whenever she spoke about her past, it was always vague,” Wes said.
“What if she was hiding her previous life before moving to Manitoba? What if Dot was Milly?” It sounded fantastical as Nadine said it.
“You think Dot Voline was her pen name?” asked Wes. “That was never hinted at in anything I read or by Dot.”
“Not only a pen name but a new identity, like Dellia in Patience . Dot published it in 2000. It was about a woman who changed her name and started a new life to get away from her husband’s affair.”
“You think whatever inspired Thirty Pieces happened and she changed her name and moved away to start a new life,” mused Wes. “How would people from her old Ottawa life have not recognized her?”
“The glasses, maybe, and also they might simply have not expected Milly Cross to be the world-famous author. Kind of the same way you sometimes don’t recognize people when they’re out of context.”
“That makes sense. We need some proof.”
Quickly they split up research tasks, and Nadine called Irina at the Herald .
“What do you want?” asked Irina when she answered. Would it kill her to say hello?
“I need a birth record,” said Nadine, getting right down to it. Irina had access to the best online database for birth, death, and marriage records. “The name is Dot or Dorothy Voline.”
“Year of birth?” Irina’s voice didn’t change.
“It’s 1951.” That was the number that matched Dot’s bio, which said she was born on an isolated farmstead.
There was the sound of what seemed like an unnecessary number of keystrokes for a thirteen-letter name. “None.”
“How about a couple years on either side?” If Dot had lied about her past, she might have lied about her age.
More tapping. “None.”
“Mildred Cross, same dates?”
“I have one in 1951. Mildred Dorothy Cross, born to Dorothy Cross née Moline and Thomas Cross in Ottawa.”
“Ottawa? Not Alberta?” That was where Dot said she’d been born.
“If it was in Alberta, I would not have said Ottawa.”
“Right, sorry.”
“Anything else?”
“No,” Nadine said slowly. Damn. They were one step closer, but they still didn’t have what they desperately needed: that critical piece of evidence that screamed John Wilson is bad and he did bad things.
“Good.” Irina hung up.
Wes came in and tossed his phone on the counter. “Dot Voline appeared in Meadow Lake, Manitoba, in 1979. She said she was from northern Alberta and lost her documents in the move. The town clerk was by all accounts a very nice and trusting man well past retirement age and helped her replace everything.”
“How did you find out so fast?” Nadine was impressed but not surprised, given how good Wes was.
“An old friend is from Manitoba, and I lucked out because his mom lives in the neighboring town. Apparently no one doubted her story, although she rarely spoke about her life before Meadow Lake.”
“Nice,” approved Nadine. Informal connections could yield the best information. She told him about Irina.
Then they stared at each other.
“It’s not enough to go up again John Wilson.” Nadine put her head in her hands, her excitement dashed. “I give up.”
Wes pulled her hands down, and she pressed her face into the curve of his shoulder. He was steady, and his hands held her close.
“Why don’t you go for a walk and clear your head while I get lunch back on track?” he said.
She leaned against him for a few beats more, simply letting herself feel small and weak and helpless. She could do that with Wes and trusted him not to shame her about feeling defeated instead of her usual self.
“No.” Her voice was muffled in his skin.
***
He held her closer, feeling the concern build. What could he say to make her feel better?
“It’s okay, Nadine. We tried.” He felt her shake her head and added, “Sometimes trying is all we can do. It’s not like this is the end of the road. We might lose access to Dot’s house, but we’ve found plenty that we can continue to investigate when we’re done here.”
“I know, but it feels like it’s not enough. Like once we leave, we’ll be stuck.”
“We won’t be.” He kissed her on the head.
“You don’t know that.” She stepped back, her neck bent. He hated seeing her so defeated.
“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice frustrated. “I can’t fix this.”
“What?” She looked at him in confusion.
“I know I should fix this, but I don’t know how.”
She tilted her head. “Why do you think you need to fix things that aren’t your fault?”
“Because it’s my responsibility.” He’d never been able to make his mother happy, and now he had to worry about Nadine as well.
“What?”
He thought back to all the times his mother told him he was the man of the house, responsible for everyone under their roof. “I don’t know. I like to keep people happy and make sure they’re comfortable.”
“For your family?”
He nodded. “I tried. I really did. I managed a bit with Ella, but Amy is a mess, and Ma…Ma is herself.”
“Oh, Wes.” Her face was sad.
“Yeah?”
She leaned over to look him in the eye. “I want to tell you something.”
“Okay.” He physically braced himself, and Nadine took his hand.
“You are not responsible for making me happy.” She said it simply, like it was common knowledge. “That is not your job.”
Wes blinked. Amy had said the same thing, but hearing it from Nadine made him reassess the words in a different way. “Yes, it is.”
“I don’t want this to get too circular, but nope, it’s not.” She took his other hand. “Obviously, this is not carte blanche to actively be a dick; let me get that clear. You can play a role in making me happy, but ultimately, it’s up to me whether I am. Not you.”
Wes sat for a few moments, absorbing what she’d said. He felt a little stunned at how matter-of-fact she was, like it really was that simple. Could it be? He could almost feel his mind shifting to accommodate this, and it was a struggle. “It’s a lot for me to think about,” he said finally.
“Okay,” she said. “We’ll both take a break.”
He kissed her, holding her face in his hands, and then kissed her nose and eyes and cheeks for the pleasure of it. She’d stopped his spiraling, and although he wasn’t sure he believed her—it wasn’t his job to make her happy?—he was willing to think about it.
Another one of those cables seemed to snap from around his chest, and he breathed freer once more.