Eleven
Catherine had known she couldn’t sit in the coffee shop forever. Eventually, she’d have to return home. Her phone kept buzzing.
Reece, of course. And another persistent caller, the ID blocked. Catherine assumed that would be the police. Messages had
been left but she did not check them.
Catherine had always put off getting bad news as long as she could, even when it came to small things. When the monthly Visa
bill arrived in the mail, she wouldn’t take it out of the envelope for a couple of days, fearful of how much she might have
spent and forgotten about. So when it came to family crises, the longer you avoided the truth, the longer you deluded yourself
into believing things couldn’t be better. The whole Schrodinger’s cat thing.
She’d finished her tea in the coffee shop across from Benjamin’s. While drinking it, she had shredded her paper napkin into
a hundred tiny pieces. She swept them into the empty paper cup and snapped the plastic lid back on. Don’t like to leave a mess, she said to herself, and then laughed quietly.
Catherine reached into her purse for her wallet, set it on the table, and opened it up. She removed a department store points
card from one of the sleeves, then dug her finger in, looking for something.
She withdrew a yellow Post-it note, no bigger than a pack of matches before it had been folded over once. The note was worn
and dirty, as though it had been hidden in that sleeve for a very long time.
Catherine managed to unfold the note, its one sticky edge adhering to itself. Written on it in faded ink was a phone number.
She punched the number into her phone, put it to her ear, and waited.
It rang once, twice, a third time. When it got to five rings Catherine was ready to give up, but just then someone answered.
There was a moment of silence, and then a man’s voice said, “Hello?”
“It’s me.”
“I have caller ID.”
“I wasn’t even sure you’d still have this number. I wasn’t even sure you’d still be alive.” When he said nothing, she said,
“Brent just died.”
“Condolences. Still at the same address? I’ll send a card.”
“I need to see you.”
“A bit soon to start dating again.”
“There’s nothing funny about this.”
“Forgive me.”
“I do need to see you.”
“I can’t imagine why.”
“Someone knows.”
No funny comeback this time. After a few seconds, he said, “If someone knows, someone talked.” Another moment’s silence. “I
see.”
“You see what?”
“Brent couldn’t keep a secret any longer. My god, Catherine, do I have to clean up after you again?”
“Why would Brent say something now? It couldn’t have been him.”
“Well, that only leaves one other person.”
“No, it had to have happened some other way. But someone’s figured it out.”
“And you know this how?”
“Can I just see you? I don’t want to do this over the phone.”
She thought she could hear a sigh at the other end. “I’ll call you later,” he said, and he was gone.
Catherine still had the phone in her hand when it buzzed. That blocked number again. She didn’t feel she could put this off
any longer.
“Hello,” she said.
“Catherine Chartwell?”
“Yes.”
“This is Detective Janice McCabe, with the Yorkton Hill Police.”
“I’ve been expecting your call.”
“Tell me where you are. I’ll send an officer to pick you up.”
“It’s okay. I’ll call Reece. He must be frantic by now.”
“No, let—”
Catherine ended the call, brought up Reece’s number, and tapped the screen.
“Mom,” he said.
“Take me home.”
“Where are you?”
She told him. “But I want you to tell me, right now, how bad it is.”
And so he did. Brent, dead. This other woman, dead. And who was this woman, Catherine wanted to know. Reece gave her the name
McCabe had revealed to him.
“Do you know who she is?” Reece asked.
“No,” she lied.
The police believed it was a murder-suicide, her son told her.
Jesus, she thought. She wasn’t even on her feet yet and felt dizzy. This was an unexpected turn of events.
Leah Kennard.
“Mom?”
She managed two words. “Which way?”
“Which way what?”
“You said . . . a murder-suicide. Which way?”
Matter-of-factly, her son said, “Dad shot her. Then he took his own life.”
Catherine went several seconds saying nothing. Then, just before ending the call, she said, “I’ll be out front.”