Sixteen
Reece
It was closing in on ten o’clock on the longest day of my life.
Earlier, I’d called Mom to ask whether there was anything she needed after her meeting with McCabe. Help with funeral arrangements?
Hire someone to go into the bedroom she’d shared with my father and make it look like nothing had ever happened there? (I’d
watched enough TV and read enough Elmore Leonard to know there were businesses that provided such a service.) Or, very simply,
be there for her? Did she want to come over and have dinner with Diana and Gage and me?
Before I could get to any of those things, Mom lit into me.
“You should have let me tell him,” she said.
“I’m sorry, what?”
“Holden already knew,” she said accusingly. “I went to his house to break the news to him, because you can never know how
he’s going to react to these things, and it was really the kind of thing he should have heard from me and not his brother.”
“Mom, I—”
“Never mind. What’s done is done.” A pause, and then, “Do you know where he is?”
“Home, I guess,” I said.
“Well, he’s not home,” she said, like it was my fault.
“Then I have no idea. Has something happened?”
“I was making arrangements to admit him to Sharnwood and he got very upset and took off. He needs to be reassessed and go back into treatment.”
“He probably needs us more than a bunch of guys in white coats right now.”
“Sharnwood is not a psychiatric facility,” Mom said defensively. “They don’t wear white coats.”
“I’m just saying.” She was getting under my skin, but considering the circumstances, I didn’t want to be short-tempered with
her.
“If he shows up at your house let me know immediately.”
“Okay, I will. Is there anything else we can do for you? Why don’t you come here, we’ll have dinner, we can start figuring
out—”
“Thank you, Reece,” she said icily. “I need to be alone right now. I’m going back to the house, going to gather together what
things I can without having to go into . . . you know.”
I didn’t know how she’d manage that. Anything she might need would be in the bedroom or adjoining bathroom. As if reading
my mind, she said, “Or I may just have to buy what I need for now. I’ll get a room at the Marriott.” And suddenly, she thought
of something. “I have to let people know.”
“Can I do some of that for you?”
“I’ll get in touch with Amelia and Geraldine.” Her older sisters. As far as I knew, Mom wasn’t all that close to them, but
still, she’d have to tell them. “Oh god, and Frank.”
My father’s older brother, in Vancouver. “You want me to handle that?” I offered.
“Would you?” she asked. She’d never been close with her brother-in-law. My uncle Frank and Dad weren’t all that chummy either.
“I’ll do it,” I said. “If there’s anything else you need, call me.”
And a few hours later, she did.
I’d just finished breaking the news to my uncle over the phone.
Frank had listened quietly while I told him what I knew.
He was shocked, saddened, and said that whatever service there was, he wouldn’t be able to attend.
He was recovering from cancer surgery and undergoing regular chemo treatments.
I asked if my father had known he’d been sick.
“No,” Frank had said. He hadn’t told him.
“We haven’t really talked in years,” he’d said.
The moment I ended the call, standing in our upstairs hallway after ten o’clock, the phone in my hand rang.
“Did Holden show up?” Mom asked before I’d even said hello.
“I’d have called you if he had.”
Diana had poked her head out the bedroom door, and I sensed Gage, in his room with the door open, was listening too.
“He won’t take my calls, and I took a taxi by the house again and he wasn’t there.” The worry in her voice was palpable. I
was starting to worry too.
“If he’s upset with you,” I said, “maybe he’ll answer if he sees it’s me calling.”
“Yes, yes, he might,” Mom said forlornly, as though admitting some kind of personal failing.
“I’ll try and get right back to you.” I ended the call and immediately brought up Holden’s number and tapped the screen. I
let it ring seven times before giving up. I called Mom back and told her.
“I don’t know what to do,” she said.
Without even thinking about where I would start, I said, “I’ll go looking for him.”
“Do you want me to go with you?”
“No. Let me see what I can do. Bye, Mom.”
As I slipped the phone into my pocket, Diana said, “You’re going out to look for Holden.” Not a question. A statement, not
without a hint of judgment in it.
I nodded resignedly. “I’ll give it a shot.”
“Maybe you should just call the police.”
I knew what she was thinking. Maybe Holden had overdosed and was in a ditch someplace. Having every Yorkton Hill cop car on
the lookout wasn’t a bad idea, but I wasn’t quite ready to go that far.
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”
She leaned up against the wall and crossed her arms. I knew this look. “They’re dragging you under,” she said.
I sighed.
“Your mother, Holden, they’re two anchors taking you to the bottom.”
“What would you have me do?” I asked.
Her eyes narrowed. “You’re already in a bad place. You don’t need this.”
“Who does? And I’m fine.”
I knew what she was referencing with the bad place comment. When WorldWide canned me, I went into a pretty deep spiral that lasted a couple of weeks. Lost my appetite, dropped
ten pounds, drank a little too much. Took long, solitary walks, so long that Diana and Gage had gone hunting for me. Diana’d
urged me to talk to someone but I refused. I’d come out of it, I said, and I did. I just needed some time.
“If they’d been there for you,” she said, “maybe I’d feel differently.”
And I knew what that meant too. I’d never asked my parents for money at the time, but Diana was appalled they didn’t at least
offer. They knew WorldWide had given me a settlement, but it was only six months’ salary. We’d blown through most of that
and were now going into our savings. I made excuses for my parents, telling Diana that it wasn’t their responsibility to rescue
us.
“They’ve pulled Holden’s ass out of the fire—financially and otherwise—more times than I’ve had my hair done,” Diana had countered.
My comeback for that was, Holden didn’t have the wherewithal to put out the flames himself. In what was undoubtedly my weakest
argument, my parents’ failure to come rushing over with a check was an acknowledgment that they knew I’d find my own way forward.
“Horseshit,” Diana had said.
Pretty much.
Don’t misunderstand. Diana liked my parents—I’d go so far as to say she loved my dad—but this was an issue that was always
there under the surface.
So here we were, in the midst of the biggest crisis the extended Chartwell family had ever faced. How was I supposed to walk away from all this now?
Diana must have realized this, too, as she let out a long breath, uncrossed her arms, and closed the distance between us.
“I’m sorry,” she said and hugged me. Holding on, she said, “I see what it does to you. It sucks the life out of you.”
I rested my head on her shoulder. “A little.”
She released me. “Go find your brother.”
“I know where he is,” Gage said, suddenly appearing in the hall.
Christ, how long had he been listening?
“How do you know where he is?” I asked.
Gage held up his phone. “I asked him.”
While Gage had been listening to us he’d simply sent his uncle a quick message saying everyone was freaking out because they
didn’t know where he was. Holden had written back and said he was hanging out at one of the town’s Tim Hortons near the garden
center Diana and I shopped at every spring. This Tims, one of more than a dozen of the franchised coffee and doughnut places
scattered across the town, was open later than most given its proximity to a nearby highway.
I could have called Mom and told her Holden had been located, but then she’d have had twenty questions about his condition.
I thought it best to learn that for myself first. Gage insisted on coming with me, since clearly he was the only one Holden
trusted. A couple of minutes later the two of us were in the car.
“So your uncle will take a message from you but not me or his mother,” I observed.
“I don’t judge him like she does,” Gage said. “I’m not gonna make him go back to Sharnwood.”
“And why didn’t he respond to my calls?”
Gage shrugged. “Maybe brother relationships are complicated. I wouldn’t know. I’m an only child.” He offered me a grin.
“Having you was enough,” I said, flashing him a grin in return. “You’re pretty close to your uncle.”
“And you don’t like that.”
“I didn’t say that. You get why we worry.”
“There’s more to him than having a drug problem. You guys don’t see the whole picture. And he’s been through an awful lot
of bad stuff and people should give him a break. Grandpa would have understood that.”
“You just need to be careful, that’s all.”
“What do you mean?”
“Like say he’s got a stash of illegal drugs in his place, stuff you don’t even know about, and while you’re there the police
decide to drop by. Whatever trouble he lands in, you’re going to be there right with him.”
Gage went quiet, like maybe he hadn’t thought about that.
The Tims was up ahead. I saw Holden’s car in the lot out front, and as we pulled into a parking spot, I saw him at a table
for four on the other side of the glass. There was a woman seated across from him. About forty, thin, big frizzy hair. Otherwise,
not counting two people behind the counter, the place was empty. Holden and the woman each had a paper cup of what I guessed
was coffee in front of them. I knew Tims outlets did not serve alcohol.
We got out of the car and went inside. Holden, facing our way, spotted us, grinned and waved us in. The woman with Holden
turned to check us out.
“Hey,” Holden said, getting to his feet and going right by me to give my son a hug. “How’s it going, man?”
Gage slipped his arms around his uncle in return. Holden whispered some words of what I supposed were condolences into his
ear, then let him go and said to the woman at the table, “Babe, this is my brother, Reece, and this here is my favorite nephew,
Gage.”