Nineteen
Reece
At breakfast, I asked Gage if he remembered what his nightmare had been about.
“No,” he said, breezing through only long enough to grab a banana. “I didn’t even know I was screaming.”
He’d woken Diana and me up. She’d been out of bed first, running down the hall to Gage’s room. I was four steps behind her.
She flipped a switch in the hallway that allowed some light to bleed into the bedroom without hitting an overhead fixture.
And it wasn’t exactly screaming. Gage was shouting “No! No! No! No!” in his sleep.
He was thrashing about under his covers when we came into the room. Diana perched herself on the edge of the bed and gently
rubbed Gage’s arm as she said, “Wake up, honey, wake up. Wake up.”
Gage opened his eyes, looked puzzledly at the two of us. “What?”
“You were having a nightmare,” I said.
He blinked a couple of times, said “It’s okay, I’m fine,” put his head on the pillow, and went back to sleep. Diana and I
staggered back to our room and spent much of the rest of the night awake.
Staring at the ceiling, she said, “I guess it’s normal.”
I agreed. We’d all been traumatized. The shock of what had happened the day before was not going to fade from memory any time soon, and I believed it was as hard on Gage to lose a grandfather as it was on me to lose a dad.
Maybe harder.
And that got me questioning why I wasn’t feeling worse about this. I was shocked, for sure. The circumstances of Dad’s death
had left me numb, confused, searching for answers, but his passing had yet to hit me on an emotional level.
There were times when I’d thought Gage’s relationship with Dad was closer than mine. Maybe closer is the wrong word. It was
different. The dynamic between a man and his grandson is not the same as between a man and his son. When I was a boy, my father
was consumed with making a living. The pressures on him were different than they were in his retirement. He had more time
for Gage than he had for me. And Gage wasn’t expected to live up to my father’s expectations, which I was sure I had not met.
And grandfathers didn’t have the same responsibility for guiding or disciplining a young man. That was a father’s job.
Of course, Dad wasn’t so thrilled about the circumstances of Gage’s birth. I got Diana pregnant before we were out of college.
That really made my father’s day. (My mom’s too.) Any hopes he’d had that I might pursue future degrees, in commerce or business
if he’d had his way, were dashed. The truth was, Diana’s pregnancy was something of a blessing, and not just because Gage
was the result. The worlds of sales and business didn’t interest me, and while I did give real estate a shot at one point,
I wasn’t sorry it hadn’t become my career. I liked to write and found an outlet for that talent in the news business, first
in radio and newspapers, and then in TV news. It was a satisfying, if not hugely lucrative, career, right up until the time
I got downsized. I was never a Wiffel-Smith salesperson of the year like my father, and I was fine with that.
Diana and Gage and I had what I thought was a good, if unremarkable, life.
Diana’s red-light ticketing job wasn’t her life’s dream, but it was a paycheck.
She’d once had ambitions of becoming an artist, and her Georgian Bay landscapes reminded me of works by Canada’s famous Group of Seven.
But that may have led some galleries to judge them as derivative, unoriginal, and few had any interest in featuring her work.
If Gage hadn’t come along, she might have developed that talent, taken it in a different direction by attending a prestigious
Toronto university that focused exclusively on art. But it wasn’t to be. Reality had a way, sometimes, of crushing ambition.
She still got out her easel and brushes occasionally, setting up in a corner of the kitchen where the light was good, but
I couldn’t actually remember the last time she’d done it.
I guess what I’m saying here is, we just went along, day to day, like most people do, living our lives. And then out of the
blue, you hit one of those proverbial bumps in the road that feels more like driving off a cliff.
And what of the Kennards? How was the family of Leah Kennard coping with all this? My thoughts hadn’t turned to them without
prodding.
It was Diana who asked, “This woman that your father . . . What do we know about her? Was she married? Did she have children?
Has her family been notified? Are they local?”
I felt a sharp pang of guilt that I’d given so little consideration to the others struck by this tragedy.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I . . . the detective didn’t have much information about her, or if she did, didn’t share it with
me.”
“Did your mother know her?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Don’t you think you should know more about all this?” Diana asked.
“Last night I got the impression you thought I was letting myself get sucked in. Now you want me to stick my nose into it?”
Diana put down her coffee and leaned in over the table. “Reece,” she said, using my actual name, a sign she had something
serious to say, “your father killed a woman. It’s not our fault it happened, but it doesn’t mean there might not be some blowback.
Like, I don’t know, maybe her family launches a lawsuit. Or the negative publicity from this affects my work, your chances
at finding a new job. What if Leah Kennard had relatives who go to Gage’s school?”
“None of those things are going to happen.”
She nodded. “I hope you’re right. All I’m saying is, your mother can be wrapped up tight. You need to pry as much information
out of her as you can.”
Diana sat back, ran her finger across the screen of her iPad, and said, “I rest my case.”
“What?”
“It’s out there.”
One of the Toronto papers had a story. A short piece, quoting police about being called to a home where two people were found
fatally shot. There were names, ages, a line that police did not believe there was any further threat to the neighborhood,
code for a domestic.
Diana did more searching and found a one-minute news clip on CP24. I’d seen their van at the scene. And something on WorldWide’s
website, again not surprising, since their team had been there too. Their item had something a little extra. The reporter
said the male deceased was the father of a former WorldWide news writer, although I was not named.
“Jesus,” I said. “What does that have to do with anything?”
Diana said nothing. She didn’t have to.
It was time to go see my mother.
I headed over to the Marriott in the BMW. I considered calling first but figured Mom would tell me not to bother, and I didn’t
want to have that argument. Better to show up. And if she wasn’t there, I’d see if she’d gone back to the house.
The Marriott lot wasn’t even half full. I found a parking spot not far from the main entrance and headed inside. Once I was
in the lobby, and had checked the dining room to see whether she was there, I called her.
She picked up on the third ring.
“Yes?”
It was just one word, but she sounded rattled.
“I’m at the hotel,” I said. “You here?”
“Um, yes,” she said.
“I’m in the lobby. Gonna get a coffee in the dining room if you’d like to join me.”
“Why are you here?”
“Gee, I don’t know. Because I’m your son? And I want to help?”
I could hear background noise, which at first I thought must be a TV, but it sounded more like traffic. The distant rumble
of a truck.
“I’ll be there in a minute,” she said.
On my way into the dining room, I happened to glance out the lobby windows to the parking lot and learned why I’d heard traffic
on her end.
She was standing at the back end of a black Mercedes, talking to someone I did not recognize. A man, maybe an inch or two
taller than Mom, dark suit and tie, thick-rimmed glasses, thinning hair. Early sixties, I was betting. A lawyer, maybe?
Even a mundane death presented numerous legal challenges. A will to probate, and estate to be distributed. But as Diana had
pointed out, a complicated case like this? Legal headaches could abound.
Either way, why was this meeting in a parking lot? Why had she let me believe she was still in her room?
I watched for a moment. Mom was gesticulating, as if trying to make a point more emphatically, the man shaking his head. Even
from my vantage point, he did not look happy to be having this conversation.
I went into the dining room, declined the waitress’s offer to check out the buffet or pick something off the menu, and just
asked for coffee.
Five minutes later, Mom entered the room. I pushed back my chair, got to my feet, and put my arms around her when she reached
the table. She returned the hug.
I said, “You’re shaking.”
“I’m okay,” she said, but I could see that she wasn’t. “Have you ordered?”
“Coffee. Have you had breakfast?”
“I’m not hungry.”
The waitress returned with my coffee and Mom ordered a tea.
I got right to it. “Who was that guy you were talking to?”
Her eyes widened. “What guy?”
“In the parking lot.”
“You’re spying on me now?”
“I didn’t need binoculars. You were right out there in the open.”
“Your father was running around on me behind my back and now you’ve got me under surveillance. What I do and who I see is
none of your business.” She looked around the room, hoping to spot the waitress. “I need a muffin.”
I raised my hand, caught a waiter’s attention. He hustled over. “My mother would like a muffin.”
He flashed her a smile and listed their muffin offerings.
“Surprise me,” she said. “Just not bran.”
And off he went.
I said, as gently as I could, “Mom, I get that what’s happened is still sinking in, that it doesn’t seem real, but there are
things we need to get into the open. If there’s things going on I don’t know about, this would be a good time to tell me.
You could start by telling me who that man was, what you were talking about. It looked serious.”
She slowly turned her head to face me and said, “An old friend.”
“An old friend,” I repeated. “He have a name?”
Her face suddenly lit up in alarm, and I braced myself to hear whatever it was she clearly didn’t want to tell me. “Did he
say carrot? I don’t want a carrot muffin. He better not bring me one of those.”