Twenty-Two
Reece
Once Mom got over being pissed with me for asking who the man she’d been talking to in the parking lot was, she agreed to
let me help her with something.
She’d heard from Detective McCabe that the autopsy on Dad had been completed, and his remains picked up by Heffernan & Sons
Funeral Home. I’d called them on Mom’s behalf, and they invited us to come over within the hour.
Heffernan’s was Yorkton Hill’s oldest funeral home, coming up on its hundredth anniversary. A family business, it had started
out as Heffernan’s Undertakers, and as the years went on, Undertakers was replaced with Funeral Home and the Sons were added.
I wondered what it was like to be in that family, to feel that weight of expectation on you, to know that every day you would
be dealing with grieving families and dead bodies and embalming fluid. But hey, as Daffy Duck used to say, It’s a living.
Grant Heffernan, slim, good-looking, early thirties, in a black suit, white shirt, and, jarringly, a fuchsia tie, met us at the door.
He led us to a small conference room with a long wooden table and heavy chairs with burgundy cushions.
Mom was suitably somber through the paperwork, filling out various forms, signing her name where Grant indicated.
He would have known the details of my father’s death, and while discreet enough not to mention them, there was the issue of a closed casket.
Despite their reputation for making their subjects presentable, even Heffernan’s might struggle with my father.
Mom opted for no casket. Cremation.
“And I don’t want a big service,” Mom said. “Immediate family only . . . if they choose to come.”
Making me wonder whether Mom was considering her own attendance.
Grant asked if we wanted to bring in some clothes for the deceased.
“Uh,” I said delicately, “if there’s no open casket, and my father is cremated, what is the point of . . .”
“I understand. Your father could be in simple robe or nothing at—”
“He’ll wear a suit,” Mom said. “Anything less is undignified.”
“Of course,” Grant said.
“The thing is,” I said, “the suit would be in the closet of the room where—”
“After we’re done here,” Mom said, “we’ll go to the house and get the clothes.”
If that wasn’t enough of a surprise, she added, “I want to see him.”
Gently, Grant said, “Totally within your rights, Mrs. Chartwell. But I would caution you that—”
Her jaw was firmly set. “You are correct, it is my right, and I choose to exercise it.”
Grant nodded. “Give me a few minutes.”
He was back in fifteen and led us one floor down to a small, carpeted, and darkly wallpapered room. A body lay on a table
before us, covered in a dark sheet from head to toe.
“Keep in mind that we have only just received the remains,” he said, standing by the head, his fingers on the corner of the
sheet. Mom’s nod of understanding was also an instruction to proceed.
I didn’t want to look. I would not have asked to come down here. But I felt that if Mom was going to do it, I had to as well.
Grant drew back the sheet, exposing my father down to his shoulders. I heard a sharp intake of breath from Mom. I could only look for a second. The room started to spin. Mom lasted four seconds longer than I did, then turned away. Grant dropped the sheet back into place.
“Thank you,” Mom said.
I slipped an arm around her, felt her trembling, and led her out of the room into a hallway. Grant invited us to rejoin him
upstairs when we were ready.
My stoic, resilient, rebuffer of condolences mother buried her face in my chest and began to sob.
“Oh god,” she muttered into me. “Oh god oh god.”
I wrapped my arms around her, not knowing what to say. I didn’t think there was anything I could say.
Her lips pressed to my sport jacket, she said four garbled words that, as best as I could tell, were, “What have I done?”
Considering what had happened at the house only a day earlier, it felt stunningly ordinary. No police cars, no yellow tape
around the property’s perimeter. We parked in the driveway and got out. I had my own key out before Mom had hers, so I opened
the front door. I thought it best if I went in first, in case there was some surprise awaiting us. I couldn’t imagine what
it would be—more bodies?—but everything looked normal.
She followed me inside and went straight to the kitchen.
“Look at this mess,” she said.
Nothing had been cleaned up in here since the morning before. There were a couple of cups, some cutlery and a dish in one
of the double sinks, coffee still in the pot, a small container of cream on the counter.
Mom picked up that last item, gave it a sniff, then poured its cottage-cheese-like contents into the sink and ran a tap to
wash it down the drain. She opened the dishwasher and put in the cups and cutlery, then tore a paper towel off the roller
to wipe down the counter.
I wondered how much of the house she would tidy before we went upstairs.
“Mom,” I said, working up to something I’d been wanting to ask since the viewing at the funeral home, “what did you mean when you asked yourself what’ve you done?”
“I never said that,” she said, getting a spray bottle of granite cleaner out from under the sink and spritzing the counter.
“Yes, you did.”
Mom grabbed some paper towels and wiped the counter vigorously.
“Who was Leah Kennard?” I asked.
“I have no idea,” she said, her back to me.
“I don’t believe you.”
She froze.
I said, “The thing is, Mom, everything’s going to come out, sooner or later. Even if what happened looks cut-and-dried, that
detective seems pretty determined to get to the truth.”
“She was probably some fling your father had,” Mom said, still not looking at me. “You come to accept certain things in a
marriage.”
“Where would he have met her?”
“Lately? I don’t really know.”
“What do you mean, lately? Did Dad know her from a long time ago?”
The question hung in the air for several seconds. Finally, Mom turned around, using the counter to support herself.
“Your father and I hadn’t planned to have you and your brother so close together.”
Holden and I were a year apart, but it wasn’t something I’d ever given much thought to. And if there was anyone who knew about
having a kid you hadn’t planned on, it was Diana and me.
“If I’d ever really considered it, I’d have guessed you wanted two kids and wanted to get it done.”
“I don’t want Holden to know what I’m about to tell you. You have to promise me.”
“Without knowing what you’re going to say, I don’t know whether I can do that.”
“He’s already on the edge.”
“He’s always on the edge,” I reminded her.
“Your father and I tried for a long time to get pregnant. When things weren’t working out, we went to a fertility clinic, but we didn’t have any success there either.”
“Jesus,” I said. “Wait. Holden’s adopted? I mean, come on, we look alike.”
“No, he’s not adopted,” she said quickly. “But Leah Kennard was his mother.”
I let the words sink in. “So Dad . . . this wasn’t the first time he’d had a relationship with her.”
Mom face flushed with anger. “No! Stop getting ahead and let me tell you.”
I raised my palms in surrender and nodded for her to continue.
“We’d reached the conclusion I simply couldn’t have children. So we explored other options, and one of them was surrogacy.
That’s what Leah Kennard was. She was our surrogate.”
“But . . . Leah wouldn’t really be his mother, right? I mean, don’t they take, like, an egg from you and mix it with Dad’s,
you know, stuff, and then they just implant it and it grows in the other woman’s womb?”
Mom looked at me like I had the intelligence of a toddler. “Thank Christ you didn’t decide to become a doctor.”
“So just tell me then.”
“What you’re talking about, in your incredibly uninformed way, is gestational surrogacy. We couldn’t go that route. We were
left with artificial insemination. Your father was the donor. There was a procedure. There was no . . . relationship.”
“Not then.”
“Not then. Of course, we did meet with her, to assess whether we thought she was the right one. Someone who, at least in some
ways, looked like me, you know? Turns out it wasn’t her that needed to win us over.
We had to win her over. She had to like us too.
You don’t agree to carry a child for people, and after all that, agree to give it up, if you don’t like them.
Of course, the money certainly helped. Leah’s family was not in a position to help her financially, she was trying to pay off school bills, and the twenty thousand we paid her probably made a huge difference in her life, at least for a time. ”
“But what about records? When Holden went for a passport, he would have had to get a copy of his birth certificate and—”
Mom raised hand. “There’s a lot of paperwork, legal steps, prebirth agreements. The certificate with Leah’s name on it is
sealed, but the one Holden was able to obtain is still legitimate.” She paused, then asserted, “I am his mother.” The way
she said it, I wasn’t sure whether she was trying to persuade me or convince herself.
I said, “So the procedure with Leah worked, and nine or ten months later, Holden arrived and . . .”
“And not long after that, I found out I was pregnant,” Mom said. “Your father and I weren’t as careful because I didn’t believe
I could have a child. The doctors couldn’t explain it. They called it a miracle. You were a miracle.”
Her eyes went to the ceiling and she slowly shook her head. Finally, she fixed her gaze on me and said, “Your timing’s never
been that great.”