said it was one thing to change just for the sake of change, but another thing altogether to forget that time moves forward. She said one look at his collection of blazers and ties was evidence enough that McKelvey did not buy into the myth of first appearances.
He put his coat on its hook and stepped lightly down the hall to find her seated at the kitchen table. He watched her there for a moment, unnoticed, a voyeur. She was an attractive woman, plain and confident in her beauty, at ease in sloppy clothes, old fraying pyjamas. She was writing in her “healing journal”, a cup of herbal tea at hand. He longed for her patience, for her ability to pause and sit like this, to be quiet and still, to listen to the beat of her own heart against the din of the city. It was half past nine in the evening. The room smelled of toast made some hours earlier, the lingering scent of burned bread. She looked up. Their eyes locked, and for the first time in a long time, they were in the same room together at the same time.
“Home,” he said.
She glanced at the clock. The Tuesday night meetings ended at eight. He caught her eye and followed her gaze to the timepiece on the wall. He blinked. Like a kid caught, getting ready to explain.
“I went for a drive after the meeting,” he said with a shrug. And he was chewing gum, which confirmed everything. He coughed, too, and cleared his throat on cue.
“You need to quit, Charlie,” she said. But there was an indifference to it. Or perhaps it was simply exasperation. A lifetime with McKelvey and his bad habits, broken promises.
“I’m working on it,” he said. “Christ.”
She tilted her head a little but didn’t say anything.
“Listen, I was going to tell you after I got the confirmation,” he said, “but I have a meeting with Aoki tomorrow morning. To find out what the Crown plans to do with...you know, with all the information I’ve been putting together.”
She stopped and looked at him, this strange expression on her face; it was a look he had not seen in a long time. A place where hope meets possibility.
“They’re going to make an arrest? In Gavin’s murder?” she said.
“I don’t know. I mean, I don’t see how they can’t.” His thumb went to his mouth, and he chewed it for a second, a nibble between the canines. “Or at least it opens them up to spending some goddamned man hours on this thing. I swear, Balani’s done almost no work on this in the past six months. Let it go cold.”
She looked at him. “If it was this man you say—”
“Duguay,” he said. “Pierre Duguay.”
“If it is this man, this Duguay, what will happen to him?”
McKelvey said, “Face trial, likely for second degree murder. If convicted, he’d get life. Maximum twenty-five, minimum ten. In reality, he’d probably serve eight to ten years behind bars, the last two in a halfway house or a minimum security health club.”
“So he could be free in as little as ten years.”
“It’s the system,” he said, as though it explained everything. “We’ve got a system run by liberal judges. You know all this, Caroline. The frustration we face every goddamned day on the job. Make an arrest and see it chucked out the window because you said something that hurt the perp’s feelings.”
“That’s not enough time,” she said. “Not for my boy’s life.”
“Listen,” he said, “it’s too early to be talking about specifics here. Let me get through this meeting with the Crown and see where we’re headed. Okay?”
“It’s funny, isn’t it?”
“What’s that,” he said.
“How at first it’s all you think about. Punishment and prison. Even the death penalty. And then after a while it’s gone, it just doesn’t matter any more. You come to the point where you lose your mind or you learn how to get past it. I stopped thinking about an arrest a while ago. It won’t bring Gavin back. It won’t change anything. It’s a cliché I heard from some of the other survivors, but I didn’t realize it was true until just now. I didn’t realize that I would feel this way. Unchanged.”
Survivors. He hated it when she used that word to describe their predicament. There were all sorts of words the counsellors were fond of tossing out as though it would win them points in a game of Psycho Scrabble. McKelvey cleared his throat again and said, “There will be justice; I promise you that.”
“You don’t know that,” she said. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”
“I already said it. So there.”
She looked at him like a sister to a brother, a friend to a friend. She knew him. She knew Charlie McKelvey better than anyone else. Knew the weight behind those words he had spoken, knew there wasn’t a day that went by that he didn’t envision revenge. For things were black and white for Charlie. She looked at him, and he saw in her eyes how the past couple of years had changed her. They had both changed. McKelvey knew he had gained weight, all of his shirts stretched and his sports coats too tight, and his face looked heavy and tired, and what little empathy or humour he had left after almost thirty years on the job was long gone. With Caroline the change was inner, as though through the darkest days of the struggle she had discovered within herself a new reservoir of strength and hope. And peace. He understood in that moment that they were standing on opposite sides of a river, the water was rising, and it was getting harder to decipher the other shoreline.
McKelvey wanted to change the subject, in fact wished he hadn’t brought it up at all. He said, as he moved to the cupboard and pulled down a mug, “I spoke with Paul after the meeting. I guess he wants me to help this kid out a little, talk to him. Guy lost his wife after two years of marriage.”
“Are you going to do it?” she said.
“I don’t know what I’d say that would change anything.”
He went and took the pot from the stove and poured some tea into his cup. He held the pot for a moment, recalling the day Caroline had brought it home from a pottery night class at the high school. It was hand-painted, and the colours ran, and when glanced at quickly, it appeared to be the handiwork of a kindergarten student. It was during remembered moments such as these that McKelvey found enough feeling for his wife, enough shared days, to see him through.
“It’s healthy,” she said. “That’s what people do when they’re hurting, they come together, they share. People have been doing it since forever. Sitting in caves talking about their—oh my god, their feelings...”
He replaced the pot on its pad on the counter. “Listen.” He stopped for a moment, looking for words. “Paul seems to think everyone has the ability or the desire to sit down and discuss this kind of stuff with complete strangers. What the fuck am I going to say to this kid?”
She looked at him, and he felt smaller. But it was the truth.
“God almighty, I’ve delivered that kind of news in person enough times, Caroline. You know what I’m saying? Standing on someone’s front step at midnight, hat in hand. I don’t need to come home and do it in my spare time, thank you very much.”
Caroline went to speak
