eyebrows drew together now, like a teacher who’d heard that line before. “What did you hit?”
“I don’t know. A sled, maybe? Red shovel? Do you live around here? Did anyone find anything like that?” He wasn’t sure why he didn’t tell her the real reason. Maybe just because she looked like she could get him in a whole lot of trouble if he even mentioned he might have hit someone.
She was backing away now, her dog tightly leashed at her side. “I think you’re wasting your time. Wait till the snow melts in the spring.”
He watched her stride off up the street and knew she didn’t believe him for a minute. He took a deep breath. Now what? He hadn’t brought a ski pole, and although he had a shovel in the back on the truck, it was a hell of a big snowbank to be digging up.
Nonetheless he took out his snow shovel and tested the mound of snow left by his plow. It was granular now and hard to penetrate. New snow had been blown on top of it by the homeowners clearing their own driveways. It seemed an impossible task. He needed help, but if the dog lady was any indication, the neighbours on this street wouldn’t lend a hand. On the other hand, it was too early to call the police.
Up ahead the dog was barking again, and when Frankie looked up, he saw the animal circling a pile of snow by a driveway halfway up the block. The dog was pawing excitedly.
Jesus, Frankie thought. Grabbing his shovel, he headed up the block. The woman glanced towards him, her jaw dropping. She yanked at her dog, dragged it away from the snowbank and set off almost at a run.
I bet she calls the police, Frankie thought. Well, at this point, maybe that’s not a bad idea.
* * *
Brandon entered his mother’s home office, which was located on the second storey at the back of the house. Her desk was positioned in the bow window and flooded with sunlight. In the summer, the yard would be a paisley print of perennial beds but a blanket of pristine snow hid them all, and even the snow-laden Colorado blue spruce at the rear of the yard could not improve his mood. The Valium was wearing off, leaving him a brain of cotton wool through which thought moved sluggishly.
He knew his mother would be out most of the day. The Superior Court calendar had been booked months in advance and nothing, not even the disappearance of her future daughter-in-law, would keep her from the arcane motion being heard today. She hadn’t even tried to send her junior. It was as if she knew there was no great crisis and Meredith was off somewhere for her own selfish reasons, as if the police were poking snowbanks in vain and there would be no gruesome discovery to disrupt her in the middle of her argument.
What the hell did she know?
When the desk itself yielded no answers, he spent an hour meticulously going through the papers in her filing cabinet. Like her life, they were carefully compartmentalized. Her university lectures, course notes and student assignments were all in her faculty office, and her case files, court transcripts and legal research were in her law office downtown. Only her personal papers, and perhaps the occasional work in progress, were kept at home, but even so, thirty years of personal papers presented a daunting challenge. Bank and investment statements, household bills and receipts, tax records, minutes of her charitable and committee work. He was astonished to discover an entire file drawer devoted to him. Not just every report card he’d ever received, but every letter he’d sent from camp, every crayoned art offering and handmade Mother’s Day card he’d ever drawn. He knew that as an only child he was important to her, but he’d always thought she had a busy, fulfilling life beyond the home. He remembered her being constantly on the phone, delayed at meetings, and listening with half an ear to his childish chatter while she scanned the latest judge’s decision. He remembered a childhood of cleaning ladies, babysitters and even catered meals when she was in the middle of a case.
She’d always seemed slightly aloof, avoiding the mushy cuddling that Meredith’s family bestowed at the smallest excuse. He couldn’t recall her ever saying “I love you” except in jest, and the unfamiliar words had not come easily to his own lips when Meredith had first demanded them. His reticence had almost cost him the warmest, most exciting woman who had ever come into his life.
He sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the open file cabinet, his child’s drawings crackling with age as they filtered through his hands. She had cherished every single artefact of his past, squirrelled it silently away in her own private drawer, never told him how much she loved them or how proud she was of him. In rare moments, uttered only the words “Your father would be so proud.” He had no memory of his father, who had died when he was two months old, but his mother had painted an idealized image. Even as a child he’d suspected no one could be as loving a husband, as devoted a father, as brilliant a lawyer nor as beloved a professor as the Harvey Kent Longstreet of her descriptions. He’d been her professor, thirteen years her senior and light years ahead of all her other suitors in maturity, wisdom and allure. Brandon had once overheard her saying to a friend that, despite plenty of offers, she’d never remarried because a love like Harvey Longstreet came along only once in a lifetime. At the time, he’d been startled, even discomfited, by the tremor of passion in her impeccably modulated voice.
Now she surprised him again with the strength of her devotion to him. He remembered the urgency in that fragment he’d overheard that morning. “He mustn’t know!” took on a less sinister, more protective meaning. Was she just trying to shield him from something? What? The answer was not on her desk, which was filled with mundane household matters, nor among the drawings and letters of his childhood. He shut the file cabinet and pulled open another one, chock full of carefully labelled file folders. Taxes, telephone, travel, wedding, will... Neither the wedding folder nor the will held anything unusual.
On a whim, he pulled open an upper drawer for the H’s. Nothing under husband, but thumbing through files in search of Harvey, he came across a file labelled “Hatfield”. Not recognizing the name, he almost skipped by, but its thick, unruly contents gave him pause. He pulled it out, and a jumble of yellowed newspaper clippings from the Montreal Star fell out. He caught the reporter’s name—Cam Hatfield—and a couple of headlines. Tributes pour in for dead professor. The private anguish of a public man. A new brand of teacher.
His scalp prickled. He picked up one article, unfolded it along its brittle seam, and began to read:
Confusion continues to surround the death of one of McGill’s most popular professors, who was found dead in his McTavish Street apartment on Monday morning. Harvey Longstreet was a member of the prominent Montreal family that founded the Anglo- Canadian Transportation Company, now known as CanTransco, in 1855. The professor’s young widow and two-month old son are in seclusion at his uncle’s Westmount home and the family is requesting privacy to deal with the tragedy. Colleagues willing to speak to the newspaper expressed shock and disbelief, stating that Longstreet had shown no signs of depression or stress—
The doorbell rang distantly. Brandon looked up, confusion giving way to fear. Meredith! Quickly he stuffed the articles back into the filing cabinet and kicked the drawer shut as he headed out the door.
A young woman stood on the doorstep, bundled against the cold in a blue parka, a red tuque with a red and white pompom and matching mittens. Was there a hint of excitement in those blue eyes, he wondered? His hopes stirred.
Then she held up her badge. “Detective Peters, Ottawa Police,” she said, enunciating carefully as if the label were unfamiliar to her. “Are you Brandon Longstreet?”
He nodded. “Any news?”
“We
