once-white sink mottled with stains. “I’m sorry about Lucas, Marilyn,” he ventured. “Are the kids home?”
Her lips tightened. “They’re coming. That’s why we’re holding off on the memorial service until next month. So Gordon can arrange to get here from France, and Julia …”
Her hesitation matched his own. “How is Julia?”
Marilyn busied herself spooning loose tea into a cracked china teapot covered in roses. “She has a new job in Costa Rica now. She’s not one to stay in touch, you know, but I think she’s finally doing okay.”
“Will she come home too?”
“I don’t know. It was harder on her, you know, losing her younger sister, and she never really — well, she wasn’t that fond of Luke, to be honest.”
Green refrained from comment. “Not fond” was a massive understatement. Julia had been moody and changeable when her sister died, and although she accused everyone close to her of failing Jackie in some way, she was especially hard on Lucas. Before Jackie’s body was found, Julia had been convinced she’d run away to escape Luke and his drinking, and thus put herself in harm’s way. She had barely spoken to him for over a year, and had moved out to sleep on a friend’s basement couch throughout the trial. Marilyn had always made excuses for her, but Green had wanted to strangle the girl, for it was as if Marilyn had lost two daughters at once. Now, once again, as a woman in her forties, the daughter was putting her own needs first.
Marilyn handed him a plate of shortbread. Her eyes locked his in a silent warning: Don’t say a word.
He didn’t. She smiled. “You haven’t changed a bit. You still don’t look a day over thirty.”
When Green was a rookie officer, he had regarded his freckles, sandy hair, and slight build as a hindrance, but over the years he’d learned to appreciate the value of being nondescript. And underestimated. Even now, only a few wisps of silver at his temples hinted at his age. “Work’s given me a few grey hairs.”
“So you’re an inspector now. La-dee-dah.”
He laughed. “All I had to do was live long enough.”
“Oh, I doubt that. Rosten may have been your start, but you’ve done well for yourself since. Do you still enjoy it?”
“Not the paperwork or the office politics, but …” He searched for words to describe what he enjoyed about his job and was surprised when none came to mind. He remembered himself as Marilyn had known him; not as a senior mandarin, drawing up budgets and shuffling personnel around, but down in the muck of the streets, railing simultaneously against injustice and villainy and against the strictures and bureaucracy of his job.
“But you like being the boss?” she asked, with a knowing twinkle in her eye.
He grinned. “It comes in handy. But I miss the real policing.”
The kettle whistled. As she poured water into the teapot, she nodded to his left hand. “You’ve a new woman in your life, I see.”
“I do. And two more children, plus a dog. You wouldn’t recognize me.”
She laughed, but her joy was fleeting. The remark had reminded them both of her own loss. She handed him his tea and led the way to the living room.
“In a way, I suppose he’s at peace now,” she said, choosing a hard-backed chair facing the window. “He never was during his life. Not for the past twenty years.”
As he searched in vain for a worthy platitude, she peered at him through the gloom. After a pause, she rose to draw the drapes back a few inches, allowing bleached winter sun to leak into the room. She stood squinting out at the snow, her face hidden.
“We tried to move on, you know. I was never a quitter and I know Jackie would not have wanted that. Of course, at first there was all that horrid suspicion, but even after Rosten’s conviction, there were those who still thought … Luke never really escaped the cloud, did he? And that dreadful man himself, throwing up every roadblock, every argument. Even warning me to keep a watch out for Julia with Luke.” She broke off. Took a deep breath. Shook her head sharply and turned back to him.
“I’m sorry, Mike. It’s been difficult watching Luke fade away over all these years. At first he tried to keep working at the shop, but once they started cutting back his hours … the shop was all he had to hold on to, really. Jacqueline had been his favourite. Well, she would be, wouldn’t she? She was a sunny girl, never difficult like Julia. Never gave us a moment’s worry. But it’s no use dwelling on that. It was nice of you to drop by, Mike. Not too many people have. I guess they find it awkward, and to be honest, we’ve kept to ourselves. Easier that way. Normal chit-chat is such a struggle.”
She returned to her chair and picked up her cup. “Will you be coming to the memorial?”
He hadn’t intended to. He hadn’t meant to re-enter this family’s life after all these years. But he found himself nodding.
Chapter Two
Green had hoped to be inconspicuous when he slipped into the cramped interior of the church and perched on an unforgiving wooden pew at the back. Outside, the tiny church had a quaint neo-Gothic charm, with a classic Ottawa Valley limestone façade and an elaborate bell tower that soared into the pallid sky. Inside, he felt trapped between stained-glass portraits of Mary at the rear and Jesus’s Last Supper directly ahead. He could almost feel their steely stares.
He felt like an imposter. Up at the front, a handful of mourners were scattered across the pews, heads bent together in whispers. Green couldn’t put names to most of them but assumed they were friends and neighbours, for he recalled that Lucas had no family and Marilyn had none on this side of the ocean. The pulpit was as yet unoccupied, but an organist sat at the side playing doleful hymns.
Green recognized Marilyn’s bowed white head in the front pew. She was deep in whispered conversation with a thin man wearing a fedora and long purple scarf. Green has last seen Gordon Carmichael as a pudgy, downy-cheeked student, heading off to Paris ostensibly to study music, but really to put as many miles as possible between himself and the pain at home. Paris had clearly left its bohemian mark. In profile he resembled a large lizard, with bulbous eyes and a chin that disappeared behind the folds of the scarf. Deep in conversation, neither he nor his mother noticed Green’s arrival.
The same could not be said for the woman on the other side of Marilyn. She was lounging in the pew, her gaze taking in the room. When it fell on Green, her face brightened. She reached his side in half a dozen stiletto strides.
“I was wondering if you’d come.”
The years had taken away the lush schoolgirl curves, but Julia Carmichael was still an attractive woman — platinum blonde now with sparkling blue eyes and a deep golden tan. Her smile was teasing, but he was relieved to note it no longer stirred him.
“Hello, Julia. I’m sorry for your loss.”
Her smiled faded and she grimaced. “I’m not.”
“I suppose not. It’s been a long time since you saw him.”
“Twenty years.” She sat down beside him and ran a finger over the polished wood. “Life’s treated you well. New wife, I hear. Congratulations.”
