you to be perfect, because otherwise you feel you can’t love them.”
With a chill, Dan remembered his son’s words in the park: I’m just afraid that one day I’ll piss you off and you’ll stop loving me, too.
Martin looked pleased, as though he’d just inserted the last tile in a ten-thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle, completing the image of a damaged man unable to express love. Dan wouldn’t give him that satisfaction.
“Is that what you think, Martin?”
Martin’s eye blinked, a lizard sunning itself on a rock. “I’m asking you.”
Dan swallowed. “I don’t have an opinion,” he lied.
He wanted to say, Don’t think you know me, to this grotesque impersonation of a man bent over his notepad beneath his Mondrian reproduction. Wasn’t it Mondrian who despised nature? Hated trees?
Dan wondered about the others who sat in this chair revealing or hiding themselves from this man and his bloodless, probing intellect — a collection of damaged beings going through the motions of expressing their desires and fears, before letting themselves out the big doors to stand deflated in the hallway beside the elevator that never came. Before returning to the other world — the real world — where theories did nothing to piece together the shattered bits of themselves. The depressed, the despairing, and the broken: women whose spouses beat them, adult children of alcoholics who went through life feeling unworthy and unloved, the emotionally distraught. How did sitting here for this hour do anything to help? When they left, their time up, did they leave a residue of pain and disappointment, an invisible trail leading all the way from this chair down the hall? Did any of them think it a virtue to sit and suffer over all this? Perhaps Martin gave out badges after it was all over, and they’d divulged all there was to divulge. A little something to say, “I suffered.” Maybe, Dan thought, he could ask for a bumper sticker instead. What would Martin scribble in his little binder if he said that?
In the daytime, Bill had begun to revert to a bad memory, a sour taste on the tongue. Yet each morning on awakening, Dan’s first thoughts were of loss. He found it difficult to drag himself out of bed and suspected he was fighting a lingering depression over the split. He knew nothing would help get him through it but time — preferably time spent alone.
Ked was long past needing Dan’s help to get ready for school. Dan found the signs of his son’s passing each morning: the dog leash hung over the banister, a cereal bowl and spoon washed and left in the dish rack, the newspaper dropped on the side table in the hall. These were Ked’s morning footprints. For such a big kid, he took up relatively little space.
The days went by in a whirl of strategy meetings and negotiations with despairing or difficult clients. Dan hadn’t expected to hear from either Bill or Thom, so he was surprised to find on his desk an application bearing the name Killingworth. Not Lucille, Thom, or Ted, but Craig. Someone wanted him to make an inquiry into the disappearance of Lucille Killingworth’s missing husband.
The name of a solicitor was prominent, but there was no client named, nothing to say who’d requested the search. Dan flipped through the file. Was this Lucille Killingworth’s way of getting the better of him, by hiring him publicly after he’d turned her down privately? Could she be that stubborn or foolish to think he could be bought? If so, he was happy to show her otherwise.
He read over the letter — not yellow parchment this time — and pressed the intercom. His boss came on the line. Ed Burch was a straight-talking, no-nonsense retired cop who never took no for an answer. “What are the chances?” That’s all Ed ever asked. And then you were off on your own. He’d been the first to congratulate Dan for becoming a single gay dad. To Ed, the word “limitation” didn’t exist.
“It came through a solicitor,” was Ed’s reply. “That’s all I can tell you. Why?”
“I know these people,” Dan said. “I don’t like them. I don’t want to take this one on.”
“It has your name on it, Danny. The client specifically asked for you.”
“Well, tell them I’m not avail —”
His boss cut him off. “I can’t do that. You start things in motion and I’ll look into it once you’ve got it going. If I can, I’ll put someone else on it then.”
“And if not?”
“If not, we’ll see.”
Dan knew his options were limited. He was still doing penance for denting the filing cabinet. He felt like a schoolboy who’d been caught writing naughty words on the blackboard. He’d have to keep his fingers clean until someone else did something worse and his little indiscretion faded from memory.
He buzzed Sally, who came in wearing a sky blue sundress, orange loafers, and a violet kerchief. Not colourless. She stood waiting for orders. Dan wasn’t sure where to start. Most of his cases involved searches for people who’d disappeared within recent memory. Cases where he could start by asking the client about the last time they’d seen the misper. What did anyone expect him to find after more than twenty years?
“Check with the Picton OPP. They should still have the original files. You can tell Detective Constable Peter Saylor I requested this.”
Sally was scribbling on her pad.
“Also check with Toronto police. Tell them I want to look at their John Doe files from the time. Canada-wide. Especially anything that’s not online. You can give them the specs, but tell them not to narrow things down too far. They can leave that to me. I’m sure the report must have been filed in both places, even if he disappeared in Prince Edward County.”
Sally went off, pen in hand, a rainbow in motion, leaving his door open.
Two days later he had Saylor’s transcript of the original missing persons report on Craig Killingworth on his desk. The photograph showed an attractive man in his late thirties or early forties: curly brown hair, a strong jaw, and intelligent eyes with a serious set. The kind of man you wouldn’t hesitate to ask directions of or maybe even buy a used car from, if the price was right. A charmer. Thom had obviously inherited his good looks from both sides of the family.
Some of the facts about the case seemed unremarkable; others merited a second look. Dan was intrigued to learn that at the time of his disappearance Lucille Killingworth had had a restraining order imposed against her husband for assault and uttering a death threat. On her testimony, Killingworth had been suspended from his job as principal of a local high school after spending a night in jail. He’d also been ordered not to make contact with his sons on the grounds that he posed a potential threat to his boys. He’d disappeared before the case made it to court.
It was a heady read. The file gave an address in nearby Bloomfield, ten minutes out of Picton, as Craig Killingworth’s last known residence. He’d lived there for two months estranged from his family until his disappearance, the exact day of which was unclear. It had eventually been narrowed down to the weekend of November 1–2, right after his appearance on the Friday at the Picton Courthouse when a date had been set for his trial. At that hearing, Killingworth tried unsuccessfully to have visiting rights to his sons reinstated. On his wife’s testimony, the court upheld the original order.
The report compiled by Picton OPP in the weeks following his disappearance created a portrait of a methodical man. All his bills had been paid, including his rent in advance, for the next two months. His pre-furnished residence had been orderly and recently cleaned. The bed was made,
