by Ron Chudley
Well, that was one problem solved. Obviously, the document had been purposely placed for easy discovery. Unexpected, however, were the words handwritten below the title:
Greg and Jill—I don’t have one—but everything you need is in here—so you can share what is left. I love you, Mum.
And underneath, an almost savage scrawl:
DARLINGS—PLEASE FORGIVE ME—I’M SO SORRY FOR
BEING SO STUPID.
As motionless as the cold house, Greg gazed at the will. Presently, with surprise, he realized that some of the handwritten part had become blurred. There was wetness on the paper—dripping from himself. It took the sudden and violent heaving of his shoulders to alert him to what was happening.
• • •
A while later, he came out of what felt like a trance to find himself at the kitchen table. A glass and a bottle of whisky were in front of him; his father’s will was also there. He took another sip of the drink he’d poured. Now more familiar with the relief it provided, he realized with surprise that Glenfiddich might have been the one thing that kept his querulous parent sane. Then he untied the ribbon on the will and unfolded it.
A quick glance with his practised eye revealed it to be a very standard document, an anticlimax after the emotions its discovery had evoked. Following the usual statements, stipulations and disclaimers, it went on to leave everything to Walter’s wife, and then, should she predecease him, equally to his children. Greg was named as executor, which he remembered long ago agreeing to do. That was it. If anything was noteworthy, it was how clear-cut and simple it was, and how fair. Knowing his old man, Greg wouldn’t have been surprised to find himself disinherited, or the whole kit and caboodle willed to the Sierra Club.
Which made what had been scrawled on the outside of the will even stranger. Forgive me. Why? So sorry for being so stupid. About what, for God’s sake?
Greg pushed aside the will and stood up from the table. Feeling woozy, he realized that he hadn’t eaten since breakfast, a situation not helped by his unaccustomed indulgence in his father’s tipple. The well-stocked kitchen had plenty of ingredients for a quickly thrown-together supper. He made a sandwich and heated a can of soup, which he consumed with some freshly brewed coffee. When he’d finished, he felt better, but the restored strength only added intensity to the renewed turmoil in his head.
Whatever his mother had done—that deed darkly hinted at even before his father’s death, which had found its final expression in the cryptic scribblings on the will—it could be ignored no longer. Before he could think straight, he simply had to find out what had happened.
Fortunately, there was one place where he might be able to do that. Clearing the dishes and washing up gave him time to figure out a plan of action. Courage to go about it was provided by another shot of the old man’s Scotch.
Ready at last, he went to the back door, where outdoor garments were traditionally hung. With reluctance, he selected an ancient leather jacket that had belonged to his father. It was stiff with age, and it reeked. He put it on anyway, finding it surprisingly comfortable. If you could see me now, he thought, trying without success to picture his father’s expression.
He went out the door, around the studio and down toward the river. Giving a wide berth to the spot where he’d found the clothing, he moved downstream, coming at last to the path that led through the woods to the property next door: the home of Lucy Lynley.
SEVEN
The Lynley house was the polar opposite of the Lothian sprawl, a neat, improbably suburban bungalow, tucked snugly into a clearing. Here, the river took a turn to the south, so although the property had frontage on the water, the dwelling itself was some distance away. At this point in the river, the current was swift—a fact not lost on Greg, who still found it difficult not to picture what it had so recently borne away—and on the far side, the land rose rapidly, blocking what was left of the sun.
Lucy’s father, Marv, Greg recalled, had worked in some capacity for the regional district. A small, wiry fellow who’d always seemed to be grinning, he was the first adult male who had not made Greg nervous. With a parent like that, it was not hard to see where Lucy had got her confidence. Now he too was dead, apparently. Like her daughter, Shirl Lynley had been forthright and pleasant, but Greg couldn’t remember much else about her.
There were lights on in the house. As he approached, a motion-sensor lamp came on at the front. His shoes scrunched on gravel, eliciting a commotion of barking. A moment later a black shape hurtled into view from the rear of the house. Greg stepped hurriedly onto the porch, back turned to the door, but the dog was a young Lab intent only on licking him to death. While fending off the canine enthusiast, Greg heard the door open behind him.
“Oh, my God!” a voice cried.
Greg straightened and turned, to find Lucy staring at him in shock, which was replaced immediately by a surprised laugh. “Oh, it’s you!” she said, in bemused tones.
“Who did you think it was?” Greg asked.
Lucy grabbed the still-leaping animal, holding his collar. “This guy’s pretty well trained, really, but with new people he gets so excited he forgets everything he knows. Calm down, Hatch. Sit!” The dog obeyed. “Good boy!” Lucy said and then, to Greg, “Sorry about that.”
“It’s okay. But it seems like I gave you a shock.”
“It’s just that when I opened the door and saw that jacket, for a moment I thought—well, you know—that it was your dad.”
“Oh.” Greg glanced down in distaste. “Yeah, I guess that’d scare anyone.” Then, realizing how callous that sounded under the circumstances, he went on hastily, “I hope I haven’t come at a bad time.”
“No, no.” Lucy held the door for him to enter, keeping the dog out, and shut it firmly. “Greg, I’m so sorry about your mother. It’s terrible. So utterly tragic and sad. I can’t begin to tell you how bad I feel.”
They stood in the hallway, awkward at first, saying the things that needed to be said. Over the last days, Greg had given little thought to Lucy, the revelation of her new relationship to his family having been pushed into the background. Guiltily, he realized that it was only because he wanted something that he’d come here at all. Yet once he started talking, he found that he was glad. As he spoke, not just relating events but also revealing his feelings, largely unacknowledged until now, it was as though his insides began to unwind. When he got to the part about discovering the will, he didn’t even omit the detail of the unexpected tears, nor the solace he had found in his father’s Scotch. He told it all, a lot more than he’d known there was to tell. When he was done, he felt surprisingly relieved.
Only then did he become aware of other sounds in the house: low voices and the canned laughter of a TV audience from somewhere nearby. Seeing him glance in that direction, Lucy said, “Goodness. Mum! Come on. I know she’ll want to see you.”
Greg followed Lucy to a living room at the far end of the hall. Like the house itself, this was quite formal, with plain, well-kept furniture and—Greg couldn’t help noticing—one of his father’s paintings. The fireplace crackled with a cozy blaze, beside which, in a deep recliner, sat Lucy’s mother.
Although Greg recognized Shirl Lynley easily enough, he was astonished at the change in her. She could not, he felt sure, be much older than his mother had been, but she looked more like eighty, her face deeply lined, her hair pure white. However, her eyes were bright and alive, the clear model for her daughter’s, and as Greg and Lucy entered, they lit up, transforming her sombre features.
“Hello, Greg,” Shirl said, turning off the TV. “I’m sorry for your loss. It’s lovely to see you again after so long—I’m just so sad it had to be like this.” Only when she held out her hand did Greg notice the final detail of the scene: placed within easy reach were two stout walking sticks.
Listening to her kindly words, Greg felt grateful and unexpectedly moved. But one thing kept nagging at the back of his mind: the real purpose for his visi
t. As soon as he could, he made his excuses and bade Shirl good night. Lucy caught up with him in the hall. “Do you have to leave so soon?”
“Not really. But the reason I came by is to ask you an awkward question, and I didn’t want to distress your mother. I’m sorry to see her looking so frail, by the way. Is she unwell?”
Lucy nodded sadly. “MS. It developed after my dad died. For a while the progress seemed quite slow, but not anymore. Unfortunately, she’s a diabetic, too. That’s the main reason why I came to live back home.”
“I’m sorry to hear it.”
“Yes, it’s dreadful for her, but we do the best we can.” Lucy led the way into a room at the other end of the house. “Okay, what’s your question?”
The room had a window overlooking the garden. Greg went to it and stared out at a fast-fading sunset. “Lucy, I need to know what it was that my mother told you on that last night. When I arrived, you looked so shocked, and bolted out so abruptly, I knew it had to be something dreadful. And important. But she didn’t tell me. And later—well—she walked into the river. Now I’ve become sort of obsessed about it.”
After a pause, Lucy said, “I guess I’m not surprised.”
“Then please tell me.”
“All right.” She moved in closer. “But first I must ask you one thing. Had your mother told you what was wrong with her?”
Greg frowned. “Wrong? What do you mean?”
“Damn!” Lucy muttered. “I told her she shouldn’t keep it from you and Jill.”
“What, for God’s sake?”
“Greg, your mother had cancer.”
Greg all but gasped. He had no idea what he’d expected, but that certainly wasn’t it. After he’d had time to recover a little, Lucy told him the whole story. Several months earlier, Mary had been diagnosed with a form of leukemia, slow but eventually lethal. Chemotherapy was the accepted treatment, but it was a doubtful remedy, with side-effects arguably worse than the disease. Somehow she’d found out about a clinic in Mexico that offered more benign—and arguably as effective—natural remedies. With her husband’s encouragement, she’d arranged to go there for treatment.
At this point Greg interrupted. “Natural remedies? What are we talking about here?”
“I’m not sure exactly. I remember her mentioning apricot pits, something called Laetrile. She didn’t tell me too much about that part.”
“You say my dad agreed to all this?”
“Evidently.”
“Wow!”
“Why so surprised? You think he didn’t care about your mum?”
“No. I’ve often thought she was the only person in the world he did care about, though that didn’t stop him treating her like a slave. But alternative therapies? Mexico? It doesn’t sound the kind of thing he’d go for.”
Lucy shook her head decidedly. “That just shows how little you knew him. You’re so straight yourself, so . . .”
“Anal?”
“I was going to say conservative. Anyway, the direct opposite of your parents. Being non-conformists—a couple of old hippies, basically—they were just the people to go for unconventional medicine. And although Walter pretended to be an old tyrant, he really was a softie underneath. From the time I was a kid, I knew that. Look at his painting. That should tell you.”
Greg shook his head. “You’re incredible.”
“Why?”
“Either you’re completely nuts or you knew my dad better than anyone.”
Lucy shrugged. “Be that as it may. The point is, he did agree to the Mexico treatment, even though it was going to cost a small fortune. He told Mary to cash in some of the bonds they had to pay for it. They’d booked into the clinic—it’s down in Baja California—and they were going to leave last week. But then . . .”
“My dad broke his hip, so they couldn’t go?”
“Not exactly.”
“What, then?”
“Your dad broke his hip because they couldn’t go.”
Greg felt dizzy. “Now I’m completely confused.”
“I’m not surprised,” Lucy sighed. “It’s complicated—and dreadful—so I’d better start at the beginning. You probably know that Walter never approved of credit, right? Mary did the actual managing, but with him everything had to be either cash or cheque; he was old-fashioned like that. They did have a bank card at the end, but only because it was necessary and free. And that turned out to be their mistake.”
“The bank card?”
“Indirectly. You see, the treatment in Mexico was going to cost twenty thousand dollars, and it had to be paid in advance. That in itself wasn’t a problem. They’d sold their securities, and they had the money. The thing was how to get it to the clinic. Their debit card wouldn’t work from Mexico, and they didn’t want to be carrying all that cash. The solution was a cashier’s cheque, and they had the funds all ready in their account to buy one.”
“What happened?”
“A couple of days before Mary was due to get the cheque, she got a phone call. The caller identified himself as an account inspector.”
Greg frowned. “Account inspector? What kind of nonsense is that?”
“Just that: nonsense. You’re an accountant, so naturally you know that. But your parents had spent their lives avoiding the modern world. When the call came, your dad was working, but your mum was the one who always did the business anyway, so she took it. This ‘inspector’ was a con artist, of course, but very plausible and clever. He told a scary story about the bank’s computer being broken into by hackers, and a whole lot of convincing garbage about needing to freeze accounts in order to stop them being plundered. To do this, he asked for their account numbers, passwords and codes and . . .”
“She gave them to him?”
“Everything!”
“Oh, Christ!”
“Thinking that she’d done the right thing, saving their precious Mexico fund, your mother was very relieved. At the time, she didn’t even tell your dad, figuring he had enough on his mind. But a few days later, when she called at the bank to pick up her precious cashier’s cheque, there was no money. The account had been cleaned out. Of course, your mum was devastated. But somehow she got herself home, and then she had no choice but to tell Walter.”
“I’m amazed she dared.”
“Apparently, she thought the only way was to bite the bullet and get it over with. That was her final mistake. She went out to the studio where he was working and just—told him. Your dad was first shocked, and then furious. He threw down his brush and took a blind run at her. I don’t suppose he even knew what he was going to do. Whatever it was, he never got the chance. He tripped over an easel and fell down hard and . . . well, you know the rest.”
Outside it was now night, the sky as dark as the mood that had descended on the little room. As the full import of what he’d been told filtered, layer by layer, into Greg’s mind, he felt the last residue of the paralysis that had possessed him, ever since he had found his mother’s clothes by the river, finally depart. Replacing it was a still, cold rage, making him feel not just released, but powerful, more strangely alive than he had felt in a long time. Account inspector! he thought savagely. If I could lay my hands on him right now, I’d kill the bastard. But none of this emotion showed on his face.
He said quietly, “I can see why you were so shocked. That story must have been terrible to hear, and even harder to tell. So, for what it’s worth, thank you.”
“I’m just sorry I had to be the messenger. Now that you know, does it help you to understand what happened?”
Greg shrugged. “I guess it has to. One other thing. On the night she died, my mum said something that—I realize now—should have been a clue as to what she intended. She asked if I’d let you keep using Dad’s studio.”
Lucy looked astonished. “Really?”
“At the time I didn’t know what she meant. But now I can answer. My dad was a difficult guy, but it seems in some ways you knew him better—and certai
nly stood up to him more—than any of us. So, as far as I’m concerned, you should feel free to come and go, use the studio, or whatever, all you want.”
“You’re very kind.”
Greg smiled, feeling—considering his still-simmering anger—absurdly gallant. “It’s my pleasure. Now I must be getting along.”
As he turned away, she stopped him with a gentle touch. “Are you going to be all right?”
“I’ve no idea. I’ll know better when I’ve decided what I’m going to do about all this.”
“What can you do?”
Greg shrugged. “Don’t know that either. But you can be very sure—something.”
EIGHT
Cowichan, which in the Coast Salish tongue means “warm land,” is the name borne by a number of geographic features on the south end of Vancouver Island. The Cowichan Valley is a fertile depression bounded in the west by the spine of the island and on the east by the ocean. Cowichan Lake is an extensive body of water sitting at the upper end of the valley. This, in turn, is drained by a river of the same name, which winds eastward for forty kilometres until, after skirting the city of Duncan, it empties into the sea at Cowichan Bay. In winter, this waterway can be a swift torrent, barely tamed by control gates at the lake end, saved from flooding only by the high, wooded banks that confine most of its length. For the rest of year, the flow is more benign—host to fishermen, swimmers and tuberiders galore—but even then, it is never less than lively, demanding care and respect.
Upon rising on the morning after he talked to Lucy, Greg’s first action was to make coffee and walk down to the river. No longer did he try to avoid the place where his mother had launched herself into the hereafter; indeed, he went there purposely. Though his face showed no emotion, his mind hummed with a continuous background harmonic of anger, as strong and as cold as the waters flowing by.
