by Anne Jolin
“Hey, you.” I smiled through the quiet tears warming my cheeks. “I stole these for you.”
Mom’s controlled sobs hit the wind, swirling around the three of us as I laid the flowers in the grass.
Leaning forward, I rested my head against the cool bark.
“I miss you, Henry,” I whispered to the tree.
I miss you too, Charlie bear.
My composure came crashing down around me like the breaking of waves on the rocks. I cried so hard my body convulsed violently until I felt mom’s arms wrap around my shoulders.
Her tears became mine, and mine became hers, and we shared in our sorrow together.
Dad had a harder time visiting Henry than we did, so mom and I often went alone. He didn’t talk about it, but I think somehow he blamed himself for never being able to save Henry. That he believed if he’d only done more, Henry would still be here.
I prayed a thousand prayers that Dad would free himself from those shackles, but he never did. He wore the scars of a man who buried his son, while bearing grief and guilt on his shoulders.
It’s not pretty. It’s ugly.
It’s not nice. It’s ruthless.
It’s not fair. It’s cruel…
When someone you loved could no longer love you back.
It left a void in you that no matter how loved you are, nothing will fill. Over time, you’d learn to live with that emptiness, and build memories around it like a bridge to serenity.
Mom had found a way to do that, but Dad and I were still drowning in that void.
That’s the risk you run when you love others though. That somehow you’ll reach and they won’t, you’ll bleed and they won’t, you’ll live and they won’t.
The death of a loved one was crippling.
Some time later, long enough for the clouds to have taken over the sky, I pressed my lips to the brass plate and whispered, “I love you,” to my big brother.
Mom said her goodbyes and that she’d see him next Sunday, before we walked with arms around each other back down the beach.
“There are my girls.” Dads voice moved across the porch as we came up the steps.
“Hey, Daddy.” I smiled, but he saw my puffy eyes and took it like a hit to the gut. Like he did every time I cried.
Mom wrapped herself around his middle and he pulled her closer with one arm, extending the other to me. “Come here, Charlie. Give your old man a hug.”
I folded easily into his side and inhaled deeply. Dad smelt like cedar and the Brute cologne he’d worn my entire life; he too smelled like home.
Dad was approaching the end of his sixties and he wore it well. The hair he had left was almost entirely grey now, and like my mom, he was healthy. Fit from afternoons spent playing pickle ball at the club and weekends losing to my mom at golf.
“Let’s get you girls inside.” He rubbed our shoulders and made the burr sound.
“I’ll make some lunch and you can tell us both about the gala now that your father is home,” Mom agreed.
Following them inside, I collapsed into an armchair, while Dad proceeded to build a fire.
I told them about Kevin and his boring date, and Leighton and her new one, while mom made soup for lunch. I told them of Beau Callaway and his donation, but not that he’d asked me out. And I brought them a copy of my speech as I did each year, knowing they’d read it when I’d gone home.
Lastly, I showed them a few of the pictures I’d taken on my phone of the event set-up, one of me and the team, but also a few Emma had taken of me at the podium at the beginning of my speech.
Mom said I looked beautiful, but I thought I looked sad.
“Henry would be proud of you, Charlie.” Dad kissed the top of my head, taking my soup bowl to the sink.
I felt guilty.
This was what was left of my family, just the three of us, and the tragedy that had brought us closer. I hadn’t been visiting as often as I used to; once a week had turned into once every two weeks, and now, once a month.
“I’m sorry I haven’t been out as often.” My eyes fell to the surface of their kitchen table.
Mom put her hand over mine and tapped it lightly. “Life gets busy, sweetheart.”
“Now, which one of you girls wants to lose a game of three-handed whist?” Dad clapped his hands together and rubbed them eagerly.
I laughed, and Mom did too.
Dad, as well as fishing, was also terrible at cards, unless it was crib. It drove him crazy the way Mom could tell how he sorted the cards in his hand from across the table.
Their marriage had been through hell and back again, but they were still in love and were still a team, even if mom did beat him most of the time.
And she did beat him at almost everything.
“Bye, sweetheart.” Mom waved from under the porch light, tucked against my dad’s side. “Drive safely.”
“I will!” I hollered through the open window and over the sound of my engine.
Dad waved too. “Call us when you get home.”
My parents were the kind of people that cared if you got home safe, and those were the best kind of people.
“I will!” I shouted again, before pulling out of their driveway.
The clock on my microwave told me it was a little after eight in the evening when I got home. I was quick about going through my evening routine. I showered and slathered myself in lotion before collapsing in a heap on the sofa with my laptop in hand.
Powering it on, I noticed an email from Kevin’s work account with two attachments.
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: Photos
Event photographer forwarded some of the promotional images from the gala. I put these in your personal folder.
xx
I clicked on the first attachment and a landscape photo opened onto the screen. It was of Beau and me at the end of the night. The photographer had zoomed in. Beau was bent at the waist, his lips on the top of my hand, and I was smiling.
It looked like a movie still.
Dragging it to the left, I saved the image to my desktop.
I closed down the photo and clicked on the second attachment. This picture was portrait and looked like it had been taken from the stage looking over the dance floor. The couple in the center eclipsed the shot. It was intimate in a way that made you unable to look away. The woman’s head was tucked into the man’s neck, the angle covering most of his face, and his hands splayed across the open back of her dress. That’s when I realized the woman was me. I was dancing in the arms of the masked man.
My mouse hovered over the delete key as I stared at it.
Then I dragged the image to the left and saved it to my desktop.
I shut the laptop, pushing it down the couch, and pulled a blanket from the floor.
Spending time with my parents was always a highlight for me. Except on this day, with visiting Henry and the gala the night prior, I was feeling more emotions than I could manage, which meant there was only one emotion that would require the surrender of others.
Fear.
It took a minute to find the remote, and when I did, it took another five to scroll through the horror selection on Netflix until I settled on an old favourite, Scream.
The year that movie was released, I spent a month sleeping with a knife beside my bed and, of course, that Halloween, Henry went as the Scream killer.
Gore was my failsafe.
When I felt scared, I didn’t have to feel anything else. Fear was an all-consuming emotion.
“What’s your favourite scary movie?”
I pulled the quilt up to my chin and let fear devour me whole.
A Few Weeks Later…
“I’m thinking Grecian with new age flare,” Emma announced, her short black hair falling into her face as she dropped concept boards onto my desk.
Tina was right behind her. “We would do all white flower arrangements with spray-painted gold roses as the po
p.”
My desk was now joined by a small arrangement that showcased her point.
The gold did pop.
Tina’s arrangements always required the pop.
“White lights in every tree.” Kevin made twinkly motions with his hands as he leaned a graceful hip against my desk.
Tom hovered in the doorway liked they’d no doubt dragged him there, but he offered his two cents anyway. “We’d do a floating stage just inside the lake with land access and spotlight it from all sides. I could rig the speakers in a semi-circle arrangement, which would allow the sound to carry throughout the garden.”
To say the team was enthusiastic about our venue for the 2017 Halo Foundation Gala would have been putting it mildly. With a last minute cancellation at the VanDusen Botanical Gardens, it would be the first ever year the event would be held in the full swing of summer, on August fourth of next year.
“And these…” Emma tapped one of the concept boards demandingly despite her tiny frame. I followed her eyesight and raised my eyebrows.
“Chinese lanterns for a Grecian theme?” I looked at my team, unsure.
Emma shook her head wildly. “No, no.”
“Picture this,” Kevin chimed in. “You give your speech, and as you finish, every guest in attendance releases one of the white lanterns.”
“The sky would be dazzling.” Emma sighed, her eyes dreamy.
Looking over their heads, I eyed Tom. “Is that safe? Are we going to have a problem with a fire hazard?”
He shook his head. “Shouldn’t be a problem. I can run specs with the city inspector when I see him next week regarding the Rickshaw wedding.”
I nodded.
The sponsorship from the campaign of mayoral candidate Beau Callaway had included a contract to sponsor the 2017 Gala, and a subsequent follow up donation of an impressive sum was made.
Needless to say, my team was eagerly willing to put that money to good use.
“Have we done anything on the Weizmann fundraiser today?” I asked, and immediately their eyes moved to anywhere but mine. “The Weizmann fundraiser is in four weeks!”
“But—” Tina pouted.
“No buts.” I shook my head and laughed. “Leave this all with me. Kevin and I will run costing and see what we come up with, but I’m serious. Get to work on the Weizmann contract.”
There was a collective growl of frustration before they filed out one after another, a few curse words in slew.
Obsessively passionate, each and every one of them, it’s why I hired them.
Picking up my cellphone from my desk, I pulled open the text messages thread and typed an iMessage out to Beau.
Me: You have made my team a bunch of botanical event hungry monsters.
Delivered.
I moved the concept boards and flower arrangement until I was once again able to see the surface of my desk, just as my office phone rang twice, signaling an interoffice call.
Hitting the button to answer, I leaned back in my chair as Kevin’s voice came through the speaker. “There’s a Dave Johnston on line three for you.”
“Thank you.”
I closed the line and picked up three. “Hi, Dave.”
The elderly voice of my apartment building manager came through the receiver. “Hi, Charleston. Sorry to bother you at work.”
Dave was a nice man, and his wife Susan baked the tenants, including myself, cookies during the holidays every year I’d lived there. They were good people.
“It’s no problem at all, Dave. What can I do for you?”
“Well”—he hesitated and my stomach dropped—“one of the owners on four had a pipe burst. We had the water pressure turned off, but with everyone being at work and all on a Tuesday, it took awhile for someone to find it. We don’t know how many units were effected, but the water damage on four is bad.”
Shit.
“Okay.” I waited for him to continue.
“We need to get into all units on the third floor, so workers can assess the damage. The crew onsite seems to think some of the water has leaked into the units on your floor, as well as possibly even the second.”
“Am I the unit directly under the burst pipe?” I asked, just as Kevin appeared in my doorway.
He mouthed, “Your 11:00 is here,” and I held up a finger, indicating I needed a minute.
I waited until I made sure he nodded before listening again.
“No,” Dave said. “You’re the unit directly across, but with the configuration of the old structure, they think the water has carried. I need your permission to enter your unit, so the workers can assess the damage.”
This was definitely not something I planned on dealing with today.
“Listen, I’m swamped here. Do you need me to be there while you assess?”
“I can let the workers in with the master key, but the foreman onsite will likely need to speak with you at some point today so they can show you what they’ve found.” Dave was sympathetic. He knew I worked late most days.
Looking at the open calendar on my desktop, I scanned through the day’s appointments, mentally doing an inventory of what could be cancelled or moved to tomorrow. “I’m swamped, but I can be out of here by four. Will that work?”
“I’ll let him know. I’m real sorry about this, Charleston,” Dave apologized.
Scribbling a note down on a sticky, I positioned it at the edge of my screen.
LEAVE BY FOUR.
“Things happen, Dave.” And they did. It wasn’t his fault the building was old. “Thank you for letting them in, and give my love to Susan.”
“Will do,” he said before hanging up.
Sighing, I leaned back in my chair and pinched the bridge of my nose. I prayed my unit hadn’t been damaged that much.
My cellphone buzzed on the desk and I got the pick-me-up I needed.
Beau: I’m choosing to take that as a compliment. Looking forward to seeing you next week. Campaign food sucks.
“Everything good?” Kevin asked, resting a hip against my doorjamb.
I looked back down at the text message from Beau, still engaged in the mini high.
“Pipe burst in my building.”
He whistled low. “Yikes.”
The screen on my phone went black. “Can you reschedule my afternoon appointments to make sure I’m out of here by four?”
“Sure thing, boss. Want me to bring her back?”
“Please.”
Kevin left and returned a minute later with Caroline Clarke, the newest Housewife of Vancouver, and also my eleven o’clock.
I was early.
Somehow the heavens had aligned and I was climbing the stairwell of my apartment building at three fifteen in the afternoon on a weekday.
This was almost as much of an accomplishment as the contract I’d just signed to host Caroline Clarke’s private party for the viewing of her first episode on The Real Housewives of Vancouver. Truthfully, I’d never seen the show, nor did I care to, but I did care that her budget was big and she was giving Smith & Co Productions carte blanche over the entire event.
Lifting my purse higher on my shoulder, I ascended quickly due to the fact that I was, once again, barefoot and carrying my heels.
The street outside the building had been completely overran with construction vehicles, and thus I’d inevitably been forced to park underground. That being said, it was a good excuse to take the stairs, which included an extra flight, seeing as I hadn’t joined Leighton at the gym…well, ever.
Opening the door marked 3rd Floor, I balked at the sight of the hallway.
It was a disaster.
Tarps were strewn every which way, and there was a massive hole in the ceiling, which had been blocked off by warning tape. It was horrible.
My perfect, pretty building looked like Jason Bourne had used up the entire arsenal of the Vancouver Police Department destroying it to protect his identity.
“Ma’am, you might want to put some shoes on.” A younger man in
a reflective vest and hardhat stepped out of my neighbour’s unit. Which, from what I could tell, was completely destroyed.
He gestured to my ensemble and smirked.
“Oh.” I looked down. “Right.”
Leaning against the wall, I hopped awkwardly on one foot and then the other, while I slid back into my pastel pumps. Not that I really thought they were going to protect me should the floor give way, but hey, why not see what happens?
I gawked at the damage and sidestepped the debris as I fumbled awkwardly to the end of the hall.
The door to my apartment was ajar, and I bumped it closed with my hip after I entered.
“Hello?” I called out, dumping my keys on the entry table.
No answer.
As I walked, I looked everywhere for any signs of disaster, the walls, the ceiling, the floors, but nothing seemed disturbed in the entryway, as far as my eyes could see anyway. I could only pray the rest of my apartment looked equally as untouched.
My heels clicked along the hardwood and stopped at the mouth of the living area.
There was a man standing with his back to me, and he was writing on a clipboard whilst looking up at my ceiling. I followed his line of vision, but couldn’t see what it was he seemed to be inspecting so closely. He was wearing a worn out plaid shirt with the cuffs rolled up his forearms and faded blue jeans tucked into steel-toe boots. Tucked under his arm was a black hardhat.
He also had an ass I knew at least one man on this planet would appreciate, namely Kevin.
He also hadn’t noticed me.
“Um. Hello?” I fidgeted awkwardly.
The man still didn’t turn around, and it was only then I realized he was wearing earplugs.
Taking a step forward, I yelled louder, “Hello!”
Still nothing.
“Okay,” I huffed, and took another step into the room. “Hello!” I shouted.
He turned in what seemed like slow motion.
No.
His face came into view.
No.
It couldn’t be.
No.
My heart arrested in my chest and my body started to shake uncontrollably.
Hope’s ugly sister Fate was a cruel bitch.
