by Ruth Hay
“Listen! Tonight you are coming home with me. Tomorrow we will go to your house and pack your things. We’ll talk it all out and I promise you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to until the deadline.”
She knew this was a big concession and she had enough sense left to understand Dylan was going beyond his mandate. She looked him in the eyes. He was not a bad guy. His family was nice. He had two kids of his own and a stay-at-home wife to look after them. He was trying to help. It wasn’t his fault she was all alone in the world. She was desperately afraid that the judge would do exactly as he had promised. He had read her mother’s will to her. It was when he came to the part where Mom wrote about her family that she totally lost it. She knew that name. Of course she did. She heard it every time her Mom drank too much or ran out of cash or gave up on her latest boyfriend.
Honor Pace.
It was said with such hatred and malice that Faith’s associations with the name were forever marked.
It was never clear to her how this Honor, (what a ridiculous name for such a dishonourable person!) had come to be the source of all her mother’s personal disasters, but she was, somehow, always to blame. As far as Faith knew, the source had to be way in the past. This Honor person had never appeared during her short lifetime. There were no photos in the little house to give a clue. That was not too strange since there was not much in the way of personal possessions either. Of course, they moved often and their stuff got pared down to survival essentials. Her Mom always thought the next place or the next job or the next man would be different. None of them never worked out.
Faith was used to the constant changes by now. It was her life until the liver cancer took hold and all the moving around stopped.
Her life became school, the hospital and home. She could control all that, as long as no one knew what she was doing. Those nosy nurses at the hospital had turned her in to the authorities. Now Dylan and the judge were in control. They had decided this Honor Pace was to be in charge of her.
Honor Pace?
The woman her mother hated so much was actually her aunt.
A twin sister to her Mom, Felicity? How could this be? How could her mother have a secret twin? Didn’t people say twins were bound together in some mysterious way? What unnameable horrors had this aunt done to cause her mother such hatred of her?
How could her mother dispose of her only daughter in this way, to this person?
Dylan had said there was no other choice. It was the foster system or her aunt in some hick town in another province near Toronto. She had had a sample of the foster home. That was no option. The judge had declared she was to be parceled off to Ontario to live.
As soon as she thought about this fate she wanted to scream out loud. She did scream out loud. Often. But it did no good. She was due to be taken from Nova Scotia to this unknown place where her awful aunt lived and she had no choice. None at all.
Well, we’ll see about that. I, Faith Joan Jeffries am about to make life a living hell for one Honor Pace, aunt or no aunt. It’s all I can do to revenge my dead mother, and I will do it thoroughly. Just you wait and see.
Chapter 10
Mavis had devised a shelter of a kind for the new plants she bought. It was going to take some time to find the right spot in the garden for each one and to plant them properly. They needed protection on the nights when the temperatures still dipped down close to zero degrees. She was not about to risk losing the lovely specimens she had brought home from the country nursery. There were perennial plants among them that were difficult to find in the more commercial places; old-fashioned plants like deep purple aquilegia that often reverted to its original white or pink, for example. Or that lovely rose campion with its brilliant flower on the greyish green stems that was prolific and reliable provided it was kept under control.
She had arranged an old sheet over the bench seat on the edge of the woods and the plants were kept there in boxes or baskets until she had time to plant them out. Of course the old Canadian saying was, ‘Do not plant new until at least the May holiday weekend’, but Mavis had never adhered to that belief. She would have to provide additional protection on cold nights for fragile items and she had collected a number of old dish cloths and towels for that purpose. It would all be worthwhile when her garden had a head’s start on the season. There was nothing quite like the feeling of sitting back and watching garden plans made entirely in your head, come into glorious colour as the summer weeks went on.
This morning she was carefully removing the covers from the new plants and planning to sit down with a cup of coffee to contemplate the best placement of these, when she was interrupted by Honor.
This was unusual. Honor often stayed in her bedroom with the door open and waited until the sun was fully on the garden before getting up to work.
Mavis took off her gardening gloves and cleared a space on the bench. She could tell from Honor’s determined approach along the central path that this, whatever it was, was important.
“Mavis, I don’t know what to do. I must tell someone and I trust you. Something has happened and it has come out of the blue. Here, read this. I can hardly talk about it.”
She handed Mavis an official letter from her trembling hand. Her first instinct was to leave aside the letter and deal with Honor’s obvious distress but when she made to set the letter aside for a moment, Honor groaned aloud and snatched it up again, saying, “Please read it now. I am in agony here. I need your help.”
It was difficult to turn her attention away from a woman in such obvious distress but the contents of the letter soon captured her entire attention. She read through it twice to be sure she had the details. It was not a long letter but it was very clearly official in all respects. Mavis Montgomery had seen many such documents in the course of her career at the London Courthouse and she knew what it meant.
She folded up the letter and handed it back to Honor.
“It seems you are about to receive a visit from your niece, Faith. I see you had this notification some weeks ago and I presume you did nothing to stop her coming.”
“Honestly, Mavis, I did not believe it at first. I know nothing about a niece. I didn’t even know the whereabouts of my sister. She and I stopped communicating years ago. I have no idea how the authorities even found me. This whole thing is a nightmare. What can I do? I am in a very difficult situation here. I don’t want to lose my place at Harmony House but this is an impossibility. I have no idea what to do with a teenager. None at all!”
Mavis’s mind was racing through a dozen scenarios but none offered a reasonable solution. This Faith Joan Jeffries was arriving in three days and there was no time to set in place anything other than emergency plans.
She thought next of Hilary. Hilary was good in emergencies.
“Honor, you need to calm down. You are not alone in this. I can’t promise a long-term fix but we can at least band together to get you through the initial stage of what is a big life change. Go and get dressed and make tea or something. I will find Hilary and we will have a council of war.”
She patted Honor’s shoulder and pushed her gently toward her apartment. All thoughts of a pleasant hour or so planting fled into the ether. She would need to be doing a very different kind of planting and she must be at her most persuasive.
First: tackle Hilary.
* * *
“I beg your pardon? I know it’s still early in the day but my ears must be blocked with sleep. Did you just say, Mavis, that we are about to be invaded by a teenager?”
“I know. I know, Hilary! It’s not in the plan but that seems to be the situation.”
“But? But!”
Words seemed to fail Hilary and that in itself was a very bad sign. Mavis took advantage of her speechless pause.
“I think we need to band together to give some support to Honor. Of course this girl cannot live here for any length of time, but Honor is bereft of ideas. Until she can come to grips with the situation and take char
ge, we should try to put something in place to bridge the gap for her.”
“Did you say three days? She’s arriving in three days? What can we do in that time?”
This sounded a little more positive and Mavis, whose mind had been whirling all the way upstairs to Hilary’s room, had a stopgap plan in mind. She fully expected Hilary to shoot it down but it would be a start.
“Well, we need somewhere for Faith to sleep. Honor’s apartment is not suitable as her room is the smallest here. I would gladly take her for a couple of nights……….”
“That’s ridiculous Mavis, you have only one bed. She can go into the guest suite, I suppose.”
Trust Hilary to come up with a solution. When it came to unpredictable problems she was known for her quick thinking.
“What a good idea, Hilary. Faith would be on the main level with me and I can keep an eye on her.
I will set up the pull-out bed and put out towels in the connecting powder room. Thank goodness we had the shower installed there. She will be independent.”
“Please don’t make her too comfortable, Mavis. She can’t stay here. I don’t know what Honor has in mind for this girl but her arrival puts us in a very difficult position. We may have to rescind Honor’s contract and force her to leave.”
“Oh, Hilary! Nothing that drastic, surely? From the little that Honor could tell me, the girl has had a horrible time. Her mother is dead and there is no father in evidence.”
“It is not our problem, Mavis. Her aunt will have to take charge. None of us signed on for a teenager disrupting our lives. We just cannot consider it.”
Mavis knew her friend was being logical. She also knew Hilary Dempster was a most compassionate person once you got past her prickly exterior coating. She said nothing more, but her heart was full of Honor’s last plea, “There may be a blood tie between us, but this child is a completely unknown quantity to me, as I am to her. Please, Mavis, help us both.”
* * *
Hilary decided to call an emergency meeting. She requested the winter dining room as a location to remove the chance of anyone thinking this was another happy food occasion. Mavis was sworn to secrecy but she did spend several hours with Honor catching up on her predicament. The conversations took place out of doors, far from listening ears, or in Mavis’s room with the doors closed.
Mavis was curious about how this desperate family situation had developed but when Honor confessed it was a long and dark tale, she immediately turned to more urgent matters and diverted Honor to practicalities such as schooling, luggage and whether Honor could afford to set up suitable housing for her niece.
Honor flinched at the word ‘niece’. “I just can’t think of myself as a person with a niece.”
Her complexion, which was pale to begin with, now verged on a greenish tint which was not complementing her vivid red hair colour.
“I wouldn’t know how to live with a young person, particularly one who was raised by my sister. Felicity and I were like chalk and cheese. No one ever took us for twins.
She hated me and no doubt she has transferred that hate to her daughter. How can I decide matters for a child I do not know, and how can she be expected to obey an aunt she has never seen or spoken to? It’s impossible.”
Mavis could not deny these facts but she remained aware of the needs of the abandoned girl. She hoped the other members of Harmony House felt as she did that this child needed support and understanding in equal measure to that needed by her Aunt Honor. She and Hilary had been mothers once. Vilma had helped to raise her stepchildren. Eve and Jannice were childless but, hopefully, five women could contribute to helping Honor and Faith in this initial stage of their new relationship. Turfing them out now to live together as strangers was not likely to be successful.
At least, that was the way Mavis Montgomery saw things. She summoned all her powers of persuasion and prepared to do battle on behalf of a grown young woman she hardly knew, and a very young girl she knew not at all.
* * *
Dear Diary I am scared. I have never been this scared before, not even when I found out my father was never coming back, or when Felicity fell down drunk in the living room and I thought she had died, or when Blackbeard got run over in the street or when we skipped out that night with two cases each and left everything else behind. Well, maybe that last thing was the worst.
Until now!
Dylan will put me on a plane tomorrow morning and I land in Toronto where some unknown guy with a board saying my name will find me (huh?) and take me to this London, Ontario, by bus.
OMG all that is bad enough but then I have to see this Honor Pace.
Definitely the worst thing of all.
Should I spit in her face first off? Oh, wait…how will I know her? I could spit at the wrong person. Dylan said she lives in a big house. I hope she has enough money to send me away somewhere nice where I can live at a school until I am 18 and not have to see her again. Ever.
It’s no damn use. I’m still scared. Dylan’s wife, he calls her Lyn Babe,(cute!) told me to try to make a good impression. She says not to wear too much make-up just at first, and to watch my language . I think it means no swearing.
She said I could send her a text when I get there but not to text her husband .
She thinks he is too sad about me and she wants him to recover.
I will have to think about that bit.
It’s three in the morning now. I’d better try to sleep.
Goodbye Dylan and Lyn Babe.
Goodbye Nova Scotia.
Goodbye Every Single Thing I have known.
Hello Ontario (??????????????????????????)
As Mom used to say when she was desperate………….. God help Me!
Chapter 11
Taking their cue from Hilary, whose tension was palpable, all five co-housing women sat down quickly and quietly around the polished table in the winter dining room. The shock of Hilary’s first announcement about the girl’s arrival had dimmed in the intervening day but there was still a great deal of concern that their placid life was about to be shattered.
Mavis had made it clear the child was likely to be unstable.
“What exactly does ‘unstable’ mean?” asked Vilma.
Mavis had gone through the background information she had garnered from Dylan by using her courthouse contacts. At the end of that story not only Vilma was silenced. There were varying degrees of disbelief on the faces around the table. Now they had to translate that concern into practical approaches to what was likely to be a very challenging situation.
“I can’t say how long this period of adjustment for both Faith and Honor will last. I hope we can all rally round and support both of them until matters become more clear. You already know what arrangements we have made for Faith’s accommodation while she is with us. Mavis has some general comments to make about our behaviour toward her.”
“Yes, thank you Hilary, and thanks to all who have come to me and expressed your worries. It will be best if we leave the girl alone to settle down. We don’t want to overwhelm her with all of us at once. Just go about your usual business and try to be natural if you happen to encounter her in the house.
I will keep an eye on her. We decided it’s best to keep her separated from Honor for now. I will go to the bus terminal tomorrow afternoon and collect her. I will, of course, try to reassure her of our goodwill on the way from town.”
“So you are saying you don’t want a reception committee on the front steps, then?”
This brought a chuckle from everyone.
“Exactly, Jannice! We’ll play it by ear. Let’s make a time to meet in Hilary’s room in three days from now and I will bring you up to date. How does that sound?”
Everyone agreed and the room soon cleared.
Honor was, if anything, even more agitated at the thought of how all of Harmony House was now involved in her family affairs.
Vilma, who had intimate knowledge of how annoying disaffected teens cou
ld be, crossed her fingers for good luck as she passed by Honor.
Jannice was excited at the chance to get to know a young girl who might bring life into their fairly staid adult existence.
Eve had noted the information from Mavis about unstable behaviours and she felt unsettled by this.
She knew what unstable meant. It meant unpredictable things could be said and done at any time and she had had enough of that kind of uncertainty to last a lifetime. She hoped to stay well clear of this Faith female.
Hilary was doing her best to follow Mavis’s lead and be positive but she feared, among other things, possible destruction of the guest room, a midnight escape effort, police being called to the crescent and alarming all the neighbours, or an out and out fight between aunt and niece. She was not looking forward to the imminent arrival of one Faith Joan Jeffries.
Oh God help me! The bus is pulling in to this travel agency place. It looks dead. I am so tired of travel but I am so afraid of getting out of here and meeting this godawful aunt who is going to be in charge of me.
I can’t stand it!
“This is the bus terminus, little lady. It’s time to get out and collect your luggage.”
The escort man, who had been sitting with her all the way from the airport in Toronto, now spoke for the first time. He had been buried in a newspaper during the endless journey and now he was washing his hands of her.
Good riddance to him then!
Faith made her way slowly out of the bus and stood on the sidewalk with a watchful eye for everyone who emerged from the terminus building behind her or from the cars parked nearby. One of them could be the dreaded Honor Pace and she felt completely unready for such an encounter.
It had been such a long and difficult day. She had not expected to feel so upset about saying goodbye to Lyn Babe and then to Dylan. It felt like a band aid being ripped off without warning and she could still feel the raw area on her heart where the temporary fix had been.
