The Nesting Dolls

by Gail Bowen

  I sat down on the edge of the bathtub. “Need anything?” I asked.

  “Just someone to talk to,” he said. “What are you up to today?”

  “I thought since Kym and the Wainbergs are going to be here for a couple of hours, I’d get all my errands out of the way. We’re supposed to get more snow this afternoon, so I thought you and I could crawl into bed and watch Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas.”

  Zack rinsed the soap off his razor. “I thought we were living The Nightmare Before Christmas.”

  “This version has songs,” I said. “And it’s funny.”

  “Bring it on,” Zack said. He placed his razor back in its case, and turned his chair towards the door.

  “After you’re settled, I’m going to pick up groceries,” I said. “Anything strike your fancy?

  “Do we have any more of that chicken soup?”

  “No, but I can make some. No problem at all. And I have to hit the mall – briefly. Mieka called, and the Core Rec Centre has seven boys between ages of fourteen and seventeen on their list and not a single present for that age group. I thought I’d get some Sports Mart gift certificates.”

  “Wise choice. Sports Mart has neat stuff. Jo, I’d like to make a donation too. Falconer Shreve’s had a good year, and when I was a kid, I spent a lot of hours in places like the Core Rec Centre. The Christmas party was always a big deal. Give me a minute to find my chequebook.”

  When the Wainbergs arrived, I told Isobel that Taylor was in her studio and that Pablo Neruda’s Odes to Common Things was somewhere on her desk. Isobel’s face lit up. “I love Neruda,” she said before dashing off to get the book.

  Noah’s complexion was usually ruddy with health, but that morning, he was grey and careworn. After Isobel wandered down the hall to Taylor’s bedroom, I poured him a cup of coffee. “Are you okay?” I said.

  “I’m fine. I guess none of us is getting any younger. How’s the man in your life?”

  “His nurse, Kym, whom I am delighted to discover is a strapping young man, is here to keep track of him and decide when he’s ready to confront the world again.”

  Noah added cream and sugar to his coffee. “Delia will be relieved to know that Zack’s being well taken care of.”

  “How about you?” I said.

  “I have broad shoulders, and we seem to be moving in the right direction. Did Zack tell you that Nadine Perrault and I agreed to call off the private investigators?”

  “He did, and it’s good news. As the needlepoint pillow my grandmother gave me says, ‘Least said, soonest mended.’ I keep the pillow in my office at the university. It’s been very helpful over the years.”

  Noah gave me a sidelong glance. “If they handed that pillow out to new lawyers, the litigation rate in this country would drop by 90 per cent.”

  “Would that be a bad thing?”

  He smiled. “I don’t get a vote. A lawyer who doesn’t practise is a eunuch.”

  I sat down opposite him. “Well, I’m not a lawyer, and I think that as a husband and father you’re handling this very well. One way or another, you and Delia are going to have a permanent relationship with Nadine. You don’t want to start out under a cloud of accusations and counter-accusations.”

  “Agreed. There’s been enough ugliness. It’s time to turn the page. Nadine and I discussed something along the lines of an open adoption.”

  “But Jacob would live with you and Delia.”

  Noah’s blue eyes flashed. “Absolutely. That issue was never on the table. Nadine’s a realist. She knows that if this case came to court, she’d lose.” The tension left his face. “The point is that there isn’t going to be a court case. Nadine was remarkably open about her mental state. Mourning Abby is taking a heavy toll. Nadine says she’s exhausted and is having difficulty concentrating. We agreed that Jacob deserves better.”

  “He does,” I said, “and so does Nadine. Finding out the hard way that she isn’t capable of giving Jacob what he needs would only be another blow for her. My children weren’t as young as Jacob when their father died, but I still cringe when I remember how badly I failed them during those first months. It was all I could do to get out of bed in the morning.”

  Noah looked at me hard. “That doesn’t sound like you.”

  “I wasn’t like me,’ I said. “I know what Nadine’s going through because I’ve been through it. And it’s more than just the loss of a partner you love, it’s believing that the death was absolutely arbitrary – a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “I don’t think I ever heard how your husband died.”

  “The newspapers called it ‘The Good Samaritan Murder.’ Ian was coming back to Regina from a funeral in Swift Current. There was a blizzard. The driver of a stranded car flagged him down and when Ian got out to help, the driver and her boyfriend beat him to death with a tire iron.”

  Noah stared at his coffee cup. “I’m sorry, Jo. I didn’t know.”

  “For months, the authorities treated Ian’s murder as a chance occurrence – a case of someone being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “Like Abby.”

  “Exactly,” I said. “And, Noah, you have no idea how terrible it was. I’d been so certain that I could build a cocoon around our family by cooking balanced meals, observing the speed limit, and making regular appointments for us all to get our medical and dental check-ups. Losing Ian to what seemed like an existential blowout made me question the underpinnings of my life.”

  “And you think that’s what Nadine’s going through?”

  “I do. Abby was a woman who left nothing to chance; yet she was raped and murdered by a stranger in a strange city. When something like that happens, the old safe world disappears, and there’s nothing to hold onto – at least that’s the way it was for me.”

  “Nadine says she’s dreading going back to the house she and Abby shared. I suggested she stay in Regina for a while. She could spend time with Jacob and get to know us a little better.”

  “How does Delia feel about that?”

  “I haven’t asked her,” Noah said. “I’m hoping to enlist Zack’s support.”

  As if on cue, Zack wheeled into the room, Pantera at his side.

  “Enlist my support in what?” he asked.

  “Noah thinks it’s time to be conciliatory towards Nadine,” I said. “I agree. A little kindness at this point will ease tensions, and we could all use that.” I kissed his forehead. “I’d better get moving. The sooner I leave, the sooner I can come home.”

  “I’m for that,” Zack said. “Hey, you forgot the cheque.”

  He handed me the envelope and I dropped it in my bag. Pantera looked anxious. I patted his head. “Take care of Zack,” I said. “If anybody suspicious shows up, remember your command and push.”

  Since the evening of the Luther concert, our holidays had been short on comfort and joy, but the sheltered world of UpSlideDown offered both in abundance. Mieka and the girls had decorated the tree with children’s mittens, scarves, and toques – all donated, all destined for good homes. The air smelled of brewing coffee and fresh baking; in the background, very softly, a CD of children’s songs was playing one of my favourites, the lullaby from Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel. No child was crying. No child was screaming. No child was having a tantrum. It was a fragile peace, but it was good enough for me.

  Mieka was standing at the entrance to the kitchen talking to a young woman wearing a Saskatchewan Roughriders ski jacket and toque. When my daughter spotted me, she motioned me over.

  “Mum, this is Lisa Wallace from the Core Rec Centre,” she said. “Lisa, this is my mum, Joanne Shreve.”

  I reached into my bag. “Perfect timing,” I said, handing her the gift certificates. “I was just dropping these off for the teenaged boys on your list.”

  “Thanks,” Lisa said. “Adolescent boys like to swagger, but they’re still just kids, and they look forward to the Core Rec party.”


  “And I have a cheque from my husband.” I held it out to Lisa.

  “This is a godsend,” she said. “With the recession we’ve had a lot of corporate donors pull out.”

  “Zack’s a trial lawyer,” I said. “I think every year is a good year for them.”

  Lisa eyed the envelope. “Would it be rude if I peeked to see how good?”

  “Be my guest,” I said.

  She ripped open the envelope and glanced at the cheque. “Wow,” she said. “That’s more than generous, Joanne. We’ll send your husband a tax receipt, of course, but until I get it in the mail, please tell him we’re very grateful.”

  “When Zack was growing up, he spent a lot of time in places like Core Rec. I guess it all comes around.”

  Lisa looked thoughtful. “It’s surprising how often it does,” she said. She zipped her jacket. “I’ll see you at the party, Mieka. Nice meeting you, Joanne, and thanks again.”

  “My pleasure.”

  “Lisa has a tough job,” I said.

  “She does,” Mieka said, “and she gets paid zip, but she believes in what she does. I believe in what she does, too. She and I have talked about opening an UpSlideDown in the Core. Minimal charge, but mums and dads would have to stay in the playroom with their kids, the way parents do here.” Mieka took my arm. Her eyes shone, and her tone was fervent. “The idea is first for the kids to have fun and second for parents, who are often very young, to learn parenting skills. Nothing heavy-handed – just learning by observing and doing. The mums and dads who come to UpSlideDown are always telling me how watching other families helps them figure out how to handle problems or to realize that a behaviour that was worrying them is perfectly normal.”

  Mieka’s excitement about the project was infectious. “So is this an idea you and Lisa are just kicking around or has it gone further?”

  “We’ve drafted a business plan, and we’ve found the property we want. Remember that old school-supply shop on 4th Avenue?”

  “Markesteyn’s?”

  “That’s the one. It has a big warehouse area in the back, so it would be perfect for us. And Lisa’s brother’s an engineer. He’s checked out the building. He says it’s solid.”

  “Good buildings don’t come cheap.”

  “We’re working on that.”

  “Zack knows people with deep pockets. Maybe you should talk to him.”

  “He’s been pretty sick. I don’t want to rush him.”

  “Neither do I, but this is exactly the kind of project he’d enjoy. Just wait a couple of days till he’s back to normal. Actually, it might be something he and I could work on together.”

  Mieka rubbed her hands together gleefully. “Let’s talk about it. As you probably noticed, I’m pretty stoked about this.”

  “I noticed,” I said. “And it makes me very happy. Now, why don’t you buy a potential investor a cup of coffee?”

  “My pleasure,” Mieka said. “By the way, you just missed Nadine.”

  “She was here?” I said.

  Mieka nodded. “She wasn’t here long.”

  “How did she seem? Noah was at the house when I left. He was concerned about her state of mind.”

  The timer on the oven clock began to buzz. “The muffins are ready,” Mieka said. “Give me three minutes to get them out on the counter, then we can really talk.”

  I poured myself a mug of coffee, stood by the counter and looked around the room. The demographic of UpSlideDown intrigued me. A disproportionate number of the women were pregnant; most appeared affluent, and all were young. The men wore jeans, carried computer notebooks, and, without exception, were writing novels or screenplays.

  It wasn’t long before Mieka rejoined me. “To answer your question,” she said, “Nadine seemed sad, but calm. When she came in, she did what Abby always did: ordered a latte, sat where Abby always sat, and nibbled at a piece of pastry and watched the kids playing. When I asked if I could join her, she seemed happy to have company.”

  “I imagine she wanted to talk about Abby.”

  “She did,” Mieka said. “And there wasn’t much I could tell her. The only real conversational possibility I ever had with Abby was when she asked me how I could reconcile faith in God with the cruelties of the world. I blew it, and the next night she was dead.”

  “Did you tell Nadine about Abby’s question?”

  “No. Once in a while, I actually exercise good judgment. You told me that Nadine was finding comfort in her faith, so I thought it would be kinder not to tell her that the woman she loved had stopped believing.” Mieka picked up a paper napkin and dabbed absently at a small spill on the counter. “The only safe topic I could think of was child development. Nadine was fascinated by how much Jacob has learned since she last saw him, so she asked about what babies his age can normally do. Of course, that’s the one subject upon which I’m an expert.”

  “That’s not true,” I said. “You’re one of the smartest women I know.”

  “When I’m in my own small garden,” Mieka said sardonically. “Anyway, I was babbling about the varying rates at which children develop skills, when Lisa came in. At first everything was fine. I introduced Lisa and Nadine. Lisa, who knew nothing about Nadine’s circumstances, started asking the usual questions we ask people on their first visit to Regina in winter.

  “Nadine was cordial, but they didn’t talk long. Lisa had errands to do, so she told Nadine she hoped she’d enjoy her time here, then gave me the package she’d dropped by to return. You’ll be interested in this, Mum. People who brought gifts here for Core Rec were supposed to pencil in the age and gender of the child for whom the gift was intended. But one of the gifts had a tag with Delia Wainberg’s name on it.”

  “I’m assuming it was from Abby.”

  “Yes,” Mieka said. “After Lisa told us about the tag, Nadine asked if she could look at the gift. She recognized Abby’s handwriting and said she’d like to be alone for a while. Lisa and I took off, and that’s when you came in. When Lisa left, I looked over to see how Nadine was doing, but she was gone.” Mieka pointed to the table. “The gift is still there.”

  We went over to the table where Nadine had been sitting. Nadine’s latte was still half-full and the gift, a book in which a parent records the highlights of a baby’s first year, lay beside it.

  I picked up the baby book. Bound in navy leather, its design was clean and handsome. Except for Jacob’s full name and his date of birth hand-lettered in copperplate, the cover was unadorned. The heavy vellum pages inside were equally chaste. The first page, in the same copperplate hand, recorded Jacob’s time and date of birth, his birth weight and length, and the fact that he had been born at home, in the cabin that Abby shared with Nadine. I remembered the warmth of its living room, the quilts on the walls, the sound of the river flowing past. It would have been a gentle place for a child to enter the world.

  I turned to the second page and felt a fist in my stomach. The name of the mother, Abby Margaret Michaels, had been written in the same careful calligraphy, but the name of the father had been entered in an angry scrawl of black ink that had torn the paper.

  The name was Theodore Lazar Brokaw.

  I gasped. My first thought was that in her agony at discovering she’d lost the parents she’d believed were her birth parents, Abby had transposed facts. I turned the page. More furious scrawls of black ink. These scrawls all but obliterated the lettering that identified Jacob’s maternal grandparents as Hugh and Margaret Michaels. The new names angrily entered were Delia Margolis Wainberg and Theodore Lazar Brokaw.

  Mieka had been looking over my shoulder. “My God. How could that happen?” she breathed.

  Fragments of conversations floated to the surface of my consciousness. Myra’s chilling observation. “He always went for the same type: clever, pale, Semitic.” Nadine’s whispered hypothesis when Mieka asked if she knew who fathered Abby’s baby: “I always thought it was someone who had already proven himself in the world.” Theo’s confu
sion the night of the Wainbergs’ party when he saw Delia: “You’ve gotten old.” The way he’d buried his face in her neck, and his relief when he smelled her Chanel No. 5, the same perfume Abby wore. The photograph I’d shown him, where he had identified Abby not as his daughter but as “my girl, my clever girl.” His sense that Jacob was somehow connected with him. The world had become a confusing place for Theo Brokaw, but his damaged brain had stubbornly held on to certain facts. He knew that it was the second-smallest of the nesting dolls that was the carrier of the secret. He knew that Abby Michaels was the mother of his baby.

  CHAPTER 14

  Mieka touched the mutilated name of Abby’s father and lover with her forefinger, and then closed the baby book. “What are we going to do with this, Mum?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Abby wanted Delia to know the truth about Theo Brokaw’s relationship to Jacob, but telling Delia isn’t going to change anything. It’s just going to cause more grief.” I picked up the book. “Do you have a shredder?”

  Mieka shook her head. “No, but I have a match.”

  “This book is evidence in a murder case.”

  “That doesn’t mean it won’t burn,” Mieka said.

  “We’re not the only ones who saw it,” I said. “Nadine Perrault knows the truth.”

  “She must be feeling as sick as we are,” Mieka said.

  “Yes, but I’m sure she’s also relieved. The book is proof that Nadine wasn’t responsible for Abby’s despair in the last weeks of her life.”

  “Do you think Nadine will use this to get custody of Jacob?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. I picked up the book and dropped it back in the gift bag. “But now that you’ve raised that possibility, I know that we can’t destroy this. Nadine has a right to use it.”

  “It’s a powerful weapon,” Mieka said.

  “It is,” I agreed. “And if Nadine uses it, there will be collateral damage. She might get custody of Jacob, but he’ll have to live with some very painful knowledge. So will the Wainbergs.”