by Fran Kimmel
She waited for the washer to fill, tapping furiously, reciting some nonsense about accepting herself. There was something not right with the water pressure; the hot water trickled into the spinner like the tail end of a pee stream. Eric had taken a look at the pipes, but he’d been interrupted by a call to the plant for an overly heated union meeting and had never gotten back to it. Outside of their walls, Eric loved a good crisis, loved taking charge. He was called away so often these days; Ellie questioned if he was making up calamity just to escape the house.
Ellie heard the dog bark upstairs and tried to ignore it. She told herself that her thoughts stayed hidden from her husband, that none of what went on in her head had leaked into the air between them. But she knew that wasn’t true. Every word she’d said to Eric that morning had been wrong. By the time she’d come out to the kitchen, he was finishing his toast, the Neesley Advance open to the Local News page.
“How’d you sleep?” she asked, walking around him when he reached for her.
“Walter had a rough night,” he said.
Which meant Eric had a rough night too.
Ellie stared past Eric to Sammy, their five-year-old, who sat on the floor in the corner of the living room, still wearing his Superman pajamas as he sorted his Legos.
Eric waited until Ellie’s eyes met his again. Then he called over his shoulder without turning to face his son, “Hey, slugger. Come have some cereal.” When he got no response, he whistled and raised his voice. “Hey, bud. Come on.”
Sammy kept sorting.
“He’s not a dog,” Ellie said, reaching for the coffee pot.
“He’s not a dog,” Sammy repeated from his corner.
Ellie filled Eric’s cup before pouring the dregs into her own. Thorn moseyed down the hallway and then collapsed at Eric’s feet. Eric rewarded him with a pat on the head.
“So you’re only working the half shift? Today’s your last day until the new year?” She sat across from her husband at the table, Myrtle’s napkin holder and salt and pepper shakers between them.
He passed her the newspaper. “Over one hundred calls for police,” the headline read.
“That’s not a question, is it?” he said. “Because we’ve been talking about this for a month. Today’s my last day.”
“Unless there’s an emergency,” she said.
“Unless there’s an emergency.”
She scanned the newspaper column, reading out loud. “December 12. An abandoned blue Neon car towed from Marsh Road. Dog reported stolen from a Harder Road residence returned home an hour later. So many emergencies.”
“Not my problem, obviously,” he said.
They’d thrown a big party for Eric up in Smoky River on his last day with the force. After they moved back to Neesley, he moped around the house day after day until Ellie thought she would go mad. She was relieved when he took a nine-to-five security contract at the Chitwood Gas Plant, even though she knew he thoroughly hated the job. From sergeant to rent-a-cop—in his mind, he could sink no lower.
“The plant should be quiet over Christmas,” she said.
Eric said nothing, just blew into his coffee as though it was still steaming.
“And if they ask for extra hours?” She was unable to stop herself. “Say one of the night guys parties too hard and they call you in?”
He stood quickly, causing Thorn to humph and roll to avoid being stepped on. “I’ll be here, Ellie. And I’ll get you your tree. I’ll do it this afternoon, just like I promised. What more do you want?”
Ellie watched her husband’s forehead grow angry-red, like skin under the rim of a baseball cap on a blistering hot day. Thorn licked Eric’s sock, the only trick he knew when he sensed a change in mood.
She wasn’t trying to badger him. She just wanted this Christmas to be perfect—their house full of laughter. She wanted tender turkey and smooth gravy that tasted better than Myrtle’s.
Eric strode to the closet and retrieved his parka. She assumed he’d wanted to make a clean exit, but he’d misplaced his keys again and stood there dumbly, patting his pockets.
“I’ll find them,” he said, although they both knew he wouldn’t. “I put them in my pocket.”
“If you put them in your pocket, they would be in your pocket.”
He poked around the kitchen and then headed to yesterday’s pants in the bedroom, as predictable as snow in winter. She rummaged through the family’s pile of boots in the front closet. The key ring lay wedged behind one of Walter’s old Sorels. Eric came back down the hallway, empty-handed, and before she could stop herself, she pitched the keys at him, giving him no time to react.
That had been their morning. Ellie dipped her fingers in the washing machine’s sudsy water. She must try harder. Thorn let out a series of mournful bursts above her. She could hear the thump of Walter’s cane as he shuffled down the hallway. She trudged up the stairs and pushed the dog outside to do his business. By the time she got back down, the washing cycle was spinning merrily minus its soiled load. Sensational.
—
It was a quarter to three by the time Eric walked into the cramped Child and Family Services office. The woman behind the reception counter wiped the sleep from her eyes, yawning.
“I’m here to see Betty Holt,” Eric said, leaning against the counter.
The woman stayed blank.
“Could you just tell Betty that Eric Nyland is here? I’ll only be a few minutes.”
She stifled another yawn, sloppy red mouth twisting, and then shuffled down the hallway. Her brown woolly sweater hung over a turtleneck and multiple t-shirts of different lengths.
Eric sat in one of the chairs in the waiting area. When the woman came back she stood in front of the bulletin board, fiddling with tacks and rearranging postings.
“Have you got any plans for Christmas?” she asked him.
He wondered if she’d forgotten about Betty on her way down the hall. “Just time with the family,” he said. “Will Betty be long?”
She stood with her back to him. “Christmas is my favourite next to Easter, what with eggnog and Nanaimo bars and turkey this and that! I haven’t put out one snow globe this year, not one, and my romances are going to stay on the bookshelf so I can focus all my attention on chapters six and seven. Financial statements. They make my eyes swim, they really do.”
Eric hadn’t a clue what she was talking about. He bent to pick up the scattered papers she’d let fall. “You dropped a few.”
He passed her the papers as Betty came bustling down the hall, arms outstretched. He and Betty had been friends since grade school.
“Eric Nyland. Well, aren’t you a sight,” Betty exclaimed. “You’ve come to wish your dear friend a merry Christmas.”
The receptionist stepped back while Eric braced himself for the collision. Betty wrapped around him in a bear hug.
“The office closes at four today,” the receptionist said, her back flat against the bulletin board.
Betty laughed, her ample belly jiggling. “Yes, Cindy. I remember.”
“You still haven’t signed my time-off schedule.”
“I’m just going to have a quick chinwag with Eric here. I expect he’s come laden with gifts.”
“Sorry, no gifts,” Eric said as Betty whisked him down the hall and into her crowded office. The room had a window view of the parking lot, Eric’s car in one of the visitors’ stalls.
“Cindy Simpson,” Betty whispered before closing her door. “Our new receptionist. Did she tell you she’s studying for her bookkeeping exam?”
“She said something about finances.” Eric moved stacks of folders off the chair and laid them between the desktop Santa and the bowl stuffed with candy canes.
Betty wheeled a chair out from behind her desk. “She tells everyone who’ll listen that she’s studying for her bookkeeping exam. She�
��s flunked four times already—she tells everyone that too. She seems to swell in the awe of her own persistence.”
Eric’s mind flashed to his own stream of recently failed tests. Ellie’s look, as she pitched him his lost keys that morning.
Betty maneuvered her chair right across from his, sat down, took a breath, and leaned forward. “This is a lovely surprise, Eric. Merry Christmas. I’d offer you a cup of Cindy’s coffee, but it’s truly undrinkable.”
Eric felt himself relax for the first time all day. Betty put him at ease. She always had.
“How are you doing, Betty?”
“Still fat and happy.” She laughed and he did too. Then she shook her head and sighed. “But I’m still ripping children from their parents, sadly. You should read some of my emails. You’d think I was the most hated woman in the county.”
Whenever Eric thought of goodness, Betty came to mind. She could unearth chances in the unlikeliest places. She’d once invited their entire school to her grade four birthday party just to make sure the Buckland kids—snot-nosed and shabby and never included in anything—got their fair share of cake and ice cream. When the school bus emptied in front of the Holt farmhouse, her mother nearly had a heart attack.
Betty patted her hand lightly against his knee. “I thought we might see more of each other, now that you’re back.”
Eric didn’t want to think of all he’d not done since moving back to Neesley. “Sorry,” he said, clearing his throat. “Still settling in.”
Betty raised her eyebrows, not convinced. “I was surprised to hear you’d quit the force. So you’re at the plant now. How’s security working out?”
“Pretty quiet.” The cheap shirt with the Chitwood Plant logo, his rent-a-cop outfit, chafed his neck under his jacket. “I’ve booked off the week. My first stay-at-home Christmas in over a decade.” He said this lightly, although the thought of spending a week with his family, no distractions, made him feel defenceless.
Betty smiled. “Well, there’s one advantage right there. Time off at Christmas. Leaving behind all those testy holiday husbands and fathers and boyfriends. All those extra fender-benders. How are Ellie and the boys?”
“Fine,” he lied. “Adjusting to life around here. Sammy’s in kindergarten. Dan’s pumping weights.”
“Such good boys. And Walter? How’s he doing?”
Eric’s string of couch nights was making it harder to be civil to his father. Eric had wanted to install an outside lock on Walter’s bedroom door, to stop his shrivelled white feet from wandering into the freezing cold, but Ellie wouldn’t have it. You wouldn’t lock a child in for getting confused in the night. They didn’t lock in Sammy, who sometimes prowled around the house in his sleep, opening and closing bedroom doors. No, their home would be no one’s prison, not under Ellie’s watch. But it was Eric who lay in wait on the couch, who kept his ear to the floor, who listened for the sound of his father shuffling down the hall. If he let himself think about it, which he tried his best to avoid, he’d been listening for those footsteps his whole damn life.
“The same,” Eric said. “Dan cracked up Walter’s truck.”
“I heard. Thank God he wasn’t hurt.”
Of course she’d heard. Ex-RCMP’s kid out for a joyride. Everybody had heard.
When he continued to sit without speaking, she asked, “Did you come in just to have me grill you about your life?”
Eric leaned forward. “What do you know about Nigel Wilson?”
“Nigel?” she asked, surprised. “I haven’t talked to him in years. Not since school days. You’re the one living right across the road from him.”
“What the hell is he doing back here?”
Betty sat back and studied his face. “The return of the prodigal sons. He might be asking the same about you.”
“There’s a young girl living with him. Hannah Finch.”
“I heard.”
“Well, what do you know about her?”
“Nothing, Eric,” she said, raising her hands. “She’s not one of mine. Nigel brought her with him, without the mother, when he moved back home. Tragic story. He finally finds a woman who will have him, and she dies. He’s started up some kind of accounting practice. Farmer’s books, that kind of thing. Keeps to himself. The girl is being home-schooled as far as I know. What’s this about?”
“I picked her up on the road today in this godawful weather. She was miles out. Not dressed right.”
“Oh. Well, that’s not good.” She sighed, glancing toward the burgeoning cabinets, each filled with familial disasters. “What did the girl tell you?”
“Nothing. She asked me to drive her back home.”
“How did she look?”
“Cold. Miserable.”
“Aren’t we all this winter.”
“Something’s not right. Wilson’s not right.”
Betty did not answer at once but stared out her office window. “You’re not likely the best judge of Nigel Wilson,” she said at last. “Did you talk to him?”
“Briefly.”
“How did that go?”
Eric had returned plenty of kids. They all came from somewhere. Some had parents who called the station day and night, voices husky with worry. Some had parents who made no call at all, parents who kept their eyes on the TV when he arrived on their doorstep with their offspring in tow. Nigel Wilson fell more into this second category, but worse. He was not fit to be around children. Not a good person.
“I want you to check on her.”
“On what grounds?”
“Something doesn’t smell right.”
“So I should barge through his front door and do a sniff test?”
“You’re defending him?”
“Against what?” She was not the least bit ruffled, despite his accusation. “He’s not my favourite person either, Eric, but you haven’t given me much to work with here. You know how it works. If she’s been hurt, or talked about being hurt, or showed signs . . .”
He hesitated, staring at her. “It’s just this feeling—” he said. What was he thinking? He had plenty to worry about this Christmas without dredging up demons from his childhood. He stood, angry with himself. “No, you’re right. Let sleeping dogs lie. I should be off. I’m supposed to be getting Ellie her tree.” Although he’d clearly missed his window. It would be dark before he got back to their road.
Betty stood and wrapped her arms around him. “I’ll see what I can do,” she said. “And don’t be a stranger. Give Ellie my best.”
When he got back to the reception area, Cindy Simpson was down on the floor, coat on, unplugging the Christmas lights from the spindly tree tucked into the corner. She looked up and said, “We’re closing early today for Christmas. Shutting down until New Year’s. Not that I’ll get a break. I’m studying for my bookkeeping exam.”
“Stay safe,” he said. She turned, mouth open, but he ducked out of the office before she could say more.
—
Hannah wanted to stay on her towel, pinned to the dazzling hot sand, the warm sun pressing down and making her crave sleep. But her stomach hurt. She needed something to eat. When she stepped into the hall, Nigel’s office door was closed, so she tiptoed past his room and down the stairs in the dark.
There was little food in the house. She found some tired frozen chicken strips and lined them in rows on a cookie sheet for the oven and boiled water in a pot for peas and carrots, which had been in the freezer so long they were covered with snow. She set out the salt and pepper and knives and forks and poured water into the blue cups with glass thin as paper. When she turned from the sink, a glass for each hand, Nigel had appeared, standing right behind her, his half-empty bottle in one hand, drinking cup in the other. She nearly lost her balance, water sloshing over her fingers.
His eyes were too glassy, his face too red. He just stood t
here, so she worked around him, dishing food onto their plates, carrying the plates to the table. By the time she sat down, her stomach had filled with rocks.
Nigel wedged into the chair across from her, thumping the bottle on the table as he sat. He pushed his plate to the side and filled his glass.
“You’re a supid girl, Hannah. Ungrayful.” He took a long drink. “A joyride with Eric Nyland. Supid.”
Nigel leaned toward her, his boozy smell all over her. Her whole body twitched, legs jumping under the table, but she didn’t look up, forcing herself to shovel down bites as fast as she could.
“Whad I say ’bout him. ’Bout saying away.” He leaned back again and took another drink. “Sorry piece a shit. The pair of you.”
She needed to finish and get back up to her room and out of sight. She took two more wretched bites of the cardboard chicken.
He tilted sideways in slow motion, like a dead person falling out of a chair. But then his arm shot out, and he managed to right himself again, and when he came back up, he had Mandy in his clasp.
Hannah jumped up. “Put her down!” Mandy hissed and struggled, a flurry of paws, but Nigel held tighter. “I hate you,” she screamed, lunging toward him, pounding her fists on his head. Mandy shrieked, a sharp cry she’d never heard before. Nigel pushed Hannah hard in the chest and she staggered backwards, her head thudding on the corner of the table. Her ears filled with a high-pitched buzzing noise, Nigel’s shouts echoing from far away. She felt weak, like she was sliding off her whale into dark water. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t stretch her arms out to brace her fall. The last thing she remembered was a muffled thud as she hit the floor face first.
Three
By the time his dad walked through the door, they had already arranged themselves in their usual spots, plates still empty, food laid out in bowls, no steam rising. Daniel slumped at the table. He’d been cooped up all day in this dismal house, grounded.
