Shadows On The River
Linda Hall
I was only fourteen when I witnessed a murder on the riverbank.A murder that went unpunished. Unless you count what happened to my family. We were forced out of town by the teenaged killer's prominent parents. And the murder was forgotten–by everyone but me. Now, the killer is a respected businessman.I can't let him get away with it. But I'm a single mother with a child to protect, what can I do? The new man in my life, Mark Bishop, warns me to be careful. For there's already been another murder. Close to home.
Most of the time, I can forget what Larry Fremont did to my family.
Most of the time, I can follow my mother’s advice when she says, “Some things, Alicia, are best left buried.” But tonight, it all came back to me. I aimed the remote at the television screen and cranked up the volume.
There had been a death. His personal accountant or lawyer, someone named Paul Ashton. Somehow I knew in my soul that Larry Fremont had killed that man. And if I would admit it to myself, I knew my insomnia, this locking of all my doors and windows, this habitual looking over my shoulder, went back twenty-five years to when I watched Larry Fremont throw my best friend off a bridge. And then laugh about it.
He had killed once and had gotten away with it. He has killed since. He would kill again. And I was terrified of him.
Linda Hall
When people ask award-winning author Linda Hall when it was that she got the “bug” for writing, she answers that she was probably in fact born with a pencil in her hand. Linda has always loved reading and would read far into the night, way past when she was supposed to turn her lights out. She still enjoys reading and probably reads a novel a week.
She also loved to write, and drove her childhood friends crazy wanting to spend summer afternoons making up group stories. She’s carried that love into adulthood with twelve novels.
Linda has been married for thirty-five years to a wonderful and supportive husband who reads everything she writes and who is always her first editor. The Halls have two children and three grandchildren.
Growing up in New Jersey, her love of the ocean was nurtured during many trips to the shore. When she’s not writing, she and her husband enjoy sailing the St. John River system and the coast of Maine in their 28-foot sailboat, Gypsy Rover II.
Linda loves to hear from her readers and can be contacted at Linda@writerhall.com. She invites her readers to her Web site, which includes her blog and pictures of her sailboat: http://writerhall.com.
Shadows on the River
Linda Hall
Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times? Jesus answered, I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.
—Matthew 18:21–22
Acknowledgments
A special thank-you to Pamela Benoit Scott for all the information on ASL sign language and deafness and for great insights into the deaf culture.
A second thank-you goes to Jan Donovan-Downs for all of the information on childhood deafness.
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
EPILOGUE
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
PROLOGUE
Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?” Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.”
Matthew 18:21–22
The girl checked the time on her pink wristwatch and looked back at the front door of the school. Tracy, her best friend, should have been here by now. The girl sat down on the stone embankment and swung her legs hard, hitting the backs of her calves against the rock in a steady rhythm. No. She was wrong. Tracy wasn’t her best friend. She used to be. Then Tracy got to be friends with the popular girls.
And then today happened.
“I have a secret to tell you,” Tracy had whispered to her after lunch.
So surprised, all she could manage was a quick “Okay.”
“I’ll get my mother to pick us up. We’ll go to my house and I’ll tell you. I’ll even show you my diary.”
“Okay.” The girl tried to keep the eagerness out of her voice.
“We can be friends again.” Tracy had smiled at her, that big, broad smile of hers and the girl dared hope that they could go back to being the kind of friends they were in elementary school, best friends, sharing secrets, knowing everything about each other.
“Don’t take the bus home. Just wait out front by the rock.”
“Okay.”
But Tracy hadn’t shown up. It was late by now. All of the school buses had long since pulled out and she was alone in the front of the deserted school. It was hot and clammy and she was beginning to feel sick to her stomach.
From her perch on the rocks she watched two teachers leave, figures in the distance who didn’t see her, the woman holding her skirt down against the warm breeze as she carried an armful of papers. She could hear them laugh from here. There were only two more days of school left before summer vacation and it looked as if the teachers were just as happy to be free as the students.
She looked back at the door. Maybe she should go inside and phone Tracy’s house. She checked her wallet for dimes. But what if during the time she was inside making the call, Tracy’s mother came?
So she waited.
A little while later she wondered if she should go into the school and see if anyone was still in the office. Maybe she should call her mother.
But her mother wasn’t expecting her and probably wasn’t even home. She’d phoned her mother at lunch to ask if she could go to Tracy’s and her mother had seemed pleased. Even though she had never told her mother her problems with Tracy, her mother knew.
“You go,” she had said on the phone. “Go and have a good time. I’ll use the time to run some errands.”
The girl spent the rest of the afternoon smiling. Tracy would soon be back in her life. And in a couple of weeks there would be church camp. With Tracy as her best friend again, it would be fun.
As she sat and sat in the blistering sun, her shirt stuck to her back in the heat, she finally came to the only conclusion she could—Tracy had played a trick on her. Tracy was probably at home with the popular girls and they were all laughing at her. She could imagine them, even now, sitting cross-legged on the wooden slats of Tracy’s sundeck drinking lemonade and calling her a loser.
The girl jumped down from the embankment and felt a tear at the edge of an eye. Angrily she wiped it away. She looked down the empty street for a long time deciding whether to walk home. That meant about a mile along the hot road until the main part of town with its stores and the drugstore her father owned. She could stop there, she thought, and wait for him and get a ride home, but she’d have to hang around in the back until closing time. And that would be like forever.
No, what she would have to do would be to walk right through town, turn left for half a mile until she came to her street. She’d have to walk fast past Tracy’s house. She didn’t want to give her the satisfaction. She let out a sigh, shifted her book bag, and started walking, the black pavement hot through the bottom of her sneakers.
A quarter of a mile later she decided to take the shortcut. Maybe it would be cooler. She turned down the gravel road, which would become a dirt path winding past the church and through the graveyard beside it down to the river. Then it would be across the footbridge. A few steps later, she would be at the edge of her subdivision.
She wouldn’t worry about that bridge. She knew what people said—that it was unsafe. She’d climb across the logs they put in the way and then hurry across it without looking down. A few minutes later she would be at her own house. She and Tracy had taken this way lots of times.
But it wasn’t cooler on the path. If anything, it was hotter. She walked faster, a cloud of insects beside her. Perhaps when she got to the graveyard she could climb down the bank and get a drink of water from the river.
Her head felt hot, her legs heavy. She shifted her book bag. This wasn’t such a great idea, she thought as she swatted away the bugs. Up ahead on the horizon was the church steeple. Good. Now it wasn’t too far. A big drink of river water and she’d feel a whole lot better. Maybe her mother would even be at the church. Sometimes she went there for Bible studies and things. Or maybe somebody she knew would be there, Pastor Arnold, or the funny fat guy who mowed the lawns. Because the nearer she got to the footbridge, the more afraid she was feeling.
She began to run, and as she did she thought about Tracy. They hadn’t spoken to each other in months. The notes she’d left in Tracy’s locker were ignored and when she tried to phone her, Tracy was always not home. So why today? Did it have something to do with Larry Fremont? All of the popular girls were in love with him. Sure, he was sorta cute, but he was a lot older. Sixteen and Tracy was only thirteen, although Tracy was quick to point out that she would be turning fourteen in a month. Lots of fourteen-year-old girls go out with sixteen-year-old boys.
But there was something else she didn’t like about Larry. That his family was the richest family in town, that they practically owned the town, had nothing to do with it. His mother owned the town’s coal mine, which was where just about everyone’s father she knew worked. No, it wasn’t that. There was something about Larry that was just plain creepy. Maybe that’s when she and Tracy stopped being friends, when she told Tracy what she thought of Larry.
She ran faster. She was running against the hot wind now, anger propelling her forward. She made her plans. This was the end of her trying to be friends with Tracy. Once she got home, she would act like she hadn’t been waiting in front of the school for hours. She would pretend like nothing had happened.
If Tracy said something like, “Were you waiting a long time? We forgot all about you.” Her answer would be, “Well, that makes two of us, because I completely forgot about going to your house. I got a ride home with my mom like always.”
Angry tears coursed down her cheeks. How could she have been so stupid? How could she think Tracy really wanted to be her friend?
The path brought her behind the Fremont Mansion, and from that vantage point she could glimpse the blue ocean, frothy with whitecaps. A bit farther down this path and she would be at the church.
No cars were there. Maybe she could get in and cool off. She tried the doors. Locked.
Then she heard the voices, looked down toward the footbridge and saw them. Tracy and Larry. She put a hand to her mouth and slunk close to the side of the church. They hadn’t seen her. Good.
She didn’t quite know why, maybe it was something in their demeanor, but she decided to stay hidden. So this is why Tracy wasn’t there to pick her up. She was with Larry!
She stole quietly to the graveyard where she hid behind a huge black gravestone under a pine tree. From here she could watch them.
They appeared to be arguing. She could hear their voices, high and loud, but not the words. At one point Larry placed his palm firmly on Tracy’s chest as if to push her backward. She shouted something, flung his hand away and backed into the railing.
She wanted to call out, to warn Tracy that the railing wasn’t safe. There were already parts of it that were broken, slats and boards that had fallen onto the rocks far below, but there she was, leaning against the railing with her whole weight. Larry put his hand on Tracy, only this time he was choking her.
The girl was about to call out. She didn’t. For years afterward she would wonder if she could have somehow changed the outcome of everything in her future—her parents having to leave the church, her dad losing his business, her mother being ostracized—if she had only called out. Instead, she knelt in the hot buggy grass and put her head between her knees for a few moments and watched an ant crawl on her shoe while the voices on the bridge grew louder, angrier, more frantic.
She looked up again.
Larry was holding Tracy’s shirt collar with both hands and glaring down at her. They were very close. Tracy was screaming, flailing. “Let me go! Let me go!” But he wouldn’t.
The girl in the graveyard was about to rush forward and say, “Stop!” but at that moment, Larry let go of her. Tracy began to laugh as she backed seductively against the railing and put one foot up onto the cracked slat.
Larry was moving toward her now and when he got to her, he put his hand on her face.
At that moment something bit the girl’s ankle. She looked down at it and scratched.
Tracy’s screams caused her to look up and when she did, Tracy was tumbling off the footbridge, arms flailing, trying to grab for handholds in the air. Screaming. Screaming.
Larry looked down at her and laughed.
The girl in the graveyard leaned her head into the warm black gravestone and vomited onto the grass. Above her in the sun a gull called.
ONE
25 years later…
I turned over onto my side, pulled the quilt up around my ears and listened to the snowy wind rattle against the outside of my house. I snuggled down deeper into the warmth of my blanket. Still, sleep wouldn’t come. I threw off the blankets and glanced at the alarm clock. 2:52 a.m. I sighed deeply, loudly and sat up on the side of the bed where I’d slept alone for eight years since my daughter, Maddy, was born. It was going to be one of those nights.
I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and stuffed my feet into my slippers and switched on my bedside lamp. Beside me the novel I was reading lay opened and facedown.
It wasn’t just the blizzard that was keeping me awake. Rod should have called today. We should have heard something one way or the other by now. This was stupid, I thought, yawning and tying my terry cloth robe around me. What could I do right now, anyway? I couldn’t exactly phone him at three in the morning, could I? I walked out into the hall, as another wintry blast shook my little house. The storm was worsening, as predicted.
I gathered my hair up off my neck and tried to still my thoughts. This was insane. I was just nervous, that’s all it was. This project that Rod and I had bid on was just that—another project. There would be more projects. At least, that’s what I tried to tell myself. Never mind that this was the biggest contract to come down the pike in a long time.
I made my way across to Maddy’s room to check on her. We both needed the money this project would provide. If I was lucky, the money might just be enough to pay off all my credit cards. There were always unforeseen expenses with Maddy, with her special needs, plus there were all the normal things she wanted, like a new pair of ice skates. New ones, she kept insisting. Not secondhand ones. If we got the project, brand-new ones would be no problem.
As the wind increased, rattling the panes, I also thought about Rod. He and his wife Jolene were expecting their first baby, a daughter, in just a few weeks. They, too, were relying on this money.
And then there was Mark Bishop—newly hired, specifically for this project. What would he do if we lost it? In the two weeks he and I had worked together, we’d gotten to know each other pretty well—enough to know that we clicked. We spoke the same language—boats and boat design. We’d had many long discussions about sailing in rough weather, racing in light winds and whether Kevlar was better than nylon for small, light wind boats.
But not about personal things. I knew very little about his private life. All I knew was that he wasn’t married and that he had moved to Nova Scotia from Florida, where he’d worked at a marina. For all I knew, he could have a girlfriend stashed away somewhere, or even a fiancåe. But it went both ways. He didn’t know anything about me, either. I have a whole lot of secret places that no one can enter.
So, whenever I start getting lost in his eyes, and start imagining how wonderful it would be to sail around the world with him, I have to call myself back. Even so, Jolene had decided early on that Mark and I were perfect for each other. Sometimes she could be worse than a mother, trying to fix me up with every and any available bachelor.
Why was I driving myself crazy on a snowy night? Mark and I would be working together for a long time. The contract was “in the bag.” Those had been Rod’s exact words. Yet, why hadn’t we gotten any word? We should’ve heard a week ago.
The smoke detector in the hall chirped briefly, which is what it does when the power surges. I glanced up at it. This was promising to be the biggest winter storm of the season.
“Got your flashlights and candles?” Mark had said to me as we left work that afternoon. The early evening clouds had hovered gray, low and leaden above us.
“I think I’m ready,” I said.
“Hey, you want to grab a coffee somewhere?” he had asked. I was momentarily taken aback. In the two weeks we had known each other, he had never suggested that just he and I go out. It was always the three of us, Mark, Rod and me, sitting together at the coffee shop on the corner, talking about budgets, plans or how we would fulfill the contract in the time allotted. Was this a work thing or a date?
“I have to get home to my daughter,” I said. “I want to get us settled before it snows.”
He knew I had a daughter, but not anything about her or why it was I had to get home early. I didn’t date much. The few men I’d gone out with over the past eight years had run, not walked, away from me when they’d found out about my daughter.
“Well, then,” he had said, nodding his head slightly toward me. If he’d been wearing a cap, he would have tipped it—it was that sort of gesture. “We’ll see each other on Monday. Stay warm this weekend.”
A huge Nor’easter, which had been making its way up the Atlantic coast for days now, was finally reaching us here in Halifax. I had already done all the requisite things; stocked up on flashlight batteries and candles and made sure all my doors and windows were tightly closed. I had also filled the bathtub and containers with water, plus we had plenty of food. One never knew.
Despite the wind tonight, despite the storm, my daughter Maddy was tucked into bed and sleeping soundly, her soft, stuffed yellow animal, Curly Duck, nestled in the crook of her neck. I watched her for a minute before I bent down and pushed a ringlet out of her face. So peaceful. How I longed for that sort of peace in my own life. I ran the back of my finger over the smoothness of her cheek. She flinched slightly, but didn’t waken. I pulled the blankets up around her chin and bent down to give her a whisper of a kiss on her forehead.
I rose. For a few moments I leaned against the doorjamb and watched her sleep. She’s the only good thing that came out of a one-year marriage to a philandering bum.
I crept downstairs, wiping the sleep more thoroughly out of my eyes. I sat down at my quasi-drafting table in my studio/office. It had started out as a dining room in another life, but now was firmly devoted to my boat designs. My eyes blurred when I looked down at the technical drawings for the boat I was designing. Absently, I rubbed an eyebrow with the end of my pencil.
I looked up and out toward the back of my house. It was too dark to see, but I could feel the wind, fingering its way through the cracks around my windows, snow firmly in its grip.
I checked my e-mail. Nothing yet from Rod. As if there would be. Hadn’t I checked it a dozen times before I went to bed at eleven?
Rod and Jolene own Maritime Nautical. Boat builders hire him to design sail-to-keel ratios, rudder length and shape. Rod and I were classmates at Memorial University in Newfoundland and we both have degrees in marine engineering technology.
His wife, Jolene, has been my best friend since high school. She has a degree in Business Administration and runs the business end of the company.
When I went to Newfoundland to study marine design, she stayed in Prince Edward Island and went to university there. Halfway through my last year at Memorial, Jolene came up to visit me. As soon as she and Rod met, sparks flew, and they’ve been together ever since. They were married shortly after Maddy was born, and have been trying, almost from the beginning, to have a baby.
About ten years ago Rod, Sterling Roarke and I, all engineering classmates, decided we’d go into business for ourselves. I ended up marrying Sterling. Within a year I was pregnant and Sterling was running around. It was only after we divorced that I learned the extent of his affairs. He also ran the business into the ground by not getting proposals ready on time, promising things and not following through and lying to me and to Rod. Nine years ago, Rod, Jolene and I decided to let him go and strike out on our own. I was eight months pregnant at the time.
We moved the business to Halifax, despite my misgivings about living here. After Maddy was born, I knew I couldn’t work full-time. I’ve been taking the odd contract here and there, working from home. And then, of course, there is my own little sailboat that I’ve been fine-tuning and tweaking forever. I rested my forehead in one hand as I studied my sketchbook.
The project I was so worried about on this stormy night was a biggie. It would mean going back to full-time work. This was my chance, and I was ready, really ready. Maddy was doing well these days—remarkably so. When Rod called me two weeks ago, I figured fate or God was handing me a gift. Maybe things were looking up for me, finally.
The contract was to design from the keel up, a twenty-foot day sailer/racer for one of the foremost boat builders in Maine. It had to be fast. It had to win races. I looked down at my preliminary sketches. If I shaved a bit off the front end of the keel…And then the worries nagged again. Could I do this? What if I fail? What if they hate my designs? Even though I’d tested it on a million computer programs, there was no guarantee. The best computer program cannot totally duplicate what a real body of water does.
And then there was Maddy to think about. What if Maddy needed help in school and I wasn’t there? I was feeling a vague unease and I wasn’t quite sure why. I glanced at the time readout on my computer. Three-ten. I really should go back upstairs and try to get some sleep.
I’ve had insomnia for as long as I can remember. It goes back at least to when Maddy was born and I realized that I would be raising her on my own. It intensified ten months later when I learned the extent of her disabilities. Maddy is profoundly deaf.
A blast of storm hit the side of my house. From the dining room there was a door to a large wooden sundeck, and the wind came at it with such a ferocity that it seemed personal. I hugged my arms around me while the drapes quivered. I could feel the storm from here.
I turned up the thermostat. Then I walked around the first floor of my small house, touching things as I passed them; my glass model boat, the newest sailing mystery from the library, a pair of Maddy’s gloves, her stuffed teddy bear, the framed picture of my parents. I don’t know why I was doing this pacing. Nerves, perhaps?
Then I sat down in front of my drawing, picked up the remote and aimed it at the little television I keep perched on a wobbly end table. Maybe there would be news about the storm. Or maybe the sound of it would keep me company on this uneasy, lonely night.
On the all-news channel, a weather announcer stood in front of a map of the east coast and indicated with a sweep of her hand, the track of the storm. It would gain in intensity throughout the night, she said, and peter out by late morning or early afternoon. Scrolling along the bottom of the TV screen in red were the words, “Severe weather watch for all of Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and parts of New Brunswick. Stay tuned to local broadcasts for more information.”
Scrabbles of snow hit my glass windows and slithered down like ghostly spiders. The cups in my kitchen cupboard rattled slightly against each other. I rose and stood beside the window and looked out. Snow swirled sideways underneath the streetlights.
“Please, God,” I found myself praying, “Watch over us.” I chided myself for praying. A long time ago I gave up on God. Yet, at times like this, I pray.
The news channel switched to another item and suddenly my attention jerked abruptly to the television screen. There I found myself looking into the face of the very person who had kept me looking over my shoulder all these years.
Larry Fremont.
Something like lead settled in my stomach. Larry Fremont is the reason I am no longer a Christian. Larry Fremont is the reason I gave up on prayer. I sat down at my table and watched the screen. Another gasp of wind made my house shudder.
One of the richest men in Halifax, Larry Fremont’s name has been linked to more than a few shady dealings down through the years. My fingers trembled. It’s not like I hadn’t seen his face in the newspapers or on posters, billboards or TV before. He’d run for mayor of Halifax a while back. He didn’t get elected—maybe the people were too smart. He was one of those rich entrepreneurs who manages always to be in the public eye. Just like his mother, I thought. Something deep inside me groaned and I felt a rising nausea.
I ran a hand through my hair and swallowed. Most of the time I can forget what Larry Fremont did to my family. Most of the time I can follow my father’s advice to put it behind me. Or my mother’s when she says, “Some things, Alicia, are best left buried.” Most of the time I can do that, not turn over the slime-covered rocks of the past. But tonight, with the winter storm battering my home and my thoughts, it all came back to me in crystal clarity. I aimed the remote at the screen and cranked up the volume, wondering if it would wake up Maddy. If it’s loud enough she can feel the vibrations through the floorboards.
Even though Larry and I lived in the same city now, we had never bumped into each other on the street, which was a blessing. Had I been crazy to move to the same city in which he lived? Sometimes I thought so.
One thing I had done was keep my married name. Maybe that gave me an edge of protection. Or maybe I was only fooling myself.
I kept my eye on the television. There had been a death. His personal accountant or lawyer, someone named Paul Ashton, had been found dead in his hotel room in Portland, Maine. It was believed that Ashton had a heart condition.
“I don’t believe that for a minute,” I said it out loud, shocking myself with that outburst.
Somehow I knew in my soul that Larry Fremont had killed that man. And I knew something else, too. If I would admit it to myself, my insomnia went farther back than to the birth of Maddy, or even learning that I would be raising a deaf child. No, this chronic, fearful insomnia, this locking of all my doors and windows, this habitual looking over my shoulder, the prayers I utter at odd times of the day even though I no longer believe in God, went back a full twenty-five years to when I watched Larry Fremont throw my best friend off a bridge. And then laugh about it.
He had killed once and had gotten away with it once. He has killed since. He would kill again. And I was terrified of him.
TWO
I woke with a groan the next morning with Maddy jumping on my bed and me and then pointing excitedly toward the window where it was still snowing, but more gently now. The fierce storm of the previous evening had spent itself out and all that was left were huge, lazy flakes wafting earthward. I had not gotten back to sleep until almost four. I had watched the news, hungry for more information about Larry Fremont and the death of his financial adviser, but there wasn’t a lot.
Ashton and Fremont were down in Maine discussing trade opportunities when Ashton retired to his room early, complaining of a stomachache. The maid discovered his body in the morning. He had not called down to the front desk or to his wife. That was all. I had clicked through several more news channels but found nothing.
I’d finally fallen into a fitful sleep then only to be awakened in what seemed like mere minutes when Maddy came in, signing that it was snowing, and that the snow was all the way up to the windows.
“I don’t think it’s that high,” I signed, and laughed. I signed and spoke at the same time. “Did you feel it? It was windy. The house shook.”
She signed excitedly, asking if we could go out and play in the snow.
“Later,” I signed. “We’ll have to shovel the snow, especially if we want to go out and get you those skates I’ve been promising you.”
My fears of last night were for now erased by the sunny dawn. All would be well. In a day or two my coffers would be overflowing with cold, hard cash and brand-new, name-brand skates would be no problem. And Larry Fremont? He was in the news all the time, anyway. How was this time any different?
“We can get new skates? Not old ones?” she signed.
“Yep, that’s the plan.” I pulled myself up out of my bed. Oh, yuck. Did I feel awful or what? I needed about four more hours of deep sleep.
“Are you ready for waffles?” I signed, and then yawned, fell back on my bed. “Maybe I should sleep first,” I said.
But Maddy would have none of that. She jumped on me, and we giggled and tickled for a while. Then I got up and put on my robe, and Maddy went and stood on tiptoes at my window. She ran her hand over the inside of the pane where snow was piled on the outside. I looked at her skinny, bare legs and her blond curls still tangled from sleep and thought to myself that she was the most beautiful little girl in all the world. I would give my life to not have the same thing happen to her as happened to me when I was a young girl, not too much older than she was now.
I tapped her shoulder and she turned to me. “You need your slippers,” I told her. “The floor is cold. Get your slippers and then we’ll make waffles.”
“Blueberry waffles?” she asked.
“Sure.” And then I signed something and she smiled and came into my outstretched arms.
We have a sign between ourselves which really means, “Come here for a hug, pumpkin pie,” which is my nickname for her because of her blond hair with its pumpkin-colored tints. She didn’t like the sign for strawberry blond. She was the one who came up with “pumpkin.” I added the “pie.” I held her fiercely and was surprised at the tears that swam in my eyes. I’m so very proud of her. When you have a deaf child, the learning curve is steep. First, there were multiple visits to specialists, only to discover that with the kind of deafness she had, a cochlear implant was a crapshoot. It might work. It probably wouldn’t. I learned that deaf children are often a year or so behind in their reading and literacy. I took a sign-language course for parents of deaf children and taught her signing from babyhood on.
I told her how much I loved her and how proud I was of her and how she was the best ice skater in the world and how as soon as the roads were cleared we’d go get new skates.
“Today?”
“I don’t know about today. It depends on how soon they come and plow the roads. And when we can get shoveled out.”
The two of us headed downstairs to make Saturday-morning waffles. Maddy went and stood in front of the picture window and gazed out at the snow. The morning sun peeked through the clouds. It was a white, wintry wasteland out there, a pale desert after a sandstorm. Sun on snow always brings a beauty, a whiteness to the inside of a house that isn’t there in other seasons. The snowplows hadn’t been by yet, so there was no delineation between the frontyard and road. One hearty soul was already out there attempting to clear his driveway with his snowblower, but it had gotten windy suddenly and from here it looked like the snow he was blowing was landing right back where it started.
Later when the wind died down, Maddy and I would bundle ourselves up and try to clean up the place with our shovels. The task looked daunting. Maybe my kind duplex neighbor Gus would snowblow my driveway when he cleared his own. He often did.
I pulled out the waffle iron from under my cupboard beside the stove and plugged it in to warm it up. I got out the eggs and flour and frozen blueberries and while I did so, I aimed the remote at the television to see if there was any news of the storm. Or of Larry Fremont. Especially Larry Fremont.
The news was the storm, of course, which had left an estimated twenty thousand Haligonians out of power. I felt fortunate that all we’d had were a couple of flickers. There was nothing about Larry Fremont, or the death of his associate.
Maddy, now clad in her favorite slippers and pink fleece housecoat, helped me measure flour into the mixing bowl, getting it all over her hands. She was signing happily about snow and skates and how much fun we’d have later, and could we make a snowman? And a snow fort? And could we have a snowball fight? And could her friend Miranda come over to play?
“Hey,” I signed, “Don’t talk so wildly, you’re getting flour all over the place.”
She giggled and wiped her fingers on her housecoat before she signed again. “Can Miranda come over?”
I nodded and signed that we could do all of those things, except, for perhaps, Miranda. “It will be hard to get anywhere today,” I signed.
Miranda is her school friend and deaf like Maddy.
The news flipped to a new item. I listened with one ear while I finished up the waffle batter.
Maddy said, “Look.” She said these words rather than signed them and I was really proud of her for talking. I followed her gaze to a man on cross-country skis who was walking a dog. It looked windswept and barren, like some scene out of Nanook of the North.
“Can we go skating like him?” she asked me.
I did a sort of made-up finger spelling sign for skiing, because this wasn’t a word I thought she knew. The two of us, like every deaf family, have a lot of made-up signs, “family signs,” they’re called.
“Can we go skiing, then?”
I laughed and said we had no skis. I poured the batter onto the waffle iron, filling every crevice. She kept her eyes on the snow while the waffle sizzled.
When it was done, I opened it up and took out the waffle, cut it in two and placed it on our plates. I poured on thick maple syrup, the real stuff, and we sat down and began to dig in. As we did so it struck me, as it sometimes does, that we didn’t offer any kind of table grace. The only time we ever do is when my parents come for a visit. I grew up in the church with grace at every meal and summer church camp and memorizing Bible verses and Sunday School. There are times when I wonder if Maddy might be missing out.
She was pouring on way too much syrup and I signed that that was enough. She turned away from me, pretending not to see. That’s what she does when she doesn’t want to talk to me, she’ll either turn her face away or close her eyes, scrunching them up and facing me defiantly. Although I love her to death, my little daughter can be stubborn at times.
I heard the name Fremont from the television and turned quickly away from Maddy and aimed the remote to turn up the volume. But it was the identical broadcast that I’d heard before. No new information. What was I expecting? And why did I care so much anyway?
After breakfast Maddy and I spent a lazy morning cleaning the house and doing laundry and making a batch of ginger molasses cookies. Later on she “chatted” with Miranda via her computer and then watched TV. Other mothers mind when their children spend too much time on the computer, but not me. It enhances Maddy’s reading. I tried to keep my eyes open while I sat at the table and worked a bit more on the boat design, but I was tired, very tired. What I wouldn’t give for a nap.
The snowplow eventually came by, leaving a tanker-load full of snow at the end of my driveway. By early afternoon, I began to hear the sound of snowblowers in the neighborhood. If you closed your eyes you could almost pretend it was summer and these were lawn mowers.
Midafternoon my neighbor began snowblowing my driveway. I waved to him from the picture window. Bless him. My neighbor Gus and his wife, Dolores, often make sure my driveway is plowed. I rarely even have to mow my own lawn in the summer. I know they feel sorry for me, a single mother with a deaf daughter.
I looked again. There were two men out there working on my driveway. Gus was behind the snowblower and someone else wielded a shovel at the end of it. I peered more closely. Mark? Could that possibly be Mark? I squinted. Yes! Farther down the street was his car. I put a hand to my face. Why on earth was he here shoveling my driveway? And how had he driven these roads in the first place?
I grabbed my coat and pulled on my boots and signed to Maddy to “Wait here. Watch from the window. I’ll be right back.”
I stomped through thigh-high snow to where Gus had cleaned a foot-wide swath to the end of my driveway. Mark looked up, saw me, grinned and put down the shovel and leaned on it rakishly. Mark has these studious, smart, good looks that can stop women in their tracks. With his neatly cut short, light hair, and his little rectangular glasses, he looks upscale; rich even, like he belongs in New York, not Halifax. No matter what he wears, clothes look so good on him. Like today. Even though he had pulled a ratty-looking, gray woolen toque down over his ears and that old man’s green down jacket.
I called to him. “What are you doing here?”
“I thought you might need a plow out.”
“And you came all the way over here?” The moment I said it, I realized I had no clue where he lived. He could live on the next street for all I knew.
“Actually,” he said scooping another shovelful of snow. “I was up late. I got going on the interior design of the boat. I wanted to run some of these plans by you.”
“And so you come out on a day like today?” Without calling first? I wanted to add.
“Why not?” He grinned a crooked little grin and I felt myself melting under his gaze.
“How did you even know where I live?” I was still astounded that he was actually here.
“Your address is on a lot of stuff at the office. It was easy to look it up online.” He searched for my address? Stop it, I told myself, stop staring at him so intently.
I looked at the window and Maddy waved at me. I pointed. “My daughter. I have to go inside. But we’ll be back. She wants to come out into the snow.”
“She’s signaling to you rather vigorously.”
“She’s not signaling,” I said. “She’s signing. She’s deaf.”
“Oh.”
Inside, I helped my extremely eager and bright-eyed daughter into her snowsuit, wool hat and mittens. I did the same for myself, changing out of my grungy baking sweatshirt and into a nice sweater. Then I bundled up against the cold. The wind out there was still gusty.
Maddy rushed ahead of me out the door, arms spread wide. She immediately jumped into three feet of snow and giggled.
“That’s my daughter, Madison,” I told Mark. “As you can see, she hates winter.”
“Just like me,” he said while he pulled the gray cap more firmly down over his ears. “I was in Florida for three years. Some may call me crazy, but I really missed the winter. Had to come back home.”
I looked at him. “This is home?”
We were standing on the sidewalk where he had started to shovel, while in the driveway Gus was still making passes up and down through the deep snow.
“Yep. Nova Scotia born and bred.”
“Where?” I asked.
“Sydney.”
“Wow. I grew up not far from there.” When I told him where, a shadow seemed to pass across his face. Or was I just imagining it? My thoughts were interrupted, in any case, by Maddy.
“Look!” she shouted out loud.
“She’s full of spunk,” he said. “Must get that from her mother.”
“I don’t know about that. Today I feel totally out of it. I didn’t sleep well last night…Maddy!” I signed when she looked over at me. “Come meet my friend.”
She rose from where she’d buried herself and waddled over, completely covered in the fluffy white stuff. Mark bent down to her level and said very plainly, “Hello, Madison.”
“His name is Mark. He’s my friend from work,” I signed to her. She smiled and said in her best voice. “Hello.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Madison,” he said.
I interpreted and she signed, “It’s nice to meet you, too.”
“Do you like the snow?” he asked.
Through my interpretation they carried on a conversation for a few more minutes and at the end of it I marveled at Mark’s persistence. My daughter made most of the men I dated nervous and ill at ease. And here was Mark, down at her level, making eye contact and asking her about school and her favorite things.
For the next hour the four of us cleaned the driveway and sidewalk. Even Maddy helped with her little shovel. After it was over I invited them all in, including Gus and Dolores, for hot chocolate and ginger molasses cookies.
When we’d all gotten inside and shed our sweaters, jackets, mitts and toques, I made a huge pot of hot chocolate in my grandmother’s stockpot. I made it the old-fashioned way, with real cocoa and milk, the way we did in the little town on Cape Breton Island where I grew up.
All we needed were Christmas carols and a fireplace to round out the afternoon, but because Christmas had passed a month ago, we had to satisfy ourselves with just hot chocolate and snow.
“You have a nice house,” Mark said looking around.
“Thank you,” I said. “I like it.”
Maddy and I live in a three-story town house. It sounds big because there are so many floors, but it’s a skinny little place. If you put it all out end-to-end, you wouldn’t end up with much square footage. The basement is basically a laundry room with enough space to store our bicycles and a few boxes. The main floor is kitchen, dining room and small living room. The third floor contains two bedrooms, Maddy’s and mine.
Dolores, who knows a few signs, talked with Maddy while Gus and Mark and I chitchatted about the boat-building industry. Gus, a retired captain, used to captain the ferry that ran between Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island a long time ago, before the Confederation Bridge was constructed.
After we’d each had a couple more cups of hot chocolate and had pretty well finished the batch of cookies Maddy and I had baked that morning, Gus and Dolores took their leave. But Mark showed no signs of asking for his coat. Maybe he really had come over to talk about the boat plans. I showed him what I had been working on in the middle of the night, while Maddy settled herself in the living room and turned on the television.
It was a matter of minutes before I realized that Maddy was watching the all-news station, not her usual fare. It was Mark who noticed why.
“Looks like she had a busy day,” he said.
She had crawled up onto the couch and was fast asleep. I went and put a quilt on top of her. Before I was able to aim the remote at the TV to shut it off, the Fremont story was on. I stood, watching it for a few seconds.
Mark was standing in the doorway when he said, “I know that guy.”
I jerked my head up at him. “Larry Fremont? You know Larry Fremont?” I was shocked.
“Paul Ashton. The man who died. I know him.”
“Really?” I was incredulous.
He nodded, leaned his trim body against the doorjamb. “Our families know each other. The Ashtons go to the same church that I do.”
“Seriously?”
“Yes, we know him.”
“No, I meant, seriously you go to church?”
“I do. You?”
I shook my head.
“I used to. Not anymore.”
“How are the Ashtons?” I asked.
“I just came from there. My parents have been with the family since this happened. Paul was a good man. Our entire church is feeling his loss.”
I kept my voice even. “So this must be quite shocking to everyone, his dying of a heart attack.”
Mark frowned, rubbed his chin. “That’s the funny thing about it. No one knew he had a heart condition, least of all his wife.”
We were standing and facing each other in the doorway. I said, “The news said he had an existing heart condition.”
Mark shook his head. “No one knows why the media came out with that, but then again, I suppose the media has been known to fabricate things from time to time.” He took off his skinny glasses and cleaned them on his shirt. The news had shifted back to the storm.
I aimed the remote and flicked the television off. Do I tell Mark that I know Larry Fremont? That we grew up in the same small town? I trembled a bit as I returned to the dining room where Mark was still leaning there and regarding me curiously.
“Are you okay, Ally?” There was concern on his face. “Is something wrong?”
“Nothing,” I said. “I’m okay,” I lied. “Just really tired.”
THREE
By Sunday, the magic of the snow had gone. It was now dirty and a nuisance and piled where it shouldn’t be, hindering the smooth flow of shopping and traffic. It was Sunday and we didn’t go to church. Funny that I thought about that fact on this morning. Sundays come and go in our house and I never consider church at all. I guess it was having Larry Fremont on the news. Or having Mark in my house the previous day. Or learning that Paul Ashton went to Mark’s church. Or even learning that Mark went to church in the first place.
I’d long ago spurned church when the one we attended had spurned my family. When all those long years ago they’d swept what had happened under the carpet, claiming I was the crazy one, that I had not seen what I knew I had. I never went back. The Fremont family were just too strong, too rich, too powerful. And our family wasn’t. We didn’t stay and fight. We left.
On this Sunday two things happened that changed everything for me. And by the time the day was over, I would realize that I should have listened to that uneasy voice the other night, the one that said nothing good will come your way, and that Larry Fremont is a murderer.
First, I was partially vindicated. The all-news station that I’d basically had on 24-7 since I first heard about Larry Fremont, came out with the truth. Paul Ashton had hit his head on the edge of the coffee table in the hotel room. They were looking into the possibility, still, that the fall may have been a result of a heart attack or brain aneurysm, but it was definitely a blow to the head that killed him. The hotel coffee table had been taken in for evidence. But I knew the truth. I was sure that Larry Fremont had hit him over the head with a blunt object and made it look as if he’d fallen into the coffee table. I would stake my life on this.
While I was watching it, the news cut away to Larry Fremont. I stopped and shushed Maddy, who was signing to me rapidly from where she was sitting on the couch. Larry Fremont saying how sad was this unfortunate accident and if the hotel was culpable in any way, they would get to the bottom of it. “Paul Ashton was a fine man,” Fremont was saying into the camera, “and I was proud to have him on my team, even if for such a short time, and to work with such an upstanding individual.” I’ll give Larry credit, he looked near tears.
The reporter added that foul play had not been ruled out. I sat and watched the whole thing without moving.
On the couch, Maddy was dressed and signing, “When are we going to get skates?”
“Soon,” I said. Fact was, I needed to get caught up with a few e-mails and do a bit of work first.
I went back to my computer and while I should’ve been working on the boat design, and particularly the rudder, which I was having trouble with, I was thinking about Larry Fremont and Paul Ashton. Money, of course. If Ashton was Fremont’s financial adviser, and a Christian at that, you can bet he found some discrepancies in the books. I knew I would be proved correct. It would just be a matter of time.
It occurred to me that I could ask Mark about this. He might know something. Truth was, after he told me he knew Ashton, I’d become wary. I don’t know why. Not many people knew about the Larry Fremont episode of my life. Even my parents don’t even know the entire thing. Jolene does. I’d told her the whole thing back when we were in high school.
It’d taken me a while to open up to her. I had arrived at the high school on Prince Edward Island, a sad, scared girl from a little town in Nova Scotia, hurt and grieving and afraid of getting close to anyone. Jolene introduced me to sailing. Her family had a couple of little sunfish sailboats that we used to take out onto the Northumberland Strait in the summer. It was on one of these trips that I had told her my story, swearing her to secrecy.
I grew to love sailing. Gliding fast through the fierce waves was the only time I felt alive. I was in my own world out there, and when I could control nothing else in my life, I could control my boat.
I opened a few online newspaper articles, but couldn’t find anything additional on Paul Ashton’s death. By all accounts, he looked to have tripped on the edge of the hotel carpet and hit his head on the coffee table. I needed to dig deeper.
Because I didn’t want to risk losing this information, I printed what I found. I ended up with quite a little stack beside my computer.
I got so engrossed in this work that for several seconds I didn’t notice Maddy standing there beside me. Finally she tugged on my sleeve. “Mom, when are we going to get skates?”
“Just a few more minutes,” I signed. “And then we’ll go. And we’ll even stop for ice cream on the way home. Would you like that?”
She signed “yummy” by rubbing her tummy and smacking her lips—a family sign.
“I like Mark,” Maddy signed to me suddenly.
I looked at her. What brought that on?
“Really?” I said.
“He’s nice,” she signed.
“I’m glad you think so,” I said.
“It was fun yesterday,” she added, and I agreed. What was happening to me? I couldn’t afford to fall for a guy like Mark.
We were getting ready to leave when the phone rang and the second life-changing event happened.
It was Rod. He sounded breathless. But more than that, he was angry. And the always even-tempered Rod I know doesn’t get angry.
“Ally. Ally. You sitting down?”
“Yes, Rod, Rod,” I said repeating his name the way he had repeated mine. “I am sitting here at my computer.”
A pause.
And then suddenly I was concerned. “Rod,” I said. “What’s wrong?” Was something wrong with Jolene? Had something gone wrong with the pregnancy? They had been trying for so long. “Is everything okay?”
“Ally, brace yourself. We lost the project.”
“What?” At first I thought he said baby, that they had lost the baby. It took me a moment to realize that the word he had said was project.
“The project. We lost it,” he said.
“What are you talking about?”
“With Maine Boatbuilding. They gave it to someone else, get this, a bigger firm in California. California! How convenient is that? They wanted a firm with more resources.” He sputtered out the last word.
I gripped the phone with both hands. Maddy was beside me on the floor, playing with two of her toy ponies.
“Rod?” I said. “How could this happen? We already gave them the general design. Didn’t they say it was ours?”
“Yes, they did. They gave me every indication.”
“I don’t understand.” I put my hand to my head, looked away from my blue-eyed daughter who was tugging at my sleeve.
“They found a firm with more people, their bid came in under ours. I’ve been on the phone for the past hour.”
“You found this out today? On a Sunday?”
“I called Lew. At home. I was sick and tired of them not answering our calls. We should have heard a week ago. Two weeks ago, even. I thought, he’s got to be home on Sunday morning. So I called him. I said, ‘You owe us, Lew, what’s going on? Why haven’t we heard?’ And that’s when he told me.”
“I absolutely can’t believe it, Rod. We’ve done work for them before. Plus, we even hired Mark.”
“I know. And they always liked our work. Lew did say they loved your design,” he added. His voice trailed off and I knew what he was thinking. The project was major. It would have put us into the big leagues. Not to mention it would have paid a few bills.
“The whole thing stinks,” he said.
“We have no recourse?”
“They were pretty firm on it.”
“We should protest. Maybe we have a case.” I put my hand to my head because suddenly all I could think about was the fact that I had not seen a cent of child support since early fall.
“There’s nothing we can do about it. We can’t sue. We have no legal grounds. The bids were fair and square and Maritime Nautical just lost out. That’s the way it would play out with a lawyer.”
I sighed. “Great.” The two of us didn’t say anything for a while.
“Ally, I know this affects you, but I’ve been thinking about you. I’d like you back on board. I’d like the three of us to be Maritime Nautical again.”
“But you don’t have enough work.”
“I’ve been checking on a lot of stuff. There are a bunch of contracts we can bid on.”
I asked, “What about Mark?”
“We’ll have to let him go. I’m sure he wouldn’t want to stay, not with his credentials and talent.”
Why did the thought of not seeing Mark on a regular basis fill me with such sadness? I still could not quite believe it.
“Maybe we should meet this afternoon. I’d like to talk to Mark face-to-face. Jolene and I could come there, or you could come here.”
I said, “Why don’t you come over here? With Maddy, it would be easier for me.”
Rod said, “That’s what I figured. I’ll call Mark. See if he’s available.”
I felt my chest collapse. Finally I said, “He was just here yesterday. We went over plans for the interior.”
“Swell,” he said drily.
“How’s Jolene taking it?”
“I haven’t told her yet.”
“What do you mean you haven’t told her?”
“She’s out looking at baby furniture with her mother.”
“This doubly stinks,” I said.
“Ally?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m really sorry.”
“It’s not your fault.”
And when we hung up, Maddy came to me and I told her that we couldn’t go shopping for a while. I signed, “I have a very important meeting this afternoon here at the house. Rod and Jolene are coming over. And Mark, too.” And because we didn’t have an agreed-upon family sign for his name, I finger spelled it for her.
Immediately she grinned and placed the thumb and forefinger of each hand together at eye level, indicating that he wore glasses. She screwed up her mouth in the way that he smiled. Forever on, this would be our sign for him.
And then she paused, seemed to think and signed quickly, “It’s okay, we can get skates tomorrow.”
“Come here, pumpkin pie.” She did. And as I held my daughter, smelled the little-girl smell of her hair, I wondered how I was going to tell her that there would probably not be any new skates for a while.
When I backed away from her, I signed. “Maybe tomorrow we can go and have a look at Value Village for some skates.”
She immediately dropped her hands to her sides and stared at me. Then, frowning, she signed rapidly, “But you said new skates. New skates. New skates. New skates.” She kept repeating this last part, her fingers becoming wilder, stiffer with each repetition.
“I know, pumpkin pie, but sometimes things happen. And Value Village has good stuff. We go there a lot.”
She regarded me for a while without saying anything.
“A bad thing happened with my work,” I tried to explain.
“I know,” she signed without looking at me. “I heard you on the phone.”
I stared at her. Sometimes I’m astounded at how astute she is. She’s learned a fair bit of lip reading, plus she’s always been able to pick up on my moods.
“It’s not fair,” she said.
“I know,” I said. But by now my little daughter had shut her eyes tightly, turned her head away fiercely. When I tapped her shoulder, she held this pose. When I reached for her and stroked her hair, she jerked away.
Several times before my guests arrived, I went up to Maddy’s room, but as soon as she saw me enter, she would shut her eyes and scrunch up her face.
Downstairs, I cleaned up our lunch dishes and loaded the dishwasher. I got out the coffeepot. Maybe people would like coffee. Why did it ever occur to me that things would work in my favor? Why did I even bother trying?
I thought about Maritime Nautical and wondered if it was time to quit trying to survive on this freelance stuff and get a real job, like with a corporation, or a big company. I’ve got both a BA and an MA in Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering and I could be making a lot more money somewhere else. People with my kind of degrees are pulling in six figures at huge boat-building companies.
I slumped into my couch and got out the Halifax Chronicle and scanned the want ads. Not finding anything of interest in the Chronicle, I got up. Tomorrow I’d try to find a Saturday Globe and Mail. There are always more job ads in that paper. But there was one good reason why I wasn’t farther in my career, and that was Maddy. And for one awful minute I resented her. She was upstairs not speaking to me because I couldn’t afford new skates for her, and she was the reason I couldn’t make more money.
But that awful moment passed in an instant.
Just before Rod and Jolene were due to arrive I went up to her room one last time. She looked up from her ponies this time and signed, “Can I go to Miranda’s today?” Her mood seemed somewhat improved.
“I can’t drive you,” I said. “I have a meeting. And I don’t know if it’s okay with Miranda’s mother.”
“Can you phone her?”
I got on the floor and sat beside her. “How about if I call her when I go downstairs and see if Miranda would like to come over tomorrow. I’ll pick you guys up after school,” I said.
“Okay.”
I ran my fingers through her strawberry curls, untangling them. I signed, “What would you and Miranda like to do tomorrow?”
“Get new skates.”
“I don’t know about that.” But maybe I would rethink it. What was forty more dollars on my credit card?
I hugged her tightly for a few minutes before I went downstairs to call Miranda’s mother, Katie.
“I’ll pick her up,” I offered, after making the girls’ playdate.
“Great. Miranda will love that. Hey, did you get the notice about the deaf luncheon next month? It’s a fund-raiser.”
“Maybe. I think it came across my e-mail.” I closed my eyes. I may have deleted it.
Katie said, “But you’ve got that new job, right? So, you probably won’t be able to be involved? We’d love to have you come. How’s the job going?”
“Well, actually…” I paused, caught my breath. “Maybe I’ll come. Mark us down.”
Katie and I were friends. Our daughters were the same age and both deaf. They had been placed in the same regular classroom, where a full-time interpreter worked with them throughout the day. Katie was an extremely energetic woman who worked hard to help her daughter succeed. We had a lot in common, yet nothing in common. Katie didn’t work. She didn’t have to. Her husband’s job provided all the money they needed and then some. Katie devoted her life to the deaf community, making sure that Miranda had the best possible care and opportunities.
I was grateful to Katie for all the work she did on behalf of the deaf community. Sometimes I felt I didn’t have the time, strength or money to advocate for my daughter’s care the way Katie did. There are times when I feel so overwhelmed.
Katie and her husband also had another child, a hearing girl who was four. Plus, they went to church. I’m not sure which one. When they would ask me if Maddy could attend with them, I always said no, even though Maddy sometimes begged to go and they had a full-time sign-language interpreter on staff.
They never pressed. I was grateful for that. Katie knew nothing about where I came from and what had happened to me, and why I was so adamantly against church. She probably figured I’d been raised like most of the people my age, in a secular family. It would probably surprise her to know I knew a few Sunday School songs. They popped into my thoughts at the oddest moments, as did prayers.
Rod and Jolene arrived ten minutes later. Jolene hugged me. She was looking more and more radiant. The fringed ends of a skinny, shimmery scarf wound many times around her neck, draped down across her round belly. She also wore a set of long silver chandelier earrings. I asked, “And how are we feeling?”
“Both of us are healthy and happy and waiting for this little girl to show her face. Only a couple more weeks.”
I said, “Wow! I can’t believe it’s so soon.” I paused. “I thought you were shopping with your mother today.”
“Rod called me on my cell. He told me everything on the way over.” She smiled widely and said, “All I can say is this is probably a blessing in disguise.”
“How can you say that?”
“You guys’ll do just great. Rod is talented and, Ally, you’re so brilliant. You have nothing to worry about. My husband, Mr. Perfection, will have no trouble getting more contracts. There’s already a bunch of stuff we’re working on bids for.”
“But this one was so big.”
“Don’t give it another thought.”
I’ve always thought it strange that this glass-is-half-full person married someone like Rod, whose glass is usually half-empty. But I guess between them they end up with a full glass, so it works. Rod spread out sheets filled with numbers and figures on my dining-room table, while Jolene leaned against the wall and talked with me about baby furniture.
Some might say Jolene’s nose is a bit too long and too pinched—aquiline, she calls it—and her lips too thin to be attractive by today’s standards. Yet Jolene has an individuality. Her black plastic rectangular glasses only add to her look.
“But this was our chance at the big leagues,” I said.
“You guys are already in the big leagues, especially you, Ally. What I want to know is how is the Maddy?”
“She’s upstairs, barely speaking to me.”
“No, I mean, your boat design, the Maddy.”
“Oh,” I said, “I get to it every now and then.” Named for my daughter, the Maddy was the name I’d given to my design.
“Maybe this is what you and Rod should be working on. That’s what I vote for and speaking of the other Maddy, would she mind if I went up and said hello?”
“She likes you. Maybe you can get her out of her mood.”
After she left, Rod tapped the papers with his pen. “The problem is that we made the mistake of putting all our eggs in one basket.”
He was about to say something more when the doorbell rang. My heart skipped a little beat. Mark had arrived. Self-consciously I checked my reflection in the hall mirror before I answered it. Hair a mess as usual. And why hadn’t I at least put on a bit of makeup? And what was I thinking with this old sweatshirt? And why was I thinking about Mark in this way, anyway? As soon as Rod told him the news, he’d be gone and on to another job. A thought struck me as I opened the door: I should show him my Maddy boat design. I quashed that idea just as soon as I answered the door and he smiled down at me.
“Come in,” I said. “Rod and Jolene are here already.”
His eyes lingered on mine for a moment. “Must be a serious meeting,” he said.
“Let me take your coat.” He shrugged out of his green jacket. As I hung it up I noted the fraying around the collar. He probably needed this job as much as I did.
Mark hadn’t even had a chance to sit down before Rod broke the news. “The project’s been pulled out from under us. That’s the reason for this meeting.”
Mark stopped in his tracks. “Wow, how’d that happen?”
“Stupidity,” Rod said. “On my part. I should have been more aware. It was my fault for hiring too fast and too soon, for hiring both of you before it was in the bag.” Rod placed both hands flat on the table. Mark and I sat down next to each other and across from him. I was conscious of how close Mark was to me.
“Jolene and I have the money to keep both you and Mark for a couple of weeks if you want,” Rod said. “There are a couple of other projects we’re bidding on. I don’t want to be unfair about this. You’ve done a lot of work already and I want to make sure you’re fairly compensated.”
Mark tapped his long fingers on the table. He took off his glasses, folded them shut and placed them on the table. I heard a thump from upstairs, wondered if I should run up there and check on Maddy, decided not to when I heard no more. Jolene was up there. Jolene could take care of it.
Mark said, “To say I’m not disappointed would be a lie. I’ve really enjoyed working with Ally on this.” He seemed to move a little closer to me when he said this. I felt a heat rise in my face. He went on, “But, I’ve been in this business long enough to know how things work. And how sometimes they don’t work the way we plan.” Quietly, he added, “I know God will have something else for me….”
I was very still as I looked at a spot on the table. I flicked at it with a fingernail. His casual reference to God unnerved me. I’m impressed with people who refer to God in casual conversation, like a friend. Even when I did go to church regularly, God was never someone who looked out for the little things in life. Mark had stopped talking and was staring at the stack of computer printouts about Larry Fremont and Paul Ashton that I had placed beside my computer. Right on top was an article about Ashton’s death with a full color picture of the man. I could kick myself for leaving these things right out there in the open.
Rod started in about future bids and direction while Mark stared at my printouts. His eyes were still on them when he said, “I could always go back to Florida. There might be work for me there…back at the marina.”
I listened as Rod talked about future projects, about future ideas and directions. I could barely concentrate. More than anything I wanted to grab that stack of papers from beside my computer and shove it deep within the confines of my garbage can.
When we were finished I asked if anyone would like coffee. I’d made some.
“Not me,” Jolene said emerging from the hallway and holding Maddy’s hand. “But if you have any herbal tea, I’d kiss your little ears.”
She signed as she spoke, and Maddy burst out laughing. Jolene’s hair was held back, I noticed, by one of Maddy’s pink butterfly barrettes. The three of us females went into the kitchen.
Jolene maneuvered herself into one of my kitchen chairs and we chatted about how she was feeling, signing at the same time so Maddy could be part of the conversation. When I first started studying American sign language, Jolene joined me. She’s now fairly fluent and says she’s planning to teach her own baby to sign before she even speaks.
Jolene was also with me when I first understood that Maddy was deaf. My baby didn’t turn to loud noises. I would stand to one side of her and clap my hands and she wouldn’t turn or flinch. I would stand behind her and call her name. Nothing.
I’d sit on my couch and rock back and forth and hope I had it wrong. Maybe it was something simple. But I knew the worst one day while visiting Rod and Jolene and we were outside in the backyard. A truck rumbled by. Just as it neared the house it backfired. The sound was loud and excruciating. All of us jumped. Maddy sat in her high chair and grinned.
Jolene went with me the next day when I took her to the doctor and then the audiologist who confirmed my suspicion. She was profoundly deaf, cause unknown.
I knew absolutely nothing about deafness then or caring for a deaf child. I barely knew that there was a sign language. Through the years I’ve learned enough to fill a bookshelf. And I have. I have many books on deafness. I have pamphlets and printouts from the Internet, information on the deaf culture, signing, and hundreds of government leaflets and pamphlets on everything from implants to hearing aids to deaf literacy. Amassing this information, learning everything I can, meeting and talking with many deaf people has been, practically, my full-time job since Maddy was born.
My own career took a back seat.
By the time we went back to the dining room with mugs of coffee on a tray, Rod was hunched into his laptop, furiously clacking at the keys, and Mark had actually picked up the sheaf of papers I’d printed and was leafing through them. He raised his eyebrows at me when I came in.
I put the tray on the table and Mark asked me if he could see my boat design. I said, maybe. He carefully put the printouts back beside my computer aligning the edges and stacking them precisely. He patted the stack as a final gesture.
I stirred in milk and sugar and said, “Did you guys find anything?”
Rod said, “We’ve been surfing the Web for possible projects.”
Jolene said, “I think you should work on the Maddy.”
“The what?” Mark said.
“Oh, it’s nothing,” I said.
“It’s not nothing,” Jolene said. “It’s Ally’s idea for a slick, one-person racing sailboat.”
His eyes brightened. “Really? I’d like to see that.”
“Maybe sometime. It’s not ready. Have some coffee.”
While we drank our coffee and Maddy played with her ponies on the floor, Mark tried to get me to talk about my design. Just like the previous day, when the meeting naturally came to an end, Mark didn’t rise to leave first.
I handed Mark his coat, and said that I guessed the meeting hadn’t been all that bad and how I was happy to get to work together for a little bit longer.
“I would like to continue working with you,” he said.
“Well, yes, it’s been fun.”
He paused, took a breath and said quietly, “May I ask why you printed out all those news articles on Paul? If you don’t want to answer, you don’t have to. If I’m prying, that is.”
“I was interested in the story.”
“You always print off random articles?” He paused. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t pry.”
“No, uh. It’s okay.” I paused. “Maybe you should know, especially because you knew Paul Ashton. Larry Fremont and I grew up in the same town.”
His eyes widened.
“So, um, naturally, I was curious. His mother owned the mine that employed ninety percent of the people in our town.”
“Did your father work in the mine?” His eyes were hooded when he looked at me and I couldn’t read his expression. Did I imagine it or did his eyes take on an intensity that wasn’t there before? Imperceptibly, I backed away slightly from him, but then I realized what it was. He knew Paul Ashton and Paul Ashton had died. No wonder he seemed intense, sad today. Anyone would, given those circumstances.
I shook my head, looked away from his piercing glance. “My father is a pharmacist. Fremont sent most of his business our way, so yes, I guess you could say that we, too, were employed by the Fremonts. My family moved to PEI when the mine closed.” I tried to keep the nervousness out of my voice, but his eyes were frightening me. To change the subject I quickly asked, “How are the Ashtons today?”
Êîíåö îçíàêîìèòåëüíîãî ôðàãìåíòà.
Òåêñò ïðåäîñòàâëåí ÎÎÎ «ËèòÐåñ».
Ïðî÷èòàéòå ýòó êíèãó öåëèêîì, êóïèâ ïîëíóþ ëåãàëüíóþ âåðñèþ (https://www.litres.ru/linda-hall/shadows-on-the-river/) íà ËèòÐåñ.
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