Of course there was no reply. Donna wouldn’t be in the basement.
She hated going down to the basement for any reason at all. And if the
light was burned out, forget it. Donna had always been afraid of the dark.
She didn’t even have a washing machine down there. Madeleine closed
the door to the cellar and went back through the house. She was going to
feel pretty darn silly when Donna called her this afternoon and told her
she was—well, wherever she was. She felt the prickle of fear again, but
forced it down. She was a practical woman, if nothing else.
Madeleine filled Samantha’s water dish and left the house, closing
the door behind her. She thought briefly of locking it, then decided not
to. No one locked their doors in Parr’s Landing. Then she drove back
across town to her home on Blossom Street to make some phone calls.
Billy sat in a back booth
at the Pear Tree Café and Breakfast Nook on
Main Street eating his breakfast when the young cop parked his cruiser
outside and walked up to the counter. Billy heard the cop order two
coffees to go: one black, and one double-double.
What Parr’s Landing needs is a doughnut shop,
Billy thought dryly.
He would have liked to make the joke to the cop’s face, but suspected
that Constable McKitrick was lacking a sense of humour where Billy
was concerned. He went on eating his breakfast and hoped McKitrick
wouldn’t notice him. But the café was small and McKitrick was a cop, and
you didn’t get to be a cop—even in Parr’s Landing, Ontario—without at
least rudimentary observational skills, so he braced himself.
McKitrick gave the room a once-over. His glance lighted on Billy at
the far table and he walked over, leaving the takeaway coffee cups on the
counter.
“Dr. Lightning,” Elliot said.
“Constable McKitrick.” Billy replied with cool politeness. “How are
you this morning?”
“Very well, sir. Thank you. Still here, I see.”
“Well, I try not to rush my breakfast, constable,” Billy replied. “At my
age, it’s not good for the digestion.”
Two red spots appeared high on McKitrick’s cheekbones. “I mean in
Parr’s Landing, Dr. Lightning,” he said stiffly. “How long are you planning
to stay, exactly?”
“I don’t know, constable.” Billy had already taken as much of this
as he was going to take from this stupid redneck cop. “As I understand
it, it’s a free country, and I am a citizen of that free country. Are you
enacting the War Measures Act in Parr’s Landing, constable? Has there
been another October Crisis, except involving visitors to Parr’s Landing
this time instead of rogue French Canadians? Or is it just that I’m an
Indian?”
“Think you’re tough, do you, sir?” Elliot said, too softly for anyone
at the surrounding tables to hear. He leaned in close to Billy’s face. “I’m
warning you—”
Billy raised his own face to Elliot’s level and met his gaze. “No,
constable,
I’m
warning
you
. If you continue to harass me, you’re going to
find out the hard way that your harassment is a mistake on your part. I’m
sure that in this town, your word is law. But I’m not from here, Constable
McKitrick. I’m a tenured professor at a major university. I am also well connected. There’s a telephone in my motel room that makes long distance calls. Unless you want to find yourself transferred to some shit ass northern outpost that makes Parr’s Landing look like Paris, France,
my advice to you is that you back off.”
Billy was bluffing a little bit, but he was gambling on the cop not
knowing by how much. Apparently, it worked: Elliot dropped his eyes
and took a half step backwards. Billy leaned back in his seat.
So intent on their standoff were the two men that neither noticed
the blonde woman in the dark green sweater until she tapped Elliot on
the shoulder and said, “Excuse me, are you Elliot? Elliot McKitrick?”
Billy looked up, surprised, and Elliot turned around.
“You don’t recognize me, do you?” The woman smiled at Elliot and
said, “I used to be Christina Monroe. Now I’m Christina Parr. You know—
Jeremy’s sister-in-law? I think you’re a friend of Jeremy’s, aren’t you?”
Billy, whose first thought had been that this woman was too
beautiful to be a local, was watching Elliot’s face for a reaction, wondering
how anyone who looked like Christina Parr—presumably some member
of that family of Parr’s, the local gentry—could have any possible
connection to a buffoon like Elliot McKitrick. He was surprised by Elliot’s
reaction. In lightning-fast succession, the colour drained from the cop’s
face, then returned with a vengeance, rising from the line where his
uniform collar met his neck to the top of his hairline. Elliot hadn’t made
a sound. But if his reaction had been audible, it might have sounded like
the sharp, automatic intake of breath the human body makes when it’s
plunged into a lake that’s colder than expected on a hot summer day.
Billy immediately liked Christina Parr, if only because she’d inexplicably
managed to ruffle this smug bully’s veneer of authority. Billy wondered
if they’d ever been a couple, but dismissed the notion, as much out of
enlightened self-interest as his growing conviction that Christina Parr
was so far out of this cop’s league as to render the notion beyond absurd.
“Oh, hey—of course,” Elliot said, recovering some composure.
“Chris! Good to see you. I was sorry to hear about Jack.”
“Thanks, Elliot.” Her neutral gaze never left Elliot’s face. “You look
well.”
“Thanks, Chris,” he said. “You, too. It’s been—what, fifteen years?”
Christina nodded. “About that. So,” she said. “You joined the police
force. I’m not surprised. Good for you. I knew you’d make something of
yourself.”
“So—how's Jeremy? It’s been at least as long since I’ve seen him.
How’s he doing?”
Christina smiled again, but Billy noted that there appeared to
be subtitles to the entire conversation between her and Elliot. This
particular smile didn’t seem entirely friendly.
“He’s fine, I guess. I could have sworn he told me this morning that
you and he had a beer together last night at O’Toole’s, out on Davenport
Road? Did I get the name wrong? Was it one of his other friends he ran
into?”
Again, Elliot blushed. “Oh, yeah, right! Sorry, Chris—yeah, I did
run into him there last night.” He indicated the takeaway coffee on the
counter with a sideways jerk of his head. “Long day yesterday. Not enough
coffee yet today.” He laughed, as though he had made some sort of joke.
When Christina said nothing in reply but only continued to smile that
peculiar, knowing smile, Elliot cleared his throat and said, “Well, back
to the station. Good to see you, Christina. Welcome back. I wish it were
under different circumstances, though. Again, I’m sorry about Jack. He
was a good man.”
“Yes, he was,” she said. “Thanks, Elliot. I’ll tell Jeremy I ran into you.”
This seemed to fluster the cop even more. He nodded briskly and
went back to the counter to collect the two cups of coffee. He didn’t look
back at either Christina or Billy when he pushed open the door of the
café. In silence, they both watched the cruiser drive off down Main Street.
Billy exhaled. “Whew,” he said. He looked at Christina and said, “So,
friend of yours?”
“He is—was—a friend of my brother-in-law’s,” she said, her eyes
still on the departing cruiser. “I haven’t seen him for a long time. I’ve
been away.”
“Not the friendliest sort,” Billy said neutrally. If there was a backstory
here, he didn’t want to get off on the wrong foot with her by accidentally
putting that foot in his mouth. He was still wagering that there wasn’t
one, but there was no point in risking it. It had been a long time since
he’d been as attracted to a woman as he was to this Christina Parr.
You’re an idiot,
Billy chided himself. You’re not a romantic,
you’re
a cynic. And this woman isn’t just out of the cop’s league, she’s out of yours.
She’s too beautiful for either of you.
Christina shrugged. “This is a hard place,” she said sadly. “Life is
tough up here in these little northern towns. It’s mean. It does things to
people. It’s one of the reasons my husband and I left. My late husband, I
mean. I’m sorry. I’m still not used to saying ‘late husband.’”
“I’m sorry,” Billy said sincerely. “For your loss, I mean.” He half-rose
from his seat and extended his hand. “I’m Billy Lightning.”
“Christina Parr,” she said. Billy was acutely aware of the softness of
her hand in his, and of its apparent fragility. Everything else in Parr’s
Landing had been hard, or rough, from the people to the topography. Her
hand felt like a sparrow had landed in his palm, one he might accidentally
crush if he squeezed it too hard.
“Forgive me if I’m being too forward,” Billy said, “but would you care
to join me? I’m not from here. I’m just visiting.”
Christina glanced around the café. While she and Elliot had been
talking, the two remaining tables had been taken and she had no desire to
sit at the counter with her back to the rest of the patrons. Some residual
sense of small-town sensitivity to gossip rolled over in its sleep in the
back of her mind, but since nothing good had ever come to her from
this particular small town—and because if her “reputation” was that
vulnerable to gossip, it was likely already toast when she got pregnant
and ran off with Jack Parr—and mostly because she’d never been lonelier
or more eager for a neutral conversation with another adult that wasn’t
fraught with subtext—she found herself saying to Billy Lightning,
“Thank you, yes. I can’t stay—I’m just going to have a cup of coffee. I have
errands to run.”
“Please,” Billy said, indicating the empty seat in front of him. “I’d
enjoy the company.”
Christina sat down at the booth. For a moment the two of them
sized each other up in the way that men and women meeting for the
first time under potentially complicated circumstances do—Christina
trying not to be conscious of the looks they were getting from a few of
the patrons of the café, and Billy not giving a damn about them, except
for her sake. He hoped he hadn’t made a mistake in inviting her to sit
down like this. Of course, all of this happened without either of them
giving each other any clue of what they were thinking.
“So,” Christina began. “You’re not from here, obviously. How do you
like it?”
“Not much,” Billy said honestly. “They’re not very friendly to
outsiders.” He didn’t add,
especially outsiders who look like me,
but Christina
seemed to understand what he meant. She favoured him with a smile that
was sympathetic but noncommittal, as though she were acknowledging
the root of his problem—the fact that he was an outsider, and a Native
outsider at that—but allowing him the space to elaborate, or not, as he
saw fit or was comfortable. He was touched by her sensitivity.
“My husband and I left when we were very young,” Christina said.
“We moved to Toronto just before our daughter was born. We raised her
there, so nothing about this place is familiar to her. It has no memories.”
“Did you come back to be with family?”
Something passed over Christina’s face. “In a way. My mother-in law is here,” she said. “My daughter hadn’t ever met her, and I thought it
would be a good time for her to get to know her a bit. It’s a big house, so
we’ll be staying for a while.”
“Of course—the big house on the hill. The one that looks a bit like a
Norman chateau.”
Christina raised her eyebrows. “A Norman chateau? I have to say,
I’ve never heard it described that way before. Lots of ways, but never
like that.” Her curiosity was piqued and she took a second, closer look
at the man in front of her who spoke so politely and made references to
Norman chateaus. “Where are you from, Mr. Lightning?”
“Please, call me Billy,” he said. “I’m originally from Benson, a tiny
little town way outside of Sault Ste. Marie. When I say ‘way outside,’ I
mean ‘way outside.’ I was adopted when I was twelve by a family from
Toronto. I grew up there, except for graduate school—so basically, I guess,
the short answer to that question is, Toronto. Like you,” he added.
“Graduate school?”
“You sound surprised.”
“No, it’s not that,” she said. Now it was Christina’s turn to be
flustered. “It’s just . . . my husband—my
late
husband, Jesus I need to get
used to saying that—and I never went to university. We barely escaped
high school here by the skin of our teeth. What did you study in graduate
school?”
“Lots of different things,” he said neutrally. “A lot of history. I’m a
cultural anthropologist at Grantham University, in Michigan.”
“Now I’m impressed!” she said, laughing.
She has a beautiful laugh,
Billy thought, feeling absurdly flattered to
be the source of it.
“So, you’re not ‘Mr.’ Lightning, you’re ‘Professor’ Lightning.”
“Only to my students. And then, only in the classroom. I’ve always
preferred ‘Billy’ to anything else. My father was the first person to call
me ‘Billy.’ At the residential school, they always called me ‘William.’ It
took a long time for me to hear ‘William’ without a lot of bad memories.”
“Billy it is, then. So, Billy, what on earth are you doing here? I know
why I’m back, but what would bring a university professor to this shi . . . I
mean, godforsaken town? Sorry, I’ve only been back a couple of days and
my language is already starting to suffer.”
“It a shitty town,” he confirmed. “There you go. I said it so you
don’t have to.” He signalled to the waitress, then said to Christina, “You
still don’t have any coffee.”
When the waitress had refreshed Billy’s coffee cup and brought
Christina a cup of her own, Billy continued. “To answer your question,”
he said, “I’m here because my father passed away recently. He’d done an
excavation up here at Spirit Rock in the early 1950s, on the site of the
St. Barthélemy Ojibwa mission, the Jesuit mission from the 1700s. My
father was a cultural anthropologist as well, at the University of Toronto.
I was on his crew in 1952. Some strange things happened on that dig. My
father’s death . . . well, my father’s death wasn’t accidental. I have some
notion that it might be somehow connected to the work he did in Parr’s
Landing in the fifties.”