I assured Tina I wouldn’t. I planned to count on Mel more than I ever had. More than I ever expected I would.

The cab was in front of the house, the driver getting out of the car.

PEOPLE WASTE TIME AT AIRPORTS, thanks to all the security. I wasted no time at all. I spent an hour on the pay telephones, calling ahead to Walter Freeman, to Harold Hayashida, to Mike Pilato, to Glynnis Dalgetty, to Maude Blair, to Tom Grychuk, and, of course, to Mel.

“I’ll meet you at the airport,” Mel said when I told him I was returning, and I insisted no, I needed to follow up on something else, and I asked him, almost begged him, to see me that evening, because without him nothing could be done.

Mel told me I wasn’t making sense. “Josie, nothing’s happened since you left yesterday. There’s nothing new to talk about, just a lot of investigations going on. At least give me an idea what we’ll be looking for, who we’ll be looking at, who’ll be involved.”

So I told him. “Grychuk.”

“Who?”

“Tom Grychuk. He operates the lift bridge. Over the canal.”

“How does he fit in? He’s not even on our radar.”

“They’re calling my flight. I have to go. Tell me you can see me tonight.”

“I can see you any night,” he said, which was just what I didn’t want to hear at the moment.

“I’ll call,” I began to say around the lump in my throat, then began again. “I’ll call you at seven. On your cell. All right?”

They hadn’t called my flight yet. I just couldn’t bear to keep speaking to him with so much distance separating us.

I FELL ASLEEP SOMEWHERE OVER ALBERTA and woke when the pilot dropped the aircraft heavily in Toronto, landing the plane as though knocking a bookcase to the floor.

I headed for the arrivals area with my carry-on bag, running through all the things to be done when I arrived home and pushing aside a few small niggling doubts. I knew enough to be sure about what happened to Gabe and why, but the few details I lacked kept gnawing at my confidence like mice on a pantry door.

Walking through the sliding doors and into the concourse where the taxis and limos waited, I saw the friends and relatives of passengers watching the doors like spectators at a dull baseball game. The only person who stood out was a tall, gap-toothed man in a blue chauffeur uniform smiling back at me and holding a white cardboard sign with mrs. marshall scrawled across it in black crayon.

“Hello, Alex,” I said. Alex reached for my carry-on bag, which I snatched away from him. “How’s Tina?”

From behind the wheel, Alex informed me that Tina had reserved the limousine and insisted on paying the fare. From the back seat, I informed Alex that it was very nice of Tina and I was going to enjoy her generosity and his careful manoeuvring of the limousine, but I was not going to take part in any damn conversation on the way.

Alex nodded and looked hurt.

It took forty-five minutes to reach the beach strip. It felt like forty-five hours.

When Alex opened the door, I stepped out, thanked him, walked directly to my front door, unlocked it, and collapsed on the living-room sofa. I needed five minutes alone to gather my thoughts and my courage again. When I had done so, I made a few more phone calls.

26.

Mother looked up in surprise when I entered her room. Her expression suggested that she thought something was wrong, perhaps with her memory. Hadn’t I left the day before, saying I would be gone for a week? Had a week passed? Had she missed five days of her dwindling life, lost somewhere in the routine of eating, sleeping, and waiting?

“I’m all right,” I said, hugging her. “I came back early because I have something important to do.”

I brought us tea from the commissary, ignoring glances from staff members. Back in her room, Mother waved at the television set, indicating that I should turn it off, then reached for the blackboard and wrote on it, Talk to me. What is wrong?

I wanted to cry, so I did. Just a little, enough to dampen my eyes and wet my cheeks. I realized for the first time that we had both lost the men we loved, lost them in terrible ways. Not slowly, to disease or decline, but violently and agonizingly. When you lose someone in that manner, you lose something else as well. You lose the sense that the world is a good place, and at times a beautiful place. It’s more than losing your innocence; we all lose our innocence earlier than we know. When someone we love is taken from us in a brutal manner, we lose our sense of home, our notion that we can withdraw to a place where we are loved unconditionally.

When Mother saw me crying, she reached to wipe my cheeks and brought her lips to them and kissed me. Had she been able to speak, I know she would have repeated words to me that she had spoken when we lived in the house near the steel mills, when my father carried a lunch box to work each morning, and the lunch box contained a sandwich made with more mustard than meat, wrapped in waxed paper, along with a Thermos of hot tea and perhaps a piece of cheese or an apple, and sometimes a note from Mother. Tina found one of the notes when she was ten and I was seven. The note said, Always remember.

“Always remember what?” I asked.

“Always remember that she loves him, you ignorant twerp,” Tina said.

I began apologizing for the pain I knew I had caused Mother, especially in the years before I married Gabe, when I had met men in bars and discos and once while hitchhiking home, and the harsh words I used when she tried to caution me.

She lifted my face when I began telling her how sorry I was for all the ways I had let her down, for all the times I had not been here with her, for all the nasty things I had said to her, and all the sweet things I should have done and failed to do. She held up her finger and shook her head, silencing me. Reaching for the blackboard, she began writing on it, glancing up at me from time to time before handing it to me, her eyes waiting for my reaction.

She had written: Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart. It was a Hallmark moment.

“That’s lovely, Mother,” I said.

She beamed with pride, took the blackboard from me, erased the words, and wrote, Because a thing seems difficult for you, do not think it impossible for anyone to accomplish.

Like many women of her generation, Mother had qualities that the world refused to acknowledge because it refused to grant her the opportunity to reveal them. I had known this about her, but never expected she was capable of spouting such wisdom. “This is wonderful,” I said. “Any more? I can use a little backbone right now.”

Another smile, another swipe of her arm over the blackboard, and she added, in her lovely cursive writing, You have power over your mind, not over outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.

This wasn’t Mother speaking. She was a wonderful, wise woman, but …

“Where are you getting this?” I asked. I believe I raised one eyebrow.

She laughed, silently of course, reached into the wheelchair cushion beside her, and withdrew a paperback edition of The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius that had been Gabe’s, and that I had brought to her a few weeks ago.

“That’s quite a leap you made,” I said. “From Elmore Leonard to Aurelius. You almost had me fooled, quoting a Roman who’s been dead two thousand years or so.” I reached to give her another hug. “Thanks for this,” I said. “I’ll see you tomorrow, and I think I’ll have good news.”

When I released her, she was looking at me, her mouth shaping an O and her eyes sparkling at the idea that her daughter would finally bring her good news. Then she reached for her pad again and wrote, Mel Holiday?