The Brutal Heart Read online

  “What happened?”

  “I introduced myself, and Leo took a swing at me. Strong kid,” Zack said admiringly.

  “Did you swing back?”

  “God, no. I remembered my own days in rehab. Our most potent weapon was our catheter. Disconnect one of those, aim it, and -”

  I put up my hand. “I get the picture.”

  Zack smiled at the memory. “Anyway, I let Leo flail away and rant about how unfair it was that he had to spend the rest of his fucking life in a fucking wheelchair. And when he was finished, I told him I’d be back the next day and I wheeled off in my fucking wheelchair.”

  I shook my head. “How come you never told me this?”

  “The kid deserved his privacy, and when I met him, he was not at his best. Leo was a tough case. I must have gone there every day for three solid weeks before he finally cracked.”

  “You won him over with your charm,” I said.

  Zack shook his head. “No, I bought him off with a T-shirt I got on the Internet. On the front there was a cartoon of a guy in a wheelchair saying, ‘I’m only in this for the parking.’ ”

  “And the cartoon got through to Leo?”

  “Something did. He stopped yelling, and we started talking. He turned out to be a really nice kid. We still keep in touch.”

  “So where’s Leo now?”

  “At U of S, majoring in English, which, as Leo points out, is a lame subject anyway, so what the hell?”

  I took Zack’s hand. “We’re laughing again,” I said.

  “Yep, and we can freeze the frame right here if you want. I can tell you more uproarious stories about my adventures in rehab, and we can declare the subject of Cristal off limits.”

  “Except it’s always better to know than not to know,” I said. “So let’s have it. I’m assuming the fact that the DVDS went to other people besides you rules out Debbie Haczkewicz as the source.”

  “Absolutely,” Zack said. “So we’re back to square one.”

  “Square one times seven,” I said.

  “With a couple of significant differences.” Zack ticked off the points on his fingers. “My relationship with Cristal had been over for two years when she died, and you knew that I’d been with her.”

  “And the men who called this morning had wives who were still living in blissful ignorance,” I said.

  Zack lowered his eyes. “Right. And, of course, these guys are terrified that now that the genie is out of the bottle, they’ll lose their families.”

  “Maybe they should have thought of that sooner.”

  Zack pushed his chair back. “Jo, all of Cristal’s clients, me included, took a stupid risk, but what we should have done is no longer an issue. We have to deal with the stuff that’s hitting the fan now. And I need to know where it’s coming from.”

  “Talk to the other men,” I said.

  “That’s not a problem for you?”

  I shook my head.

  “I’d like to keep this whole thing as quiet as possible. Would it be all right if we met here tonight?”

  “Of course,” I said. “But, Zack, I’m assuming these are people I know.”

  “Some of them are,” he said, “and if it’s going to be awkward for you, say the word.”

  “It’s going to be awkward for everybody,” I said. “It might be wise to make sure Taylor and I have already left for the game when your guests arrive and that they’re gone by the time we get back.”

  “Got it,” Zack said. “To be fair, Jo, most of these people are decent. They’ve done something foolish and they’ve jeopardized things that should not have been jeopardized, but they’re not beyond the pale. Try to hang on to that.”

  “You think I’m being judgmental.”

  Zack’s dark eyes met mine. “I think none of us knows what goes on in other people’s bedrooms.”

  As soon as Taylor and I arrived at Luther, she spotted Blake Falconer’s Mercedes in the parking lot. “Hey, there’s Gracie’s dad’s car. Okay if I go in and find her?”

  “Uh-uh,” I said. “Gracie’s probably with her team, warming up. And there are going to be a lot of people at this game. In that new hoodie, you’re going to look like every other Luther student in the gym.”

  Taylor patted the emblematic lion on her shirt. “I want to fit in.”

  “Wherever you are, you fit in,” I said.

  Arms outstretched, Taylor did a 360-degree twirl, taking in the campus. “Isn’t this just the greatest?” she said.

  It was a green and gold evening in May. The sun was moving down in the sky and as its light hit the jets of water from the lawn sprinklers, it shattered into prisms, small rainbows blooming in the rich grass. The air was silky and filled with the sounds of spring: birdsong, young voices, and the rustle of new leaves in the wind.

  I put my arm around my daughter’s waist and squeezed. “You bet,” I said. “This is the greatest.”

  We didn’t need directions to the gym. It was half an hour till game time, but this game was being played for a charity and the halls were already choked with donors and students, most wearing the Luther black and gold, but many wearing the red and yellow of their rivals, the Spartans. Rowdy, animated, and flushed with excitement, the kids moved towards the gymnasium, where the hormones boiling inside them could erupt as soon as the whistle blew. The donors, many of them wearing smart scarves in the colours of their alma mater, were carried along by the crowd and by the hope that, when the whistle blew, their own hormones would kick in.

  I didn’t have any trouble spotting Ginny. She was sitting in the front row of the bleachers, wearing jeans, a sweatshirt, and a black ball cap. More than a few people glanced her way, but Ginny’s focus was her daughters, who were doing layups with the rest of their team. I sat down beside her. “Quite a crowd,” I said.

  “Ranch Ehrlo’s a good cause,” she replied, but her eyes stayed on her girls. When their coach whistled the team off the court, Ginny turned to me. “I’m glad you’re here. You, too, Taylor.”

  “Thanks for keeping seats for us,” Taylor said. “I hate sitting way up at the top.”

  “Me too,” Ginny said. “That’s why I always made sure I was in the game.”

  I laughed. “How did the door-knocking go this afternoon?”

  “Not bad. No one threw stones at me and no one called me a slut. Getting custody of the girls is helping.”

  “Good career move?” I said.

  Ginny made a moue of mock disgust. “You’re so cynical, Joanne.”

  We both laughed. “So what’s next?” I asked. “Milo called about the breakfast rally.”

  “Bring yogurt,” she said. “I have to choke down all that grease, but there’s no reason you should.”

  “This isn’t my first breakfast rally,” I said. “I know to bring yogurt.”

  “Good. Hey, Keith tells me he’s bounced a couple of ideas off you, and you’re brilliant.”

  “Keith overestimates my contribution,” I said. “They’re his ideas. I just confirm that they’re brilliant.”

  “Well, whatever you’re doing, thanks. This campaign is a mess. We need all the help we can get. Speaking of help, I really appreciate Mieka letting us shoot a couple of TV spots at her business.”

  “You’re taping at UpSlideDown? How did that happen?”

  “Keith arranged it. He said it would be perfect. It’s in the constituency, and those yummy mummies and their toddlers will help people forget my libidinous hijinks.”

  “And Mieka was all right with it?”

  Ginny’s smile was puckish. “My libidinous hijinks?”

  I laughed. “The TV spots. She’s not exactly right wing.”

  “I might be conservative, Jo, but I’m not a dinosaur. And the TV shoot was Mieka’s idea.”

  We were interrupted by a man who wanted Ginny’s autograph, then by a woman who asked Ginny if it was true she supported same-sex marriage. When Ginny said she did, the woman called her an abomination and huffed off. “I
believe I just lost a vote,” Ginny said mildly.

  I was reading the history of Ranch Ehrlo in the souvenir program, trying not to listen to Ginny defend her stance on Canada’s role in Afghanistan to a very angry young man, when I saw Blake Falconer. He was still wearing a suit and tie, but he looked unkempt. His eyes were red and swollen and his face was haggard. I went over and tapped him on the shoulder.

  “Hi there,” I said.

  For a moment, it seemed he couldn’t quite place me. “Sorry,” he said. “I wandered off there for a bit.”

  “Are you okay?”

  He tried a smile. “Bad day. But Gracie’s playing, so here I am.”

  “Why don’t you sit with us?” I said. “Ginny saved a place for Zack, but he has a meeting.”

  Blake nodded. “I’m aware of the meeting.”

  “Did you get a DVD?”

  “No. My relationship with Cristal was… different.” His voice broke. “Jesus, the hits just keep on coming, don’t they?” He took out a handkerchief and blew his nose.

  “When was the last time you got some sleep?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  I touched his arm. “Go home and go to bed,” I said. “I can bring Gracie by after the game.”

  “Thanks, but she always looks for me in the stands.”

  He sat beside me, head down, staring at the gleaming wood of the gym floor. Only when the teams were announced, did he raise his eyes. Gracie flushed and freckled, her explosion of red curls tamed into a ponytail, swept the stands with her eyes, found her dad, gave him the thumbs-up, and ran into place. The Brodnitz twins, sleek in the Luther black and gold, had already found their places, and they were bouncing lightly on their toes, impatient to start.

  When the whistle blew, the stands erupted. At first it seemed the teams were evenly matched. Close to the half, the score was 32-26 for Luther. The fans leapt to their feet and stayed there despite the rising temperature. Taylor knew nothing about basketball, but, her face shining with excitement, she was on her feet cheering or groaning whenever everyone else wearing the black and gold cheered and groaned. Only Blake and Ginny seemed immune to the contact high. Blake watched through unseeing eyes, his face frozen in a half-smile. The noise in the gym was ear-splitting, but Ginny observed the action with professional concentration. She didn’t cheer for her daughters: her connection to their game was deeper than that. When either of them took possession of the ball, Ginny would stretch her own strong wide hands, willing them to play their best.

  And after the half, their best was sensational. The coach might have been unwise in praising the Brodnitz twins so fulsomely to their teammates, but she hadn’t been inaccurate. The other young women on the team played with enthusiasm and skill; some, including Gracie Falconer, showed flashes of real ability, but Emma and Chloe Brodnitz were brilliant.

  Strong, quick, and tenacious, the twins generated their own force field: creating plays, leaping, shooting, scoring. Their game had nothing to do with chalkboards and strategies, and everything to do with body wisdom. They didn’t react. They seemed to know what was going to happen next, and when it happened, the twins were already there. Luther won: 72-48. The Brodnitz twins had been responsible for fifty of those points. As the opposing teams shook hands, Ginny permitted herself a small smile. During the obligatory team hug, Chloe and Emma remained distant, and they moved away from the celebration quickly. Em glanced in our direction, saw her mother, and she and Chloe ran over to our front-row bench.

  Ginny treated her daughters as peers. “Nice game,” she said. “A couple of plays that I imagine you’d like to reassess but, on the whole, great job.”

  Chloe gazed at the crowd. “Is Dad here?”

  “I don’t think so,” Ginny said.

  Em narrowed her eyes at her sister. “Get used to it. The case is over.” Then she turned to her mother. “You can come back to the locker room if you want. A couple of the girls said they’d like to meet you.”

  Ginny stood up. “My pleasure.” She turned to me. “See you at the breakfast?”

  “I’ll be there,” I said. “Em and Chloe, it was a thrill watching you tonight.”

  “Thank you. It was nice of you to come,” they said in unison.

  Gracie, a girl as generous as she was gregarious, finally broke from her teammates and came running over to us. Damp with perspiration, she was still making connections. “Taylor, there are some girls you absolutely have to meet. I know you’ll absolutely love them, and they’ll absolutely love you.”

  Taylor looked at me beseechingly. “Is it okay?”

  “Absolutely,” I said.

  Gracie rolled her eyes. “I overuse that word, don’t I?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “But you’re so absolutely great, nobody cares. Now, I think your father and I should get out of here. This room is a steam bath. We’ll meet you outside.”

  Gracie groaned and threw her arms around her father. “Dad, I didn’t even say hello to you. I am such a loser.”

  Blake buried his face in his daughter’s crinkly red hair. “You’re not a loser,” he said. “You’re the best thing that ever happened to me.”

  The sorrow in Blake’s voice was palpable. Gracie stepped back and gave her father a searching look. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine,” he said. “Joanne and I will meet you out front. It really is a steam bath in here.”

  Reluctant to have the evening end, students from both Sheldon and Luther were lingering in the halls, and progress was slow. When Blake and I finally made it out of the brightly lit school into the gentle half-light of gloaming, I took a deep breath. “Feel that coolness,” I said. “I’ve always loved this time of day.”

  “For a lot of years now, I’ve hated it,” Blake said. “When the sun goes down, there are no more distractions – it’s time to face reality.”

  “Is reality that bad?” I said.

  “Tomorrow’s Cristal’s funeral,” he said. “It doesn’t get any worse than that.”

  The sprinklers had been turned off, and as we walked the ground was cool and spongy beneath our feet.

  “Did she mean that much to you?” I asked.

  “She saved me,” he said flatly. “And if I hadn’t been such a coward I could have saved her.”

  The relationship among the partners and families of Falconer Shreve was particularly intimate. We lived within blocks of one another in the city, we all owned cottages on the same bay at the lake, and the daughters of three of us were close friends.

  In the year in which they articled, the members of the Winners’ Circle went their separate ways. Delia Wainberg went to the Supreme Court; Blake, Kevin, and Chris Altieri were scooped up by big-name law firms outside the province; Zack went to a small firm in Regina where he got tons of court time, very little supervision, and wasn’t the token guy in the wheelchair. All five of them had lucrative employment offers when their articling year was over. The money was tempting, but none of the members of the Winners’ Circle gave a moment’s consideration to anything other than practising law together.

  There had been discussion about the order in which their names would appear on the office door and letterhead. Sensibly they headed off the problem of wounded egos by consigning the decision to fate. Delia Wainberg was a runner, so the members of the Winners’ Circle threw their names into one of her cross-trainers and the boy who delivered the pizza did the honours. No one complained. They moved into an office above a company that made dentures, painted the name Falconer Shreve Altieri Wainberg and Hynd on the door, and looked forward to a glowing future.

  After twenty-five years, the glow had dimmed. Zack and Delia Wainberg were still true believers, dedicated to the law as it was practised by Falconer Shreve. Chris Altieri was dead, and after two years, his suicide was still a raw wound in the hearts of those who loved him. Kevin Hynd, having found the practice of law soul-scouring, left the firm for five years while he searched for answers; Chris’s death brought Kev
in back to the firm, but he was a changed man whose New Age beliefs did not always sit well with his old partners. And Blake Falconer, the lucky guy whose name had been picked first from Delia Wainberg’s cross-trainer, had turned out to be grimly fated for tragedy.

  I met Blake Falconer at the beginning of the last summer of his marriage. Despite the fact that even he had lost count of the number of times his wife had been unfaithful in their fifteen years together, Blake’s passion for Lily was still painfully intense. During the two months when the Falconer marriage ran out its last dark moments, I saw Blake almost every day, and I was struck by the gulf between his public and private lives. Professionally, he was a successful lawyer with a golden touch for real estate and development; privately, he was a driven man trying desperately to hold on to a woman determined to destroy herself. Ultimately, the demons that had driven Lily throughout her life claimed her. Until that night on the tranquil campus of Luther College, I hadn’t realized they had almost claimed Blake as well.

  After we found a bench where we could sit while we waited for our daughters, Blake fell silent. I was relieved. I’d heard enough about Cristal to last me for a long while, but it turned out Blake was just gathering his thoughts. Very quickly, he made it clear he needed to talk.

  “If it hadn’t been for Cristal, I think I might have killed Lily,” he said. “The first time I went to Cristal’s condo, I was so filled with rage that I could barely function. I’d never been with a prostitute, but I was crazy. Lily had taken off with somebody else – again. This time I saw her actually get into the truck with the man. He was the guy who delivered bottled water to our firm. Of course, Lily, as office manager, had chosen the company. It was called Pure.

  “The man’s name was Steve and he was nineteen years old – a bodybuilder and a real smartass. Before that day, when Lily wandered, I’d always been able to force myself into some sort of perspective. I’d think about Gracie and my partners and my friends and my career. But when I saw Lily get into the truck with that cretin… something snapped. I knew I couldn’t take it any more: the humiliation, the rage, the wreckage of everything we were supposed to be to each other. I had never been unfaithful to Lily – not once – but when I thought of her spreading those beautiful legs of hers for that animal…” He swallowed hard. “I wanted her to know how it felt.”