The Gifted Page 4

  “You don’t seem very enthusiastic now,” Zack said.

  “I’m not. There’s still a lot of unfinished business in that part of my life.”

  Zack’s dark eyes were probing. “Maybe it’s time to finish it.”

  Zack examined the DVDS and chose one. “This covers Sally’s early years.”

  “The years when she and I were close,” I said.

  “If I’m lucky, I’ll get to see you.”

  “If I’m lucky, you won’t,” I said. “I was a lumpy girl with braids. Sally was a beanpole, but she already knew how to light up a room.”

  Zack slid the DVD into the player and the screen was filled with images that were as familiar to me as the back of my hand. Muskoka chairs, bright with fresh paint, facing a sun-splashed lake. A raft bobbing on the waves. A dark green rowboat with yellow lifejackets folded neatly on the seats waiting beside the dock. I had spent sixteen summers at MacLeod Lake. I hadn’t been there in forty years, but when I looked at the dock, I could feel the pressure of the sun-warmed wooden slats against my stomach as I lay face down, peering through the cracks to watch a school of newly hatched catfish swim by.

  I took a deep breath.

  Always alert to my mood, Zack turned to me. “Are you all right?”

  “Nothing life-threatening,” I said, taking his hand. “Just blindsided by memories.”

  The camera moved to the beach and zoomed in on Sally and her father building a sandcastle. Both were tanned, long-limbed, and blond. Both wore swimsuits, and the slope of their shoulders as they bent to their work was identical. Beside them on the beach lay shovels, trowels, spatulas, palette knifes, spray bottles to keep the sand moist, and bowls and buckets to use as moulds and shapers. Des and Sally’s joy in each other and in the world they were creating was palpable.

  And then I came along. As soon as he saw me, Zack hit Pause. Frozen on the screen was a girl in an unflatteringly fussy bathing suit. One of my braids was coming loose, the skin on my nose was peeling, and I had a bandage on my knee.

  I grabbed for the remote. “Zack, hit Play. Please.”

  “I just want to look at you,” Zack said. “Your eyes have always been beautiful. It’s amazing to think that that girl grew up to be the centre of my universe.”

  “It’s amazing to think that that girl grew up to be the centre of anybody’s universe,” I said. “Now take your finger off Pause.”

  Zack started the DVD again, but the scene that followed made me cringe. Sally’s mother, Nina, had sent me down to the beach to call her houseguest, Ben, and her husband and daughter to lunch. When I relayed the message, Sally glared at me.

  “Tell her we don’t need lunch,” she said.

  “But Nina has everything ready,” I said. “And the table looks really pretty.”

  “She does that for you,” Sally said. “I don’t give a hoot about how the table looks, and she knows it.”

  When Des spoke to me, his voice was kind. “Joanne, why don’t you and Ben go up to the house and have some of Nina’s lovely lunch? Sally and I will get something later.”

  There was a final shot of the father and daughter back at work on the sandcastle and then the scene changed to the luncheon, and my nerves tightened.

  The table, covered with a snowy linen cloth that touched the grass, was set for five. There were individual bouquets of pansies in goblets at each place. Nina Love’s eyes were violet and her sundress was the shade of her eyes. Her complexion even in summer was pale; her skin seemed translucent and her hair was black, lustrous, and wavy.

  “They’re not coming,” I said. My tone was tentative. I was always afraid of disappointing Nina, but I soldiered on. “Des said he and Sally would get something to eat later.”

  Nina picked up two of the flower goblets and dumped their contents onto the grass. “No loss, Joanne,” she said in her deep, thrilling voice. “You and I will have more chance to talk to Ben.”

  She removed the dishes and silverware from the extra two places and lay them on the tea-table that held our lunch. Then she raised a graceful arm. “Sit anywhere, Ben. We’re having lobster salad, your favourite, Joanne. But first come over here and let me straighten your pretty hair.”

  The face of the girl who went to Nina glowed with love and gratitude. The sight of it sickened me.

  “Zack, I can’t take any more of this,” I said.

  Zack turned off the DVD. “Why don’t we move to the couch and neck?”

  Zack’s arms were warm and strong, and after a few minutes, I was able to talk. “I loved Nina, you know. She was my refuge. Nina always said that Sally didn’t want her, and my mother didn’t want me, so fate had brought the two of us together.”

  “A persuasive argument,” Zack said.

  “I didn’t need much persuading,” I said. “I wanted to be valued, and here was this beautiful, intelligent, charming woman offering me her heart.”

  “And she turned out to be a murderer,” Zack said quietly.

  “Yes,” I said. “She turned out to be a murderer, but it took me thirty years to discover that.” I stood. “The sun’s up. Let’s head over to the construction site. I could use some fresh air.”

  It was a good day for photographs: blue-skied, sunny, and still. Progress on the Racette-Hunter Centre had been rapid. The grading and the site preparation had been completed by early summer. The foundation was in and the framing was almost finished. The contractors were optimistic that the windows and doors could be in place by the end of the year. Zack had promised Margot Hunter that the centre would be open by Labour Day, and it seemed possible.

  Making our way across the rutted dug-up site was daunting, but thanks to Zack’s new rough terrain wheelchair, it was not impossible. Being involved in a construction project was bringing Zack the joy of a kid who’d received the entire line of Tonka trucks for Christmas. Most days there was little reason for him to be onsite, but he always found an excuse, and more often than not he invited me to join him to watch the big machines. I had been through the big machine phase with my sons, but Zack’s delight was hard to resist, and that fall the two of us spent hours in weather that ranged from brilliant to unbearable watching the building take shape.

  It had been Lauren Treadgold’s idea to give everyone with a significant involvement in the Racette-Hunter project a holiday gift: a red cashmere scarf and a personalized yellow hard hat. Everyone would also receive a framed copy of an onsite photograph of the group of which he or she was a member.

  That morning, Lauren was dispensing the hard hats and scarves from the back of her yellow Land Rover. She was hatless, revealing her signature side-parted gamine cut. Despite her form-fitting leather jacket, careful makeup, and smartly knotted red scarf, Lauren appeared tired. Her cheeks were pink with cold, but her eyes were shadowed and her smile was forced.

  I didn’t recognize the two men ahead of us in line, but both had the hearty, assured faces of the successful. Both were boyishly thrilled as they tried on their hard hats.

  I was uneasy, wondering if Lauren would say anything about her very public disappearance with Julian the night of the party. But as we stepped in front of her, Lauren’s expression was tight and unrevealing. “Wonderful day for the pictures, isn’t it?” she said. “There’s a cameraman from NationTV here, too. He’s planning to get some shots of Margot and Riel to use in the documentary about the building of the R-H Centre.” She turned towards the open hatch of the SUV to get our gifts. A pair of salukis peered at her over the top of the back seat. “Chill,” she said in the no-nonsense tone advised by obedience trainers.

  “I didn’t know you had salukis,” I said, grateful for a safe topic for light chat. “They’re gorgeous – and they’re admirably well behaved.”

  “We spend a lot of time together,” Lauren said. “Salukis are hunters, so they still run after anything that moves, but Dalila and Darius know how to listen.” She turned towards her dogs. “You do know how to listen, don’t you?”

  The dogs
wagged their silky tails in unison. “Great names,” I said.

  “Vince chose them – Egyptian names for the royal dogs of Egypt.”

  Lauren reached into the SUV and handed Zack and me our scarves and hard hats. Each of the scarves was tied with a dark-green grosgrain ribbon. It was a handsome, festive touch, and I was impressed with Lauren’s attention to detail. I took a quick peek inside my hard hat and saw the inscription with my name and the name and dates of the project.

  “This is an inspired gift,” I said. “The scarf is lovely, and people will hang on to these hats.”

  “I’m hoping so,” Lauren said. “We want our donors to feel an ongoing connection with Racette-Hunter.”

  She turned to Zack. “The Peyben board is first in line for photos. We’re taking the pictures in the area where the front doors to the building will be.”

  “Very clever,” Zack said. He began to turn his chair. “You’re doing a good job, Lauren.”

  “I take my responsibilities seriously, Zack – all of them.”

  Zack raised his head slowly to meet her eyes. “I’m glad to hear that. Vince has been a close friend of mine for more than twenty years.”

  “And I’m just his problematic wife,” Lauren said.

  Zack leaned forward. When he spoke, his voice was low. “I’m grateful for the work you’re doing for Racette-Hunter. But if you’re going to start playing with a boy who’s young enough to be your son, someone’s going to get hurt.”

  I’d expected Lauren to minimize her behaviour with Julian the night of the party. She didn’t. All she said was “I know what I’m doing,” and her tone was defiant.

  Zack continued to watch her face. His gaze seemed to unnerve her, and she moved back, momentarily losing her balance.

  “Watch your step, Lauren,” Zack said. Then he finished turning his chair around and we headed for the site where the photographs would be taken.

  Blake Falconer and Margot were already there, decked out in hard hats and red scarves. When Blake saw Zack and me, he held out his arms in welcome and looked up at the cloudless blue sky. “Couldn’t have asked for a more perfect day,” he said. “The gods are obviously smiling on the Racette-Hunter project.”

  Zack grinned. “You know, Blake, in your new incarnation as Little Mary Sunshine, you’re a real pain in the ass.”

  Blake was sanguine. “I like my new job.”

  “That’s a relief,” Margot said. She was eight months’ pregnant and feeling eight months’ pregnant. “As soon as this baby arrives, I’m planning to sweep everything off my plate and load it onto yours.”

  “Bring it on,” Blake said. “I couldn’t be happier.”

  It was tonic to see the transformation in Blake, who, during his time as a senior partner at Falconer Shreve, seemed always to be shadowed by a private sorrow. It had been clear to everyone who cared about Blake that he needed a life change; sadly, Blake’s chance for fulfillment came with Leland Hunter’s death.

  When Leland died, management of Peyben passed to Margot. Believing that Margot’s grief and lack of business experience would make her easy prey, the board pushed to change the direction Leland had charted for Peyben. Margot recognized what they were up to and delivered an ultimatum: any board member who was dissatisfied with the initiatives Leland had planned should resign immediately. The board assumed Margot could be brought to heel if they resigned en masse. She called their bluff, hired Blake as CEO, and asked him to select a new board.

  To a person, the members of that board were progressive, smart, and wholly dedicated to Margot and to Peyben’s interests. One of those interests was the building of the Racette-Hunter Centre, and several board members were also members of the Racette-Hunter working team.

  The only paid employees of that team were Riel Delorme and a small support staff. The rest were volunteers. Transforming a city block of slum housing and abandoned buildings into a multipurpose centre that would meet the needs of a diverse and often troubled community was a daunting task, but Zack had used the Swiss cheese approach and broken an unmanageable whole into manageable parts, each headed by someone with special knowledge of the field. Norine MacDonald, Zack’s executive assistant, and by his assessment “the second smartest woman he’d ever known,” coordinated the various departments. The board members were not people accustomed to taking orders, but they were good-natured as the photographer’s assistant, a pixie of a woman wearing a candy-cane-striped toque, barked out instructions about where they should place themselves for the photographs.

  Taylor didn’t have a class till second period, so she’d come to the construction site with Declan, who, since his father’s death, had been at Margot’s side learning the business. That morning Declan was nattily dressed in a charcoal grey wool suit, a pale grey shirt, and a red paisley tie. Except for his spectacular dreadlocks, Declan was the very model of a young businessman. As he took his place among the captains of finance, Taylor gave him a conspiratorial wink.

  When the photographer was satisfied, his pixie assistant shepherded off the members of the board who were not needed for the next shot and began bringing in the additional members of the working team. Ernest Beauvais motioned me over. “Do you know why Riel’s not here?” he asked.

  When I shook my head, Ernest frowned. “I was afraid of that.”

  “Is something the matter with Riel?” I asked.

  “I hope not,” Ernest said. “But he’s hit a bad patch.”

  Zack wheeled over in time to hear Ernest’s words. He was clearly exasperated. “Riel better get out of that patch, pronto,” he said. “People are waiting for him. Margot’s been trying his number, but the calls are going straight to voicemail.”

  “I’ll call Mieka,” I said. “She and the girls were planning to come with him.”

  My daughter answered on the first ring. “Hi,” I said. “The photographer’s assistant is assembling people for the picture of the working team. She needs Riel to be front and centre, and he’s not around.”

  Mieka sounded harried. “Could you ask them to rearrange the order of the shots? Riel isn’t … look, Mum. I’m sorry. We’ll be there in ten minutes. Please give everyone Riel’s apologies.”

  The photographer’s assistant had just finished getting everyone in place when I relayed Mieka’s message to Margot. Margot and Riel had worked closely on the NationTV special chronicling the mediation process. I knew Margot liked Riel, but she was visibly annoyed at his tardiness.

  Ernest stepped in. “I’ll handle this,” he said. He walked over and had a few words with the pixie, and within seconds she was moving the working team aside and replacing them with a crew of onsite construction workers.

  “I guess now we just wait,” Zack said.

  Fortunately, we didn’t have to wait long. It was only a few minutes before Mieka, Riel, and our granddaughters arrived. As soon as Madeleine and Lena spotted Zack and me, they charged towards us, clearly delighted to be having an adventure on a school day. Mieka and Riel lagged behind. Riel was wearing blue jeans and a leather jacket that was unzipped to reveal his pressed white shirt and the multicoloured woven Métis scarf tied around his waist. He went straight to Margot.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I had a bad night.”

  In truth, Riel did appear tired and ill. When she saw him up close, Margot’s face softened. “You’re here now, that’s what matters,” she said. She reached out and gave Riel’s arm an encouraging pat. “Time to put on our game face. The sooner we start, the sooner we’ll finish.”

  Vince Treadgold had arrived and joined us, too. He and Lauren were positioned together for the photographer and they seemed easy with each other. Despite the tensions that preceded the shoot, the photographs turned out well. So did the clip of Margot and Riel arranging evergreen boughs around the doorway of the centre. That shot would be the final scene of our documentary.

  There were several other permutations and combinations of personnel to be photographed that morning, but one was of s
pecial interest to Zack and me. We’d arranged to have a photograph taken of the two of us with Taylor and our granddaughters.

  The girls were already wearing their scarves, but there was a problem. Unlike everyone who’d been photographed, Taylor, Madeleine, and Lena didn’t have hard hats and Riel noticed.

  “Hang on,” Riel said. “You girls need hard hats. Racette-Hunter is a Safety First construction site.”

  Margot, Blake, and Riel handed their hats to the girls, and Mieka stepped in to adjust them so the girls’ faces weren’t shadowed. “Okay, young grasshoppers,” she said finally. “You’re ready for your close-up.” The photographer, Ivan Schmidt, had a grizzled beard and the meat hook hands, cauliflower ears, and battered nose of an ex-boxer. He had been gruffly efficient with the adults, but he was warm with Taylor and the girls.

  We all had fun posing, and when the shoot was over Mieka and Riel stood close as Ivan showed them the pictures. “These are really good,” Mieka said.

  “The young women are very appealing,” Ivan said.

  “We think so,” Riel said. A strand of Mieka’s hair had blown over her forehead. Riel reached out and smoothed it into place. “Mieka, why don’t we ask Ivan to take a picture of the four of us?”

  The tenderness in Riel’s gesture lifted my heart, but my optimism was quickly dashed.

  Mieka’s face was strained. “Not today,” she said. “I didn’t get much sleep last night.”

  Ernest Beauvais had joined Zack and me to look at the pictures. Riel knew that we had heard Mieka’s gentle rebuff, and he was clearly stung. “You’re the boss,” he said.

  “That’s not true,” Mieka said. “We’re partners.”

  For a beat, Riel and Mieka faced each other. Their misery was painful to witness, and Ernest took Riel’s arm. But Riel shook him off and walked away. Mieka was crestfallen. Mercifully, during the exchange between their mother and Riel, Madeleine and Lena had been playing tag, well out of earshot. “Mieka, I’ll get the ladies moving,” I said. “I’m not in a hurry. Taylor and Declan have already left for school.”