It Isn't Cheating if He's Dead (15 page)

She pulled back. “I’m sorry. But what
happened to you?” She scanned his arms and hands, marred by similar marks. Why
hadn’t she noticed that before? Her gaze shifted to the folded pile of his brown
canvas jacket.

She took his hands and ran her fingers over
the scars. He didn’t pull away. She turned them palm up. Pink lines bisected
his forearms near the wrist. Not low enough to threaten his life, but maybe
that was his plan.

“Oh, Joe. Please tell me you don’t want to
die. Someone has to be out there looking for you. Someone who loves you.”

He shook his head and pulled his hands away
then dropped his chin to his chest. “No.” The word squeaked out from his
underused voice box. “No one.”

 “Gerald didn’t consider my feelings when
he left, did he? Didn’t ask what I wanted.  Whether or not I wanted him to
stay. Just up and left. Is that what you did, Joe?”

He didn’t move his head, but his eyes
rolled up to look at her.

“Don’t make assumptions about what others
want. What other people think. Because I’m telling you, you’re probably wrong.”
Her body tensed and she ground her teeth together. “Sorry, Joe. I’m angry. At
Gerald. He left. He died. And I don’t know why.” She licked her lips, salty
from her tears. "Joe, it's not too late. You're not dead yet."

life was
random

“Hello, tall, dark and meaty.”

Finn’s laughter on the other end of the cell
phone was music in her ears. ‘Sexual Healing’ kind of music. ‘I wanna kiss you
all over’ kind of music. ‘I believe in miracles’ kind of music.

“What time will you be here tonight? I’m
thinking roast chicken and mashed potatoes with gravy.”

He moaned. “That sounds amazing. But I
can’t come. We’ve got a missing child. Parent abduction. It’s all hands on
deck.”

Her heart sank. “Of course. Will you update
me? Let me know if you find — her? Him?”

“Her. And yes, I’ll do that. Roast the
chicken without me.”

“Nah, we’ll save it for tomorrow. Assuming
you can come. Positive thoughts for the little girl.”

He sighed. “Thanks for understanding. No
wonder you’re called Jem.”

She groaned. “Oh, that was lame. Or sweet.
Not sure which.”

“Let’s go with sweet. Talk soon.”

She ended the call and stared at her phone.
She rubbed her greasy cheek print from the screen onto her pants and tossed the
phone onto the kitchen table.

The ‘messages waiting’ indicator flashed on
her land line. She poked in her password and listened to four in a row from the
office. When will she be back? Cases piling up. Clients are pissed off they’ve
been fobbed off on other litigators. Ugh. She leaned back in the chair and ran
both hands through her hair. That part of her life seemed a million miles away.
They weren’t miles she wanted to traverse, not a gap she had any desire to
close.

The stack of unopened mail taunted her. She
sifted through each piece, tossed them onto the table unopened, like a massive
deck of cards and she was dealing a game of five bill stud. Where everyone was
a loser.

Near the bottom of the stack was an
envelope from the insurance company. She turned it over in her hands. It couldn’t
be a cheque already? She ripped it open and took out a letter dated a week earlier.

She skimmed the page, key phrases popped
out from the text. Suspicious circumstances of his death. In contact with
police. Claim may be delayed or denied.

Well shit. She didn’t kill him. How could
they deny the claim?

She glanced at the clock. Another two hours
before the letter carrier would shove another batch through her slot. She
tossed the letter aside. Maybe work would have to come sooner than later. She
had pushed the boundaries of ‘as much time as you need’ to her full advantage
and beyond. But not today. Today would be a day to catch up on the mundane.

She gathered laundry and shoved towels into
the washer, ran a vacuum around the whole house, tidying as she went. Then a
quick dust and a couple more loads of dirty clothes and towels. Kitchen and
bathrooms got a spit shine and de-griming. Three hours later she surveyed her
home. Gerald would be proud.

She shook her head and crossed her arms. Time
to stop worrying about what he would think. He’d lied to her all these years.
Didn’t trust her with the intimate details of his life. But he told Dean. Everything.
Damn it all to hell.

She sat in front of the music collection.
Each CD came out of its rightful alphabetic place in the wire tower and landed
on the hardwood. She pushed them around the floor to shuffle them, like a kid
with not enough hand-eye coordination shuffled playing cards. Then she picked
each one up and put them back in the tower. No order. No need for it. Life was
random. CDs could be too.

The tin mail slot clinked and a new batch
of bills landed in a scattered pile in her front entry. They could wait.

In the kitchen, she stripped the cupboards
of all the vegan foods she’d never liked. Things she only continued to buy and
choke down after Gerald disappeared because it’s what he wanted from her. She
flung a bag of chia seeds into the garbage. The plastic can rattled and rocked
before settling back in place.

Take that, veganism.

She pulled all the tofu products from the fridge
and lined them up along the counter. Silken, firm, fake cheese, fake pepperoni,
fake, fake, fake. She picked up each one in turn and lobbed them into the can
with the seeds. The first three shots were nothing but net. The fourth she
stood right over the can and heaved with both hands. The fifth she slam-dunked.

The last bag on the counter was the dreaded
mung beans. Gerald would sprout them, take up an entire shelf in the fridge
with these tasteless, slimy, venus-fly-trapesque bits of grass. He'd eat them
like popcorn, and the house would stink of the gas he produced. How long had
she had this bag? Pigs would have to sprout wings before she'd ever sprout
these damn beans again.

She snatched the bag, tossed it up and
grabbed it in mid-air, spun around and winged it at the garbage can. It clipped
the rim and crashed onto the floor. The cellophane burst and beans scattered
across the kitchen, under the fridge and stove, and into the front entry.

Jem stared at the mess and laughed. She
slid down the cupboard until her butt hit the floor. The humour left her. She
was cleansing herself of all the things he loved. All the things he cared about
more than he cared about her. And it hurt.

But there was no point in stopping now.

She swept up the visible beans and emptied
them into the garbage. The bag was heavy with wasted food. She had no guilt
over the waste, she needed it out of the house. She hauled it to the back alley
and dropped it into the black bin.

Jem passed the unopened mail in the front
entry and headed up the stairs. She pulled her latest memory box from the bedroom
closet, a plastic container with a fastened lid that gathered the dust destined
for the contents inside. She set it on her bed and popped the handles open.

The most important moments of her life
rested in the half-filled box. Or at least ones she had physical mementos of.
Four more boxes were stacked in the basement, labeled with the years those
memories spanned. Memories she still had in her head but feared would disappear
one day if she beat the family odds and lived long enough for senility to set
in.

She’d already passed one test. She didn’t
swallow a bottle of pills when her lover died. Now she had to avoid heart
disease. With her meat-loving ways back in full swing and a complete disdain
for any form of exercise, that might be challenging.

Finn’s fit body flashed through her mind.
Maybe he would teach her. Help her. She ran a hand across her midsection. She
could do better. For herself. For him.

She picked up the framed photo from the
nightstand. Gerald’s smiling face beamed at the camera, his hand on her
shoulder. Her left hand rested on his, the engagement ring on display. What a
corny pose. So predictable. So Gerald.

She wiped the dust off and placed a gentle
kiss on his face, then rested the photo inside the box. She eyed the mahogany chest
on the dresser. Its presence tormented her, a daily reminder of his last
message to her. ‘Don’t want my meds. Don’t want you either. Goodbye forever.’
At least that was her interpretation. She dusted the top and placed the whole
thing, spilled meds, abandoned ring and all, into the memory box.

She wandered about the house snatching
trinkets and photos and anything Gerald-related that stood in plain sight — awards
and medals and plaques for excellence in his field. She unearthed notes he’d
written that she'd tucked between the pages of books to hold her place. She dusted
it all and hid it away.

Finn was already up to his eyeballs in the
details of Gerald’s death, he didn’t have to be confronted with Gerald’s life. And
despite what Finn said, he didn’t need to be hit over the head with what Gerald
meant to her. And neither did she. It was over. Time to tuck it in a corner.
She could look to the past, visit the dead, if and when she needed to. Time to get
on with the living.

She booted up her laptop and paid the stack
of bills. Her savings were dwindling fast. If she didn't get back to work she’d
have to dip into her retirement funds.

The setting sun poured in through the
French doors. Angry growls came from her stomach and she glanced at the clock. Seven
already. She eyed the fridge and the stove. Energy drained from her.  

She poured a glass of wine into a tumbler,
added a handful of ice and tossed a bag of popcorn into the microwave. She
loved popcorn but hated the dirty, wet dog smell that permeated the house. But
tonight, it was the perfect choice.

She took a big swig of cooled Shiraz and
stared at the bag spinning in the oven. A small smile crept up on her. Gerald
would have gone ballistic. Popcorn for dinner. It was one more step in
releasing him. She pulled the popcorn bag open and dumped it into a bowl.

She rubbed her abdomen and her father’s
face appeared before her.

“I’ll do better tomorrow, Dad. I promise.”

She settled at the table with her laptop
and Googled ‘post traumatic stress disorder.’ About two-hundred-ninety-three
million results. She clicked through a variety of sites on the first page and
scanned the information. A few case studies were interesting but focused on
military personnel. Maybe Joe was military. But he was so reactive to any
mention of family, his trauma had to be related to a spouse or his parents.

A click on an official-looking link brought
her to a page from an American medical library.

“Post-traumatic stress disorder is a type
of anxiety disorder,” she read aloud. “It can happen after an individual sees
or experiences a traumatic event that involves the threat of injury or death.”

Sounds about right. She scrolled down the
page until she found a list of symptoms. Reliving the event, having strong
flashbacks and nightmares. Having strong reactions to events that remind
someone of the trauma.

She’d never witnessed any of those things
with Joe. Then again, she only saw him for a few minutes each day. Always in
the morning. Maybe she’d make a midnight pass by the park and see what happened
after dark.

The next category was avoidance. Emotional
numbness or detachment. A lack of interest in normal activities and not showing
moods. Not sure what was normal for Joe, but sitting in silence under a bush
wasn’t likely on the list. What about not speaking? Was that normal?

The last category included having an
exaggerated startle response, hyper-vigilance and trouble sleeping. That was
him in spades.

She scanned the rest of the webpage and
hesitated at a discussion of a treatment known as desensitization. Encourage
him to remember the traumatic event and express his feelings about it. If he
faced the trauma, then over time, memories of it would become less frightening.

She was no head doctor, but maybe she
should push him a bit harder. Try to find out what happened to him. And where
the hell his family was.

She dialed Doctor Lewis’ number, her foot
tapping the tile while the phone rang once, twice, three times. After four, his
damn voice mail picked up.

“Hey, Sid. It’s Jemima. Listen, I’ve got an
interesting question for you. Not about Gerald or Althea or anything. Don’t
worry, those worms are in their can for good. It’s about a homeless man I’ve
met. Do you think I could pick your brain about him? For old time’s sake?
Thanks, Sid. I’m at the same old number.”

She pulled out a lined notepad from the top
drawer of the sideboard. They’d never used it for dishes and silverware. It
held nothing but paper and files and writing instruments and outdated computer
parts. She scratched some notes from the site.

The ring of her cell phone cut the silence
and she jumped. Sid.

“Hi, Sid.”

“Hello, Jemima. What’s this about a
homeless man?”

“He’s new to the park where I deliver
sandwiches. I have no idea where he came from or why because he won’t speak.”
She described her interactions with Joe and the progress she’d made so far. “I
figure he’s suffering from PTSD. Some of the symptoms fit. The only thing I
can’t figure out is the not speaking part.”

“Mutism can happen in cases of trauma. It’s
called reactive mutism. But it’s usually a childhood trauma. I’d say it’s
pretty rare in adults.”

“Rare, but not unheard of?”

“Well, I’ve not witnessed it. But that
doesn’t mean it’s not possible. He could have suffered a childhood trauma that
was repressed and something triggered the memory. But it sounds like something
happened more recently.”

Jem chewed on the end of the pencil. “How
recent?”

“It’s hard to say without seeing him. But
with PTSD, if that is what he has, probably more than thirty days ago. Though
the mutism suggests sooner. Maybe it’s not reactive. Maybe he just doesn’t want
to say anything. We know he can speak from the few words he’s said to you. And
the fact you got him to say those is pretty amazing if he really has suffered
horrific trauma.”

“So I should keep pushing?”

“I can’t advise you on that, Jemima. It
sounds like he needs help. Professional help.”

“Right. Maybe I can find a therapist
willing to come to the park.” He didn’t bite. “How about you, Sid? You’re the
best I know.” The only one.

 “I’m in Toronto right now. For another two
weeks. Perhaps when I’m home. In the meantime, have you looked into missing
persons cases?”

Now why didn’t she think of that?

“Not yet. Thanks so much, Sid. I appreciate
your help.”

She ended the call and turned back to her
computer.  She Googled ‘missing persons Alberta’ and hit enter. She clicked on
the first link the Google gods bestowed upon her. A missing persons search
engine. The only search parameter she could enter was his first name.

She typed in ‘Joseph’ and clicked search. Eight
results. That was manageable. The link for the first missing Joseph took her to
a new page. An old picture of a man who was not her Joe smiled from the screen.
Last seen twenty-seven years ago. Missing that long and his family was still
looking for him. There was hope for Joe yet.

She visited the site of each missing
Joseph, scanned the date they went missing, the description, the photos. He
wasn’t among them. Or at least she didn’t think so. He was so thin. None of
these men were emaciated. What did Joe look like with some meat on his bones?
What was normal for him?

A numbing thought hit her. Maybe he wasn’t
from Alberta. He could be from anywhere, even the States. She rubbed her
forehead, covered her mouth with her hand, and stared at the screen. She needed
help.

She shut down her laptop, refilled her
tumbler with wine and ice, and took the bowl of popcorn into the living room.
Her body sank into the sofa and she grabbed the remote.

Page after page of choices flashed on the
screen, three hundred channels of crap. The digital video recorder she’d bought
two years after Gerald’s disappearance had done little to fill the void in her
life, but it did kill some time. She chose
Dirty Dancing
for the
umpteenth time. She could quote lines in her sleep. Familiar faces and familiar
feelings let her escape from her life for a few moments. And the wine made her
eyelids heavy.

A sharp rap at the window next to her head
jolted her awake. Finn’s face was pressed up against the glass.

“I knocked but you didn’t answer,” he
called through the closed window. “Saw the TV flickering.”

“Holy shit you scared me to death.” She let
him in the front door. “I think it’s time I gave you a key. What time is it?”

“Four-thirty. Sorry, but we found her.”

Jem cocked her head to one side. “You mean
the missing little girl? That’s wonderful.”

“Hell yeah it is. Mother was trying to take
her into Montana. Border agents got her and the Mounties brought her back here.
The girl is with her father.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why isn’t the mother allowed to have her
daughter?”

“Because she’s a drug addict and hooker.
She leaves her five-year-old alone all night while she's out turning tricks and
getting high.”

“Oh. Good reason.”

“I wanted to let you know. And I can’t
sleep. Never can after something like this. It’s like a great bennie high.”

She raised one eyebrow. “And you would know
this how?”

“Youthful indiscretions.” He gathered her
in his arms and kissed her. “Do I smell popcorn?”

“That was dinner.”

“Yikes. I’ll be here tomorrow, promise. In
the meantime,” he pulled away from her. “I’ll let you go back to sleep.”

She grabbed the lapel of his jacket and
pulled him back. She eyed the jacket and rubbed the fabric between her thumb and
fingers. “Is that silk?”

“Yeah.”

“A cop in a silk suit?”

“Only the jacket. See, jeans.”

She took a step back. “Wow. Casual and
buttoned down all at the same time.” She took hold of his lapel again. “But I’m
supposed to get up in half an hour, so no point in sleeping now.” She slid the
jacket off his shoulders and tossed it over the armchair, pointed at him, then beckoned
him with a come-hither gesture. She flashed her eyebrows up and down and ran up
the stairs, Finn on her heels.

a dangerous
game

Jem hauled the sandwich box out into a
gleaming June morning and loaded it into her van. She tiptoed upstairs and
peeked in the bedroom door. Finn lay naked and sound asleep in her bed, covers
thrown off, the rising sun illuminating his muscular frame.

Less than two hours ago, the moment he
climaxed, he rolled off her and passed out, the post-arrest high satisfied by
one great romp. When she came back in the room after her shower, he hadn’t
moved a muscle. She crept around the room, pulling drawers open an inch at a
time so as not to disturb him. She could have slammed doors and screamed bloody
murder, she doubted he would notice. He was dead to the world after more than
twenty-four hours without a break.

And here he was, still in the same spot, an
hour after her time in the kitchen making tuna sandwiches. One arm above his
head, the other thrown out to the side, one leg straight, the other slightly
bent and flopped to one side. The view was breathtaking.

He was like no man she’d ever been with. It
was more than the whole Greek God good looks thing. It was everything about him.
He was so thoughtful. So kind. So sweet. So, so… So horny.

She licked her lips and approached the side
of the bed. His signature little snores made her want him again. She ran one
finger from his ankle to his groin and up to his chest.

His eyes popped open and he became erect in
an instant. He grabbed her and rolled her onto the bed, pinned her shoulders
and sat on her thighs. “That’s a dangerous game to play with me.” He bent and
kissed her.

She laughed with his tongue in her mouth
and then returned the kiss with vigor. Adrenaline-soaked arousal sliced through
her body. She groaned and turned her head to the side. “I can’t believe I’m
saying this, but I don’t want to have sex right now.”

He released her shoulders and sat back.
“Oh. Sorry.” He ran his finger between her breasts, over her clothes, and
scratched between her legs over her denim capris. “I got a different
impression.” His smile was disarming as hell.

“Let me put it this way. I do want to, but
I can’t. The sandwiches are in the van. Tuna. Mayonnaise. Can’t leave them for
long or I’ll poison everybody.”

“Now that I understand.” He kissed her
forehead. “If you wait five minutes I can shower and come with you.” He climbed
off of her and headed for the bathroom.

“You don’t have to go to work?”

“Nope. Day off.”

“Maybe you should sleep.”

“I can do that later. Unless you don’t want
me to come. I mean, this is your thing, I get that. I don’t want to intrude.”
He stood sideways in the bathroom doorway, one hand on the jamb, eyebrows
raised.

She stared at him for a few seconds. “I
would love for you to come.”

He beamed and turned away. The shower
started to run, the door still wide open.

She skipped down the stairs and poured them
each a cup of coffee.

He fastened his watch on the way down the
stairs. A dark grey t-shirt taut against his chest hung loose around his hips. He
wasn't even tucked in today. He slid bare feet into flip-flops.

Casual Finn was even hotter than suit-and-tie
Finn. Giving him a drawer to keep a few changes of clothes was the best idea she'd
ever had.

She handed him a travel mug and a granola
bar and kissed his cheek. They climbed into the van and she pulled away from
the curb.

“Maybe don’t tell anyone you’re a cop. It
might scare some of them off.”

“Done.”

“Gotta say, even dressed like that, you
have cop tattooed on your forehead.”

He snickered. “So I’ve been told. How about
I hang back at the van. Let you go ahead with the deliveries. If you want me to
come closer, give me a signal.”

“I like that idea. There’s one fellow in
particular I’m worried about. He’s pretty new, and he doesn’t speak. I’m making
progress with him, got him to tell me his name. And he did answer a question yesterday.
Only a couple of words mind you, but still, with a voice. He hasn’t talked to
any of the others in the park.”

“Got it. Don’t mess with the residents.”

“Joe is different than the others. I think
his family might be looking for him but I have no way of finding out.”

Finn turned to her. “Jem, you’ve got a
detective sitting right beside you. Finding shit out is what I do.”

She glanced at him. “I didn’t know how to
ask. It’s not a case. Unless there’s a missing persons report or something. I
looked online but couldn’t see anyone that resembled Joe. I don’t even know
where he came from.”