Children in the Morning (2 page)

ECW Press

ECW

ecwpress.com

ChildrenintheMorning_final2_Layout 1 2/18/10 5:27 PM Page i Praise for Anne Emery

Praise for
Cecilian Vespers

“Anne Emery has already won one Arthur Ellis Award for her first Monty Collins mystery, and this one should get her on the short list for another.
Cecilian Vespers
is slick, smart, and populated with lively characters. It’s also a nicely crafted mystery.” —
The Globe and Mail

“This remarkable mystery is flawlessly composed, intricately plotted, and will have readers hooked to the very last page.”

—
The Chronicle-Herald

“Emery, winner of Canada’s 2006 Arthur Ellis Award for Best First Novel (
Sign of the Cross
), has written a finely plotted crime novel that incorporates some of the key still-unresolved issues confronting the Catholic Church in 1991, when the story takes place. Readers who enjoy ecclesiastical mysteries by William X. Kienzle and Julia Spencer-Fleming may want to try this one.”

—
Library Journal

Praise for
Barrington Street Blues

“The yin-yang of Monty and Maura, from cruel barbs to tender moments, is rendered in occasionally hilarious but mostly heart-breaking fashion. Emery makes it easy to root for Monty, who solves not only the mystery that pays the bills, but also the one that tugs at his heart.”

—
Quill & Quire

“A solid story of suspense long on mystery and short on excess . . .

The writing is lean, linear, and concise . . . it is perhaps Emery’s use of character dialogue that gives the book its weight, masterfully chronicling Collins’s slow descent into his own personal under-world.”

—
Atlantic Books Today

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“This is a wonderful yarn, full of amazingly colourful characters, dialogue that sweeps across the pages like a tsunami, a story that will keep you reading late into the night, and a plot as devious as a lawyer’s mind.”

—
Waterloo Region Record

Praise for
Obit

“Emery tops her vivid story of past political intrigue that could destroy the present with a surprising conclusion.”

—
Publishers Weekly

“A romping good ride through Halifax and New York . . . the racy writing style and quick repartee makes for a captivating tale.”

—
Atlantic Books Today

“There’s plenty of intrigue to be found in
Obit
. . . For anyone who loves a good mystery, this one will prove more than satisfying.”

—
Bookviews

“Emery has concocted an interesting plot . . . Her depiction of the gregarious Burke clan rings true . . . it is a pleasure to spend time with them.”

—
Quill & Quire

Praise for
Sign of the Cross

“A complex, multilayered mystery that goes far beyond what you’d expect from a first-time novelist.”

—
Quill & Quire

“This startlingly good first novel by a Halifax writer well-versed in the Canadian court system is notable for its cast of well-drawn characters and for a plot line that keeps you feverishly reading to the end.

Snappy dialogue, a terrific feel for Halifax, characters you really do care about, and a great plot make this one a keeper.”

—
Waterloo Region Record

“Anne Emery has produced a stunning first novel that is at once a mystery, a thriller, and a love story.
Sign of the Cross
is well written, exciting, and unforgettable.”

—
The Chronicle-Herald

ChildrenintheMorning_final_Layout 1 2/3/10 3:08 PM Page i Children in the

Morning

ChildrenintheMorning_final_Layout 1 2/3/10 3:08 PM Page ii ChildrenintheMorning_final_Layout 1 2/3/10 3:08 PM Page iii Children in the

Morning

A MYSTERY

ANNE EMERY

ECW Press

ChildrenintheMorning_final2_Layout 1 2/22/10 12:55 PM Page vi Copyright © Anne Emery, 2010

Published by ECW Press

2120 Queen Street East, Suite 200, Toronto, Ontario, Canada m4e 1e2

416.694.3348 / [email protected]

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any process — electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise — without the prior written permission of the copyright owners and ECW Press.

library and archives canada cataloguing in publication Emery, Anne

Children in the morning: a mystery / Anne Emery.

isbn: 978-1-55022-927-1

I. Title.

ps8609.m47c47 2009 c813’.6 c2009-905963-0

Cover and Text Design: Tania Craan

Cover Image: Nick Daly/Photonica/Getty Images Typesetting: Mary Bowness

Printing: Friesens 1 2 3 4 5

This book is set in AGaramond

The publication of
Children in the Morning
has been generously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts which last year invested $20.1 million in writing and publishing throughout Canada, by the Ontario Arts Council, by the Government of Ontario through Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit, by the OMDC Book Fund, an initiative of the Ontario Media Development Corporation, and by the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (bpidp).

printed and bound in canada

ChildrenintheMorning_final_Layout 1 2/3/10 3:08 PM Page v
Dedicated to the memory of my mum and dad
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There are children in the morning.

They are leaning out for love,

And they will lean that way forever.

— Leonard Cohen, “Suzanne”

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Oh, what did you see, my blue-eyed son?

Oh, what did you see, my darling young one?

I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it.

— Bob Dylan, “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”

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Chapter 1

(Normie)

You should know right from the beginning that I am not bragging. I was brought up better than that, even though I am the child of a broken home. That’s another thing you should know. but — and it’s a big but — (I’m allowed to say “big but” like this but not “big butt”

in a mean voice when it might be heard by a person with a big butt, and hurt their feelings) — but, about my broken home, Mummy says people don’t say that anymore. Anyway, even if they do, it doesn’t bother me. It kinda bothers my brother Tommy Douglas even though he’s a boy, and a lot of times boys pretend they’re tough.

Tommy never says, but I know. We have another brother, Dominic, but he’s a little baby so he’s too young to know anything. However, the whole thing is not that bad. That’s probably because we don’t have the kind of dad who took off and didn’t care and didn’t pay us any alimony. When you’ve been around school as long as I have —

I’m in grade four — you know kids who have fathers like that. But not my dad. We spend a lot of days with him, not just with my mum.

And they both love us. They are in their forties but are both still spry 1

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and sharp as a tack. It’s stupid the way they don’t just move back into the same house together but, aside from that, they are great people and I love them very much.

Mum is Maura MacNeil. People say she has a tongue on her that could skin a cat. She is always very good to me and never skins me.

But if I do something bad, she doesn’t have to stop and think about what to say; she has words ready to go. She teaches at the law school here in Halifax. My dad is Monty Collins. He is really sweet and he has a blues band. I always ask him to sing and play the song “Stray Cat Strut” and he always does. It’s my favourite song; I get to do the

“meow.” He is also a lawyer and he makes faces about his clients.

They’re bad but he has to pretend they’re good when he’s in front of the judge so the judge won’t send them down the river and throw away the key. Or the paddle, or whatever it is. It means jail.

I forgot to tell you my name. It’s Normie.
What?
I can hear you saying. It’s really Norma but you won’t see that word again in these pages. Well, except once more, right here, because I have to explain that it comes from an opera called
Norma
. Mum and Dad are opera fans and they named me after this one, then realized far too late that it was an old lady’s name (even though the N-person in the opera was not old, but never mind). So they started calling me Normie instead.

I am really good in math and English, and I know so many words that my teacher has got me working with the
grade seven
book called
Words Are Important
, which was published way back in 1955 when everybody learned harder words in school than they do these days.

And I have musical talent but do not apply myself, according to my music teacher. I am really bad at social studies but that’s because I don’t care about the tundra up north, or the Family Compact, whoever they are. But it was interesting to hear that we burned down the White House when we had a war with the Americans back in 1812.

Tommy says we kicked their butts (he said it, not me). You never think of Canadians acting like that.

Anyway, I must get on with my story. As I said, I’m not bragging and I don’t mean about the math and English. I mean I’m not bragging about what I can see and other people can’t. Because it’s a gift and I did nothing to earn it. And also because it’s all there for other people to see, but they are just not awake (yet) to these “experiences”

2

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or “visions.” I’m not sure what to call them. They say about me: “She has the sight.” Or: “She has second sight, just like old Morag.” Old Morag is my great-grandmother. Mum’s mother’s mother. She’s from Scotland. And she is really old; it’s not just people calling her that.

She must be eighty-five or something. But there are no flies on her, everyone says. People find her spooky, but I understand her.

I am looking at my diary, which says
Personal and Private!
on the cover. I hide it in a box under my bed. Nobody crawls under there to spy on my stuff. The diary is where I kept all my notes, day after day, about this story. I am taking the most important parts of it and writing them down on wide-ruled paper, using a Dixon Ticonderoga 2/hb pencil, a dictionary, and a thesaurus. I am asking Mummy about ways to say (write) certain things, but I’m not telling her what I am writing. All the information you will read here is my own.