My Temporary Life (28 page)

It doesn’t add up. It can’t be the same man. I stand in the doorway of his office, trying not to show the shock on my face. The man just doesn’t strike me as the bad, criminal type that Heather has described.

He takes a moment, surmising me, deciding on whether or not to let me in, his businessman’s smile never leaving his face. “Listen, why don’t you sit down? It’s cold out there. I’ll pour you a coffee if you like. I need a break anyway from this paperwork.” He motions towards a seat for me, and makes his way to a coffee machine that’s sitting on a counter covered in books and papers.

My face is still covered in bandages. I changed them at the motel room and tried to clean up, but the sight has to be making him wary of me. Maybe he thinks I’m a hobo looking to warm up for a few minutes on a cold day. I glance around the office, looking at piles of books, the computer that he must have been working on, and the family pictures on the desk behind him. There are pictures of him with the two boys, at different stages of their lives. There are family shots of Michael and a woman, obviously his wife. And there are pictures of the four of them together, holding each other close, and smiling the types of happy smiles that come easy to people who love each other.

“
I’m Malcolm, Malcolm Wilson. I wanted to talk to you about someone. You used to know her a long time ago. She grew up in this town.” I wondered whether he might know my name. The police must have been in touch with him about his daughter. I’m unsure of everything now though. I watch for his reaction as he hands me the cup of coffee.

“
Well Malcolm, if she worked here, I’m not sure if I would remember her. They all work here you know, all the kids. It’s like a rite of passage in this town. They all seem to work at the yard at some point. It’s just too hard to remember all of their names, but I’ll try.” He smiles, as though he’s humouring me.

I wait for him to sit, then stare at his face, watching for any type of reaction. “Heather, Heather Postman, do you remember her at all?”

The smile remains. There’s just a slight hesitation in his eyes, as he puts down his cup of coffee, and gives me his full attention. “Heather, yes, I remember Heather, of course.” He pauses then adds, almost as an afterthought, “Her family were originals in Woodbine, been here for years, and her father, he’s the police chief, has been for a long, long time.”

I pick up the coffee cup, never letting my eyes leave him, waiting to see if he’s going to speak again. My hand doesn’t shake. It’s solid as I keep my eyes on him. I can hear one of the boys outside calling to the other in a good-natured way. I can hear the sound of a clock ticking on the wall, and smell the strong coffee. The office doesn’t feel warm and inviting anymore, but I feel comfortable with this man. I feel like I’m my dad, standing at Rab’s door, all those years ago. I feel like, if I need to, I could pick Michael up and throw him down his stairs.

He starts to reach into his desk, and I can feel my eyes growing large at the prospect of facing a gun for the second time in the past few days, but all he comes out with is a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. “My one bad habit; the boys think I’ve quit.” He stops smiling now, and his hands shake a little as he lights his cigarette.

He puffs for a moment and stares out the window at the purple sky that’s clouding over, promising more snow. “Who are you, Malcolm? What is it that you want with me?” He asks it firmly but still politely.

In the days after Heather told me about Emily, and told me about her relationship with Michael, I thought about this moment. I thought about confronting him, trying to physically overpower him, and taking out some kind of revenge, for what he’d done to her, what he’d done to both of them. The anger had consumed me at times although I was careful not to show it. I thought of pounding my fists into him, just the way my dad taught me years ago. It seems different now though. He doesn’t look like the monster I envisioned. He looks like a family man, a man whose sons smile when they talk about him, a man of the community.

“
I’m a friend of Heather’s. We came into town together a few days ago. She told me about you. I wanted to meet you.” I tell him the truth, or at least the part of the truth that I’m going to let him in on for now.

He seems to lighten up. His hands stop shaking and he looks at me in a reassured way. “Heather’s in town? Where’s she been? I always wondered what happened to her. She had a hell of a rough ride after her mother died.” He seems to contemplate that for a moment before continuing. “You tell her I said hello. She was a good little worker.”

I keep pushing. I need to get a real reaction from him. I need to know where Emily is and why she isn’t in the family pictures. “It’s Emily actually that I want to know about, how Emily is doing. That’s why we’re here, back in town I mean.”

His response is immediate. “I don’t think I know Emily. Did she work here too? The boys might remember her.”

He doesn’t know. He’s telling the truth. If he is lying, then he’s a master deceiver. I keep staring at him, and he looks back as though he wants me to explain who Emily is.

“
You really don’t know, Michael? Isn’t Emily your daughter?” I’m out of options. I don’t know what else to say.

Again, he answers right away. “I don’t have a daughter. I have two sons. You met Tom, outside, remember.” He looks at me as though he thinks the coffee is clouding my mind.

“
You had a daughter though, Michael. You had a daughter ten years ago. Emily, I’m talking about Emily. She went missing a couple of days ago. I know all about her, Michael.” Still, I push, wanting to hear an explanation from him.

The man shows no signs of panic or fear. He’s sitting, facing me. He faces a man bandaged, and cut, and bruised. I know I look desperate, because I feel desperate, but he still shows no signs that he recognizes Emily’s name. “You’re mistaken. I told you I don’t have any daughters, just sons. Now what exactly is your relationship to Heather, and what is it that you want from me?” He has his businessman voice on now, and I can tell that he’s tired of our conversation.

I lower my head into my hands, forgetting about the bruises, and wince in pain when I touch it. It doesn’t add up. It didn’t add up from the moment I walked into the yard, and saw his sons working. It hasn’t added up from the time that the drunk gave me a ride home. This man doesn’t have a daughter. I look up and decide to try a different tact. “Heather had a daughter. She had a daughter ten years ago. Her name is Emily. She lives in town here.” I let the words hang in the air, watching him.

He takes the words in thoughtfully, watching me, and then turns to glance out the window at his sons, working. “Ten years ago, ten years ago, she would have been here.” He stands up suddenly, spilling his coffee on the desk. “I don’t know how. I don’t know how that could have happened.”

He’s mumbling now, and keeps talking to himself, as though he’s trying to remember something. His face turns an ashen colour, and he paces back and forth in front of the desk. He keeps repeating that it was ‘ten years ago’. He touches his lips the same way I do when my numbers temporarily don’t add up. He looks like a man who can’t quite make sense of the situation. I try again, still trying to believe that I’m talking to the father of Heather’s child. I sit up straight in my chair, and look at him accusingly. “She had your child, didn’t she, Michael? You and Heather were together?”

Before I can finish, he’s answering me, not shouting but talking firmly, positively, adamantly leaning towards me, trying to make sure I don’t miss a word. “No, no, no. Of course not, she was a child, a little girl. I wouldn’t touch her. They all come here and work for me. Heather had some problems.” He pauses, looking at me, his eyes softening for a moment, as though he can tell me what the problems were without using words.

“
If I’d known...If I’d known that it was that serious. I didn’t know she was with child, that she was pregnant. How could I know? She left. She just left.” He’s almost in tears now. His face is still colourless and his skin is sweating. His eyes are wet as he looks at me pleadingly.

It still doesn’t make any sense. I still don’t know what happened. He’s in front of me now, wringing his hands together, nervously. He looks like a man with regrets. I need to know what those regrets are. “What do you mean, Michael? What problems? What do you mean, if you’d known?”

He sits back down on his seat on the other side of the desk and tries to regain his composure. He wipes his eyes with the back of his hands, and leans forward on the desk, before speaking again. “That father of hers, the cop. She told me. She came right in here and told me, not in so many words but...if I’d known how serious it was. If I’d known what was really happening in that house...”

All of a sudden, I know. Maybe I knew for a while and hid from it, I can’t say for sure, but now I know. Now, I know. My stomach has a lump in it, and I feel sick. The anger takes a moment to come, but I know it will. It’ll come. I stare at him as he put his hands on the desk, looking at them. He just keeps looking at his hands, shaking his head. I want to hit him. I want to hit him the way my dad taught me to hit the boys at school. I want to hit him even though it’s not him that I’m angry at. I reach across the table, and almost do it, but I can’t. I know that he might have been able to stop all of the pain that Heather suffered, and all of the pain that she’s suffering now, but although I want to take my anger out on someone, my fight isn’t with him.

Minutes seem to pass, as the gravity of it all slowly hits us. When Michael finally looks up, his eyes are red and his face is wet. He wipes himself with his sleeve, and when he speaks his words are clear. It’s as though he’s making a confession, which I suppose in a way he is. “I knew who she was of course. We all did, John Postman’s daughter. And I knew what happened. Her mother died. Her mother never seemed like a happy woman, and she was always sick. It’s a small town. You know these things, especially when it’s the police chief’s wife. Tom and Mark were a few years younger than Heather, so I’d see her parents, see them at the school or in town.”

He keeps going. It’s almost as though he’s afraid to stop now, and wants to get it all out. “Well, Heather turns out to be a great kid, a good worker, quiet and withdrawn, but a good hard worker. Her dad would pick her up, waiting in his cruiser right over there, never wanting to come into the yard. He’d nod at me, if I saw him.” He shakes his head as though he doesn’t want to remember the memory.

“
She’s here for six, maybe eight months, works through the summer, and then some weekends. She’d sit and eat her lunch right out on those steps that you came up, sometimes all by herself. She was getting more and more withdrawn the longer she was here, wasn’t talking to the other kids. My boys were real young then, eight, ten years old themselves.” He pauses, thinking, I suppose, of his own children.

“
Anyways, I ask her one day; ask her if she’s okay. I take her up here into the office, let her eat her lunch sitting at one of the desks while I work.” He stares out the window again. I can tell that he doesn’t want to look at me. I can see the pain in his face as he contorts his mouth, trying to say the words. “She tells me that things aren’t good at home. She says that she and her dad, they don’t get along. She says, he sometimes, I think she said, took liberties with her. I tried not to understand what she meant. I tried to explain it to myself, tell myself that it was a teenager not getting along with her father.”

The snow is starting to fall outside, just as the sky has been promising all day. I can see Tom, in the yard, looking up at his dad, holding his hands out at his sides, indicating that the weather is changing. Michael forces a smile back and raises his hand in a wave. He turns and looks, continuing his recollection. “It’s sometimes easy to look the other way. Her Dad was respected here, still is. I looked the other way. And then one day, she’s gone. I heard that she moved away, moved out west, and I never thought about her again.” He stops suddenly, trying to make himself believe. “I wish I could say that I didn’t know what she meant. I wish I could tell you that, but I’m not sure. I just don’t know for sure.”

He’s a beaten man. His confession to me hasn’t made his face look any less heavy than it was when he began. He’ll have to carry the knowledge around with him for the rest of his life that he might have been able to do something, he might have been able to help. I suppose that there are some amends that never really can be made. I think about getting up and leaving him right where he sits, and going home, but now that I know, know for sure; in many ways my journey is just beginning. I still don’t know where Heather is, but the reason that we first came to Woodbine, all of a sudden, is more important than ever. I have to find Emily.

I look over at him as he sinks into his chair. “There’s something that you can do for me, Michael, something that might help you feel better.”

CHAPTER 27