Second Chances

Second Chances

Brenda Chapman

For Dawn Rayner,

my lifelong friend

I
would first like to thank Sylvia McConnell, previous publisher of Napoleon and RendezVous Crime, for first accepting the manuscript for
Second Chances
and for all her wise guidance throughout my writing career. Thanks also to my editor Allister Thompson for his continued care and wordsmithing — I'm grateful that we are still a team. A huge thank-you to Dundurn's president and publisher Kirk Howard and to the entire Dundurn family. A special thank-you to Emma Dolan for the cover design.

Alex Brett read my manuscript early on and gave me some invaluable advice. Darlene Cole, Katherine Hobbs, and Mike Levin reviewed subsequent drafts and gave constructive criticism that made the story stronger. I am forever in all of your debt.

As always, thank you to my family and friends, new readers and old, who have supported my writing these many years. In particular, I would like to thank my husband Ted Weagle and our daughters Lisa and Julia, who are always there to cheer me on — you make it all worthwhile.

What if they threw a war

and nobody came?

— American slogan during the Vietnam War

1971

E
lizabeth
rolled onto her stomach and trailed one fingernail in a jagged line down my back. It began with the soft pressure of her fingertip between my shoulder blades, a feathery tickle on my skin that increased in pressure as it made its descent. It ended with her nail breaking through and scratching along the base of my spine above my bathing suit bottom. When Elizabeth pulled her hand away, I let out my breath and bit my lip. My back stung like crazy, but I forced myself to lie still on the blanket, letting the cool breeze from the lake wash over me. No way I'd let on she'd hurt me. I'd swallow the pain whole first.

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Elizabeth prop her chin onto a folded arm while she stared at me through her dark sunglasses, waiting to see what I would do. Her thin lips curved into a smile.

“There oughta be a law against skin as white as yours,” she said finally. “You're like a chunk of gouda cheese, for Chrissake.”

“Well, it
is
the beginning of June,” I said. Not that I ever tanned exactly, but I wouldn't tell her that. “You're not so brown yourself.”

Elizabeth waited a few beats and said, “Compared to you, Darlene, I'm a toasted bran muffin.”

She turned onto her back, then rolled off the blanket onto the sand, spreading her arms above her head and letting out a loud sigh. “I'm sooo bored. What do you do for excitement in this hick place … or maybe I'm asking the wrong person, seeing as how you're fifteen, and lily and white could be your two middle names.”

All the reasons I hated being around my Toronto cousin were coming back to me. My mother must have known how this would play out, because she'd made me promise more than once over the past week to be polite and make Elizabeth feel welcome. “Her parents are going through a hard time,” my mother'd said, as if that gave Elizabeth licence to act like a turd. Like she was the only one in the universe whose parents had problems. I avoided confrontation like the plague, but I would have made an exception for Elizabeth if it wasn't for all those promises I'd made to my mother.

I knew Elizabeth was going to be trouble from the second she stepped off the Greyhound bus. She'd stood on the top of the steps, one hip thrust out while she surveyed the gas station like she was god's gift to beauty queens forced into exile in a Third World country. Then she'd tossed her long blonde hair back over one shoulder before climbing down the steps. She'd sauntered toward me across the parking lot in her skin-tight bell bottom jeans, her platform heels click-clicking on the pavement in time to the snappy movement of her hips.

“Hey, Darlene,” she said when she finally reached the front door to Bill's Esso where I stood leaning against a barrel of flaming pink impatiens. I'd been left to watch for her while my mom whipped over to the grocery store after an hour of waiting for the bus to arrive. “I'd know your carrot head anywhere.”

I felt a blush creeping up my neck and face. “That was my plan,” I said. “Grow hair this colour so you'd recognize me.”

Elizabeth laughed and flung an arm around my shoulders, squeezing a little too hard. “Still the same little cousin I remember. Easy to embarrass. It's been what, two years? You've gotten a lot taller but you're still a beanpole. Don't worry. Your chest should start coming in soon. Sixteen is the turning year.”

Four insults already and we were still on hello. “Nineteen sixty-eight,” I said. “Spring, three years ago. You and your parents came for the weekend.”

“What makes you so sure it was then?”

“‘Cause you took me to see the
Planet of the Apes
at the Elgin Theatre. It was a Saturday night.” I'd also checked my diary the night before but wouldn't tell her that. Let her think I was a walking calendar. Let her think I had an elephant memory. I should have known Elizabeth wouldn't be impressed.

“Man, you have no life if that's something you remember. It's a good thing I'm here to liven up your summer.”

Yeah, how lucky am I?
I kept my mouth shut and followed her over to the bus driver, who was tossing luggage onto the pavement from the belly of the bus. He turned his head and smiled at Elizabeth, but she pretended not to notice. Part of leading men on was ignoring them when they showed interest. Elizabeth told me later it was dating rule number one.

I wondered if my skin had begun to burn yet. The sun was beating down on us and making the air above the sand wavy. Elizabeth moved closer and lifted her hand again to start tracing another line down my back. I jumped up like a jack in the box and pretended to wipe sand off my stomach.

Elizabeth sat up, laughing. When she finally stopped, she wiped fake tears from her eyes and said, “You should have seen your face. It was priceless.”

I glared down at her but tried to sound like she hadn't pulled one over on me. “I'm going to help Mom in the store. You staying here or what?”

“I want to tan some more. I have a book to read in my bag so I won't even notice you're gone. You can run along.” She raised her hand in a peace sign before lying back down.

What I'd have given to dig my foot in the sand and kick it all over her stomach. I got a few feet away and turned back. “Why'd you come to Cedar Lake anyhow?”

Elizabeth propped herself up on her elbows and scowled. “My parents made me, why else?”

“Why'd they make you?”

“Because I'm dating someone they can't stand, among other things.”

“So? They can't stop you from dating who you want. These are the seventies.”

“But they
can
cut off my money. Plus I flunked grade thirteen, so they're a little hard to get along with. They need time to digest that they haven't spawned a genius.”

“What don't they like about your boyfriend?”

“Well, let's see. Michael's twenty-six and I'm seventeen. He plays guitar in a band, and oh yeah, he's black.”

“Wow.” I was impressed in spite of myself. “Your dad must have been ready to kill him … or you.”

Elizabeth smiled. “Michael came for supper once and said never again. He'd rather eat nails dipped in rat poison.”

“Will you still date him when you go back to Toronto?”

She shrugged. “I was getting tired of him always asking me where I was and expecting me to follow him around, but I liked hanging out with his band. They always have good weed.”

I waited a bit to see if Elizabeth would tell me anything more, but she'd stopped talking. She reached into her bag and pulled out a bottle of baby oil and a thin book that she opened half-way through.

“Well, see you later,” I said.

She didn't answer. I turned around and started walking away from her. I was more than happy to put distance between us. When I got closer to the road, I started running. “Stupid cousin,” I muttered. “Why couldn't you have stayed in stupid Toronto where you belong? Why'd you have to come here and ruin
my
stupid summer?”

After supper, Elizabeth plunked herself down beside me on the front steps of my mother's shop. Mom ran a convenience store in a summer cottage community on Cedar Lake in the Northumberland Hills while my father stayed in our home in Ottawa during the week and commuted to the cottage for the weekends. Mom and I had only arrived Tuesday to open up the store and we'd worked non-stop for three days setting up. Today was the first day I'd been outside, but only to entertain Elizabeth. She was the prize I got for working hard.
Some prize.
The sun had dropped a bit so that blinding sunshine struck us full in our faces. It would be a few more hours before darkness and already the mosquitoes and black flies were gathering in strength for their evening feed.

Elizabeth had on blue shorts and a gauzy white peasant top with puffy sleeves. She sucked on a grape popsicle, picking at a bug bite on the underside of her arm as she talked. Her tongue flashed dark purple every time she opened her mouth.

“I need to make some money this summer. I want to buy a stereo. I'm sick of the crappy radio.”

“Just ask your parents. They have lots of money.”

“They've tightened up my finances since I started hanging with Michael. Plus, there was the time they caught me smoking dope in the garden shed.”

“Did they ground you?”

“They did at first, but I cried and Mom always caves. My father isn't as easy to get around and he cut my allowance. He can be a real prick.” Elizabeth looked at me from under lowered lids. “So, little cousin, any ideas on how to get money?”

“There aren't many jobs around here. I babysit for a few families. Mom pays me to work in the store sometimes. Last year, I picked berries and sold them beside the highway.”

Elizabeth straightened up next to me. Her mouth curved up in a mocking, sideways smile. “Man, I forget how young you are sometimes. Babysitting's what you do if you have no life. Still, it's better than nothing or
berry picking
. Easy work if the kids are sleeping. When my exile at Cedar Pond ends, I'm going to get a weekend job in a coffeehouse.”

I smoothed down my smock top that had billowed in the breeze. My father would lock me in the cellar before he'd allow me to serve coffee to hippies. “Will your parents let you work while you're in school?” I asked.

“Why not? They don't have much say in what I do, or they won't once I turn eighteen. My grandmother left me some money in trust, and before you get all excited, it was on my father's side.” She cupped a hand over her eyes and stared up the road, having heard the rumble of a distant engine before I had. “Do you know who's coming?”

I brushed a few mosquitoes away from my face and followed the direction of Elizabeth's gaze. A plume of dust rose like flour behind a green Volkswagen van that was barrelling up the road, fast even for the locals. Through the layer of dirt and mud smeared across the side, I could make out foot-wide purple, yellow, and red flowers painted on the doors.

“Never seen them before,” I said.

We watched the van slow quickly across the road. The heads of everyone inside flopped back and forth with the suddenness of the braking.

“Drives like an idiot,” Elizabeth said.

“That's funny. My father isn't due at the lake yet.” I felt bad as soon as I said it.

Elizabeth made a choking sound and began laughing. “Good one.”

Doors slammed. I lifted my eyes. The family was walking towards us. A man with short, curly black hair wearing a purple madras shirt and patched jeans, a woman with blonde braids and a long swoop of bangs holding hands with a boy about two years old. The boy had dark hair that hung to his shoulders in tangled curls. He was barefoot and shirtless, dressed only in red shorts. We watched their plodding journey across the street. They stopped twice and the man pointed both times to the van, but the woman just shrugged and kept walking a few steps behind him.

Good thing my father wasn't there to pass judgment. He would have shown what he thought by spitting into the dirt. The man nodded as he passed us sitting on the steps. His eyes were as black as onyx. He was good-looking. That kind of good-looking that makes your throat tighten up and your heart beat faster. When he got closer, I saw that he was older than he looked at a distance, maybe early thirties. His shirt had threads sewn into the fabric that caught the light like spun gold.

The woman stopped in front of us after the man had gone into the store. “Do you know where we could find the Davidson cottage?” Her words were a soft drawl. An image of fried chicken and grits popped into my head.

Elizabeth studied the woman's embroidered peasant blouse before her eyes rose to the silver peace sign hanging between the woman's big breasts. She wasn't wearing a bra. Elizabeth's head slowly rotated in my direction.

I looked up the road and pointed. “It's on the lakeshore road about a mile that way.”

The woman leaned toward me, and I tilted my neck back to stare up at her. She had a trace of talc above her collarbone and smelled of Baby Soft perfume. Her eyes were the colour of the blue morning glories my mother planted each summer along the back fence. I could see all the way down her shirt and the sight of her large swaying breasts and dark nipples startled me.

“You are such pretty girls, sitting here in the sunshine. This your daddy's store?”

“My mother's. I'm Darlene Findley and this is my cousin, Elizabeth Hopp.” I raised a finger and pointed, poking Elizabeth on the arm.

The woman pulled the little boy close until he was wrapped around her leg. The silver bracelets on her arm jangled with the movement. “This here's Sean Lewis and I'm Candice Parsens, but people call me Candy for short. Pleased to meet you girls.”

Candy — like a stripper. I'd never seen one before, but figured Candy probably could pass for one. She smelled of drugstore perfume and moved as if she had no clothes on.

“Are you here for the summer?” I asked.

She nodded, “We've rented the Davidson cottage until September. I'm
so
looking forward to this summer away from the city.”

The kid had begun yanking on the hem of her shirt with one hand and pounding on her leg with the other. He rubbed his sticky red mouth into her leg. Candy grabbed his fist. “Sean here has a taste for something sweet like that popsicle you're eating, Elizabeth.” She looked down at him. “No hitting, Seany. I told you that. There's too much violence in this world.” She smiled at us. “Darlene and Elizabeth here have the right idea, sitting on the steps and enjoying the night air. I have half a mind to join you myself.”

Seany screamed up at her, a high-pitched wail that made Elizabeth and me jump. We stared at Candy to see what she'd do next. She laughed and started moving past us, holding onto Sean by one hand while he took one final swing at her thigh with the other.