She Felt No Pain (31 page)

As the sky turned black and sheet lightning flashed, Holly expected to feel raindrops, but none came. “Hello,” she cried, but the words blew back in her face. She continued to the main house, noticing only Marilyn’s Audi. The workmen must be gone for the day. Beside the house and another large building which might have been a cookhouse and mess hall, two enormous propane tanks on cement pads hunched like bloated toads.

Noting the new red metal roof, she stepped up to the full-length porch with fresh-milled boards and a handrail for security. An attractive rustic swing set, chairs and side table gave a cozy welcome. Huge wooden shutters were lowered across the front of the house, though a can of paint and brush sat waiting. Then she knocked.

“Is that you, Mike? Why so formal? Just come on...”

Then the door opened, and Marilyn stood in a faded denim jumpsuit, smear of paint on her nose. “Holly, what a surprise. You’re the last person I was expecting. I thought it was the carpenter come back to pick up a load of shingles for the dump. You can see we’re almost ready to go. And the propane people were here earlier with our tanks. Then the delivery came to fill them. That was a punch to the pocket. You’ll have to try our water. They went down four hundred feet, and it’s sweet as—”

She seemed to be talking uncommonly fast, perhaps swept up in the thrill of the moment. Holly felt like she was delivering a deadly telegram or a letter edged in black. “I’m sorry, but—”

“Oh, you’re not intruding at all. I was about to break for dinner. Please come in. As you can see,” Marilyn’s arms swept the room with pride, “it’s painting time. Something easy I can do myself. Sweat equity, they call it.” A large grin illuminated her face as Holly came in from the blast outside.

Marilyn closed the door and latched it, giving a little shudder. “What a wind. Sweeps up the hills like the wrath of God, doesn’t it? But not a raindrop yet.”

She ushered Holly down a short hall across the burnished, wide-planked firwood floor to a wicker chair in front of a large picture window in the rear. It overlooked a ravine down to a creek, trees as far as the eye could see, with the San Juan Range in the distance.

“How about some iced green tea? I’m ready to quit. There’s fruit, cheese, bread, all the necessities of life,” Marilyn said, and Holly postponed the moment of truth. Something dark and sour snaked up her esophagus. The woman took Holly’s silence for acquiescence and excused herself.

It was nearly pitch outside, as if it dusk had fallen. Holly’s eardrums thrummed with pressure, real or imagined. The idea that something terrible was about to happen made her heart batter its ivory cage. She willed herself to calm down, but an unresponsive primitive brain held sway. Should destroying Marilyn’s life to discover a buried truth be left to a higher power? Why had this information been given to her like a solemn burden?

A tinkling sounded, and Marilyn returned from a side room with a tray, pitcher and two glasses of ice cubes. As they both sat snug against the blast, shutters banging in the wind, she raised her tea in a silent toast, and to her own discomfort, Holly obliged.

“So it’s settled. You can stay, I hope. Get ready for a loonie-special tour,” Marilyn said as a crack rent the air outside. “That was close. We need the rain desperately. I can’t even risk burning the building debris. No permits are being issued. Mike will have to lug everything to the dump.”

Holly ran a hand through her hair as she reached into her core of strength and lifted as if she were bench-pressing twice her weight. “I don’t know how to say this...”

Marilyn caught the look, and something alien flickered in her grey eyes. Once they had seemed soft, but now the colour resembled tempered steel. She lifted her chin, clasping her hands. “You sound so serious. What is it? I thought your father had recovered.”

A second passed. “It’s about
your
mother.”

The words aged Marilyn a hundred years, shot in a vital spot like an elephant sinking to its knees.

“What...about her? She died many years ago. I told you that.” Her voice was even, but underpinning it was a treble bar.

Forced to bluff, Holly reached for the oldest line in the world, a roll of the dice, an insult to an intelligent woman. But intelligence was not wisdom. “I know what you did.” Aware that her every motion could be read, she crossed one leg and sat back in the chair. Keeping her face impassive would be a heavy task.

“Go on.” Marilyn matched her, motion for motion, sisters in a mirror.

So far she had admitted nothing. Where could Holly go now? Interrogations were like a chess game. The accused could hang himself with his own words, but if he stayed silent, the onus was on the interviewer. Would Marilyn ask for an attorney? The Canadian version of Miranda was on the back page of every pocket notebook, nothing more than reassurance of a fair and speedy process.

Suddenly another crash outside made them both jump. Marilyn shook her head. “Even closer.”

Seconds ticked, and a third crash rattled the room, and from the kitchen, glassware on shelves tinkled. But they were both frozen in a tableau.

Her throat dry from stress, Holly took a drink and held the glass against her forehead. Her hand was close to quivering, as if she suffered from familial tremor. “I—”

Marilyn’s shoulders sank, and her resolve melted faster than the disappearing cubes in her sweating glass. “Oh, my dear. I never was any good at this kind of game. It all started so long ago in a parallel universe. I was a different person. Can you believe that?”

“Arcadia.” Holly’s vision drifted to a large book on a table. Handmade, it had a velvet cover with that word.

“Arcadia was a child’s dream. This is different. The House of Alma will be perfectly pure and good. Tell me, because I am curious. How did you learn about Arcadia?”

Another crash, but with the tension of the moment, outside noises were as easy to ignore as an errant mosquito. “Joel had a few old papers. The master plan of the play.” She explained how she had found it in the cache. “That was the beginning.”

A dark looked passed across Marilyn’s stately eyebrows. “I suspected as much. He took it from my desk drawer that night. An old draft. I can’t throw away even fragments. This precious book never leaves my side.” She picked up the treasure and clasped it to her breast like an infant. “A world apart. I used to read it every night, but the pages are so fragile. Once more won’t hurt. Come see.”

Holly leaned forward at the opened page. “The calligraphy is beautiful. A medieval effect. It must have taken months.”

“Two years. We wrote the story together. I was Britomart. And Shannon was Belphoebe. It was a way to escape. And then
she
was going to take me away. To Toronto. Before it was finished. So I had to...we had to...” She closed the book with reverence. “There was no choice.”

“Tell me your side of the story. Was Joel blackmailing you?” Leading the witness by giving them self-serving options. Would she never learn the techniques? But how different in a textbook and in the flesh and neurons of reality. On one side, decency. On the other, Clare and her dangerous son. She was rationalizing, resorting to the means-to-an-end fallacy. That some people deserved to die. A fatal option for a law officer.

Marilyn nodded, then rubbed her temples as if to press away pain. “He wasn’t content with a reasonable sum. Twenty thousand, even thirty. He wanted to destroy this place, make me liquidate everything. All of the lottery money had been committed. Shannon and I had put our hearts into it. And it
will
be a success. A monument to her and the worthwhile lives we made together. We help people. You do understand.”

“Finding out about your supply of Fentanyl. Discovering the cache. Timing wasn’t on your side, much less fate itself. Ask yourself why.”
Will it be a success?
The future tense gave her a window to Marilyn’s mind.

“Convergence of the twain. The
Titanic
in search of an iceberg.” Marilyn gave a bitter laugh. “Joel wasn’t stupid. He learned fast on the streets, but he had a feral cunning. When he saw the manuscript at my home, it all became clear to him. He had shed no tears for Clare. All he cared about was that it meant he wasn’t going to get to move to Toronto.”

“I can see why you did it.” Did what? She left the question open. Was she setting snares for herself?

“Suppose I told you that Joel had abused me. That he was the twin of my mother. Once I stole a few pennies for candy, and she burned my hands on the stove.” She held them out, flexing her joints. “It’s ironic, but I don’t have clear fingerprints. Luckily there is feeling.”

The pads were blurred. Marilyn wasn’t lying. But why
suppose
I told you?
“Was there no one to help you? Aunt Dee?”

Marilyn’s laughter was bitter and short. “This isn’t today, where a whisper can bring down a child care centre. Dee was only visiting that day. She lived up in Campbell River before Clare died.”

Clare, not Mother.
“I can’t pretend to—”

“How
can
you know? Your father is a prince, like mine was, but you never lost him.”

But I lost my mother.
This was no time to contest Marilyn’s claim. The woman needed validation to draw out the poison.

Marilyn stood slowly and walked to the mantel, pointing to a silver-framed graduation picture of Shannon. An old-fashioned nursing cap framed her face like the angel of mercy she had been. Marilyn lifted it like the holy grail. “Was it worth it?” Then she turned. “She felt no pain. I am quite sure she felt no pain.”

Holly blinked and took a deep breath. The atmosphere was close, like a vacuum. If she didn’t get some air... “Shannon?” And then in Marilyn’s pooling eyes, she saw another depth like a mirror reflecting mirrors. “You mean your mother. Clare.”

Marilyn’s fist pounded the chair back, and tears of rage lit her eyes. “Other people’s misery was his happiness. A user with no conscience. Then...later...he took off, leaving poor Judy in the lurch. Thank god he never got his hands on that son of his.”

Marilyn could have blamed Joel. Dead men make the best villains. “So you killed him.”

Marilyn tossed her head back like a warhorse summoning its last strength. Her wild curls rearranged themselves in defiance, and the veins in her neck stood out. “He took that Fentanyl himself. It
was
in the medicine cabinet. That’s the first place addicts look.”

Or did you put it in the 007 case that night he stayed over and
wait for his addiction to take its course?
“A bit of luck for you.”

Marilyn’s voice rose. “It was about time. Joel deserved what he got. Death by his own selfish hand. I’m
not
sorry it happened.”

“But listen to yourself. Years of atonement show that you must regret what happened to your mother.”

Marilyn folded her arms as her muscles went rigid. “You
say
you know. Let me call your bluff.”

“I saw the nail holes on the stairs. Had the filler analyzed. I took pictures. Explain that away.”

“She was dead drunk every night. Animals have more caring mothers. And besides, the house is gone. Pictures won’t prove anything. It could be anywhere.”

“What?” The room was stifling. Something smoky met her nostrils, and she thought she heard an ominous crackling despite the roaring winds.

“Demolition finished today. They set charges to defeat those old fir beams. It collapsed like a pancake. For a moment I felt like applauding. All these years it’s sat there like a reproach. A tombstone. I sang our anthem.”

“Your anthem?”

Marilyn began in a clear soprano. “Stronger than Spain and France, Queen of the Renaissance. God save the Queen. Long may her banners wave, o’er nobleman and knave, but never passion’s slave...” Her voice trailed off.

In the middle of an opera, Holly felt a surge of heat rush through her spine and into her chest. She touched her pocket where the tiny recorder hummed, picking up human voices. “I still have the play fragment back at the office. And this tape.”

The fragile skin around the corners of Marilyn’s eyes revealed her age, despite her musculature. No matter how hard the deed, she was still soft inside. The fact that she and Shannon had dedicated themselves to a life of service proved that. Holly was already trying the case. A kind of self-defense. With the mitigation of her youth. Only fifteen.

Suddenly the lick of a wild grass fire streaked across the picture window and lit up the room. Embroiled in a brutal conversation, they had been oblivious to what was happening outside.

Marilyn ran to the front door, opened it as a wave of heat pounded in and slammed it. The yard was on fire. “A lightning strike. We can’t go this way,” she said with a hint of panic in her voice.

White blaze surrounded them as they exited a side door to meet a vortex of vampiric winds. Holly shouted, “The debris around your property is going up like tinder. We’re trapped in a fire ring.”

Marilyn wiped her forehead. Faced with losing everything, she seemed preternaturally calm. “Bobber Creek. There’s a boat. A canoe.”

“Then for God’s sake, move.” Holly shoved her shoulder, and they took off running down a narrow path. Behind them trailed the hissing of the fire and the snap of vegetation exploding. Looking back made no sense. Why stare death in the face until the last moment?

Marilyn’s arms pumped as they sprinted to the edge of the ravine, then skidded down what looked like a game trail. It had been years since anyone had chopped at the creek access, and a thicket of brambles, willows and scrub bushes impeded them. Creatures normally unseen in their camouflaged habitat burst forth in a primitive urge to escape their fates. A rabbit screamed as it bolted for the creek. Songbirds darted upward from the flames, and above, a raven soared straight through the boiling smoke, its shrill awk-awk a clarion call. The winds that hurried the flames also dispersed the choking clouds so that sometimes breathing was safe, sometimes impossible. In her hurry, Holly lost her hat to a gust which carried it over the creek into a tree. She yanked the mask from her pocket and pulled it over her head, leaving her nose free for the moment. She needed all the oxygen she could get.