Twisted (22 page)

It takes all my willpower not to veer off course toward the coffee shop. Is Liam working today? Who am I kidding? He probably wouldn't talk to me anyhow.

I pull out a scrap of paper from my bag. There's an address scrib- bled on it — where Mary wants to meet me, some bakery café place called The Gingerbread Haus. I've never been, or even heard of it, which is fine by me. I'd rather go there, someplace unknown, than
my
coffee shop. The thought of trying to introduce Mary …
“Oh, this is Mary, my mom's best friend, who was sleeping with Vince, my stepfather, while my mom was lying in bed dying of cancer. Did I mention the part about her being my mom's best friend?”

As expected, the whole place smells like freshly baked gingerbread. Mary is already there, seated at a table in the far corner reading a newspaper. I take a deep breath and walk across the room to join her.

“Hello, Mary,” I say.

She glances up and smiles a thin smile. “Hello, Alyssa.” She mo- tions with her hand toward the other chair. “You look well.”

I look like hell.

She looks older than I remember. I guess living with Vince will do that to you. “Yeah, uh, you look … well yourself.” I can lie too … I shrug my coat off, drape it over the back of the chair, and sit down.

“I ordered coffee and a piece of cake,” she says. “Do you want something?”

My stomach rumbles. It was too windy, so I couldn't eat my MiniWheats. “No thanks.”

She arches one eyebrow. “I can tell you're
thrilled
to be here,” she says.

“Could we maybe just get on with it?”

Just then the waitress drops off Mary's order. “Nothing for me,” I say as she opens her mouth to ask.

I impatiently wiggle my foot as I watch Mary add cream and sugar to her coffee then proceed to cut her cake into nine equal bite-size pieces.

“Look, Mary,” I sigh. “If this is about Aidan getting everything in the will, you could have just told me that over the phone. And news flash, I don't care. He can have it all.”

She slowly sets down her knife. “This has nothing to do with any
will
. And trust me, you might want to lose the attitude and get comfy, because what I have to tell you is going to take a long time.”

CHAPTER 35

I
can't believe she's sucked me in, made me curious. I hope it doesn't show. “Okay then, let's do this.”

Mary studies me over the rim of her coffee cup. “God, you look so much like your mother.” She takes another sip before she sets it down. “That's as far as the similarities go though, isn't it?”

I shrug, wondering what this has to do with anything.

“You're your father through and through.”

It doesn't sound like a compliment. “Thank you,” I say.

She goes back to studying me, then puts on this forlorn sort of look. “I wish you had been kinder to your mother.”

My eyebrows shoot up. “Like you were?”

She leans across the table and practically hisses, “I don't think you should be sitting there all holier-than-thou.”

“I'm not.”

“You were horrible to your mother. Just horrible. Do you think she didn't know?”

“Know what?”

“That you wished it was her who had died in that car accident instead of your father.”

“That's not true,” I say a bit too quickly.

She sits back in her chair, smiles a fake smile as the waitress tops up her coffee. Then she adds a splash of cream and stirs, leans back in. “You pushed her away. It broke her heart.”

I want to deny it. But instead I just stare down at my hands in my lap.

“Do you have any idea what it was like for her knowing you couldn't forgive her for being the one who survived?”

This time it's me who leans in. “The only thing I couldn't forgive her for was bringing Vince into our house.”

“You,” she says, pointing her spoon at me, “are wrong about Vince.”

I clench my hands into fists until my nails dig into my skin. “Is this what you wanted to talk to me about?”

“No,” she says. “Seeing you … brought back some memories, that's all.”

“So is the walk down memory lane over?”

She narrows her eyes. “If I were you, I'd be a little nicer to me.”

“Oh really. And why is that?”
I can't wait to hear this.

“Because if it weren't for me” — she bends sideways and rummages around in her big purse hanging off the corner of her chair — “God knows if and when you'd have ever come across these.” She places a small stack of flat, magazine-size books on the table.

I recognize them immediately. “My yearbooks?”

She nods. “Three junior high and one high school, grade ten. They were in a duffle bag, shoved under the eaves in your attic.”

I frown. “The attic?”

She nods again. “I was looking for boxes. I know you and Aidan haven't decided what to do with the house yet, but I thought at least I'd send some of Vince's clothes off to the Salvation Army.”

I pull the books toward me, open the one on top and start turning pages. It takes me a second to figure out what I'm seeing. When I do, my heart jams up into my throat. Every single picture of me is cut out — teams, student government, class, committees. Some perfect squares, others full body or head silhouettes. I go through one book then the next. All the pictures. Gone.

“I'm assuming you didn't do that yourself,” Mary says dryly.

I say, “No,” but it comes out silent.

“There were newspapers in the bag too.”

“Newspapers?”

“The local paper. From when you and Caroline did that Locks of Love, Stuff a Bus, when your soccer team won provincials, things like that. Every picture was cut out. Well, every picture of
you
,” she clarifies.

There's a lightness in my head, in my whole body, like I might float away any second. “I … I … don't …”

“It has to be Aidan,” she whispers.

I sit there trying to get my head around it, trying to get it to make sense. But I can't. It doesn't.

“Why would you say that?” I ask.

She gives me a confused look. “Well, who else could it be?”

I can only stare back at her.

“Seriously, Alyssa. Who?”

She becomes annoyed by my silence. “Your mother? Vince? The family of squirrels living in the attic?”

Sighing, I drag both hands down my face, pulling on my skin. “But why? Why would he do something like that?”

“I don't know, but I've seen enough
CSI
,
Criminal Mind
s,
Law and Order
to know there's something wrong here.”

“Something wrong with
him
, you mean.”

She squishes a tiny piece of gingerbread with her fork. I watch the cake ooze up between the tines. “I don't know Aidan, not really.” She looks up at me. “You lived with him, live with him now. What's he like? What's he like when he's around you?”

My eyes dart around the room, avoiding hers. She's the last person I see myself confiding in.

“Because you're the one who's closest to him,” she presses, as if she senses I'm holding back. “You know him best …”

“Yeah, well, it's not really like that,” I admit.

“Oh?” She tilts her head. “What's it like, then?”

“Um … ” Should I tell her the truth? Protecting him isn't going to do him any good. “He's not the Aidan I used to know. He's different, acts different. He suffers from … something. Some kind of mental illness, I think.” There, I said it. But I don't feel the need to share any- thing more.

She rubs some red lipstick prints off the edge of her cup with her thumb. “Those yearbooks,” she says. “You realize he would have had to have done that years ago, back when he was still living at home.”

My imagination conjures up a vision of Aidan in a darkened room, hunched over a desk. A lamp shines a pool of light onto his hands. He's holding scissors. And he cuts, and cuts, and cuts. A shudder ripples through me as I gaze blindly out the window over Mary's shoulder. My ears feel clogged, and all the noises around me sound muffled.

“You two were inseparable when you were younger,” she says. “Did you ever notice anything? Anything out of the ordinary?”

I shake my head. Quick, tiny shakes.

She gives me a doubtful look.

“I mean, I'd have to think about it,” I say. “But no, I — I don't think so.” My voice doesn't sound very confident.

We sit back in our chairs as the waitress stops by to check on us. Mary asks for some more cream. Then the waitress turns to me. “Sure I can't get you anything?”

“For God's sake. Would you just order something?” Mary says.

The thought of putting anything in my stomach makes me physically ill, but I look up and say, “I'll have a tea, I guess.”

At that moment someone at the table behind us slides their chair out and bumps into our waitress, who's carrying a tray of dirty plates. The dishes crash onto the tile floor. Everyone except Mary and me breaks into applause.

They're so loud I want to stand and scream, “Shut the hell up!” But like a robot, the inner waitress in me forces me to go over, kneel down, and help her pick up the broken plates.

“Thanks,” the waitress whispers. “They don't pay me enough for this shit.”

I don't have it in me to even fake a smile. I slide all I've gathered onto her tray and slip back into my chair.

“Mary?” I say.

“Yes?”

“What would you consider to be ‘out of the ordinary'?”

“I've no clue. And like I said, I never really knew Aidan. Though I have to say, my first impression of him was that of a strange sort of kid.”

Our waitress returns and sets my tea and Mary's cream on the table.

Once she's gone I say, “But look at his childhood. Dead mother, Vince for a father, uprooted from his home. I'd be a strange sort of kid too.”

“Maybe.” She sighs and rips open a packet of Equal. I can tell she's thinking. “Do you know anything about Aidan's mother?” she asks.

“No. He never talked about her.”

“Never?”

“No. All I know is she died in a house fire when he was thirteen. Mom told me that.”

“I don't know anything either. Except that her name was Claudia. That's about it. The only time Vince ever mentioned her was when he was drinking, and that was seemingly only to badmouth her.”

“Badmouth her? She's
dead
.”

Mary rolls her eyes. “Trust me. There was no love lost there. He'd go on and on about Claudia being his downfall, all
this
— whatever
this
means — was her fault, and that Aidan was just like her. Nothing he said really made any sense. It was just drunken gibberish.”

I tug on my tea bag string, dunk it over and over. My eyes fall on the yearbooks. “You're sure they were
hidden
.”

She nods. “Oh yes.”

My eyes are still on the books. “Who do you think hid them?”

She follows my gaze and frowns. “I never really thought about it. I just assumed it was Aidan.”

“If it was Vince, he would have had to have known there was something wrong with Aidan, would have known for a long time.”

A troubled look crosses Mary's face. “But if it was Vince, wouldn't he have just gotten rid of them?”

“Yeah … yeah, I guess so.”

“Not to say Vince didn't know there was something wrong with Aidan.” She goes silent. Again I can tell she's thinking. “You know, Alyssa. A few days before Vince passed, he was desperate to get a hold of you.”

“Why?”

“He wouldn't say. He called you several times, though, even left messages.”

“At Aidan's?”

She nods.

“But how did he know I was there? I didn't tell anybody except Caroline. And I know she wouldn't tell him.”

“I don't know. I'm guessing you didn't get any messages?”

“No.” Then I remember what Aidan said in the kitchen this morning.

“… I noticed on the call display that Mary called.”

“You make a habit of going through the call display?”

He never did answer.

“Aidan would have deleted them,” I say.

She presses her lips into a straight line. “Yes. Vince probably knew there was a good chance of that. Perhaps he hoped that one time he'd luck out and you'd answer, or maybe you'd get to the message first.”

“Do you know what the message was?”

“No.” She shakes her head. “When he was drunk, he wouldn't shut up. Nothing made sense, mind you. And when he was sober, it was like getting water from a stone. I will tell you, it must have been important. Twice I found him stumbling out to the truck, wasted out of his mind, bound and determined he was going to drive to Halifax. I finally had to hide his keys.”

“So you have no idea what it was all about.”

“No. And now, we never will.” Sniffing, she reaches for a napkin and dabs her nose. I avert my eyes until she's pulled herself back together. She smiles weakly and says, “It's kind of like the blind lead- ing the blind here, isn't it?”

Re-stacking the yearbooks, I slide them back to her using only two fingers, as if they're poisonous, as if I'm afraid of them.

“I wonder where they are … all the cut-out stuff.”

She blows out a mouthful of air. “I don't even want to think about it.”

Again my imagination kicks in. I watch
TV
too. Collages, shrines, hidden in some room, or some closet, behind a wall panel … in an old shed …

A knot tightens in my stomach. “What do you think it means?” I ask softly.

Mary takes her time answering. “Well, if I had to guess, I'd say that either Aidan really, really loves you …” — she pauses and motions with her finger for me to come closer — “or really, really hates you.”