Mist Walker. Barbara Fradkin

aback. “Why? Because of what he did. I have two daughters, and even if I didn’t, I—”

      “But he was acquitted.”

      “Because it was the word of a six-year-old against him and a whole slew of his teacher friends.”

      “So you’re saying he was guilty?”

      Her jaw jutted out, and the wattle beneath her chin quivered. “Is that so wrong of me? He may have been my brother, but I don’t shut my eyes to right and wrong.”

      “Do you think a whole slew of his teacher friends would? Just because he was a colleague?”

      “Teachers stick together. But the proof was, afterwards, they wouldn’t give him the time of day.”

      “But you’re saying they all lied to protect one of their own. And left a six-year-old to twist in the wind.”

      She mixed her drink with short jabs of her straw. “I sound bitter, don’t I? Well, I have a right to be. Ten years ago, my brother dragged our family through the mud. Vandals broke our windows so many times we had to move, my little girls got picked on in school, I got let go at the day care where I worked, because—hey, I must have had the same screwed up childhood, right? By the end, my husband couldn’t stand the stress and took off to Calgary. He came back, but not before I’d been through three years of hell on welfare. My brother molested little girls, but we’re the ones who paid the price. So yeah—” she barked out a short laugh, “I guess I’m bitter.”

      “You’ve more than earned the right,” he replied. “And I’m not reproaching you for your feelings about your brother, believe me. But when I called, you said ‘oh no’ as if you were worried about him.”

      His ploy had the desired effect, and some of the fight died from her eyes. She rummaged in her purse and extracted a package of DuMaurier cigarettes. Ignoring the “no smoking” signs plastered around the walls, she lit up and sucked a grateful breath into her lungs.

      “My brother and I were never what you’d call close. I’m eight years older than him, our dad left us when I was twelve, and we had to leave the farm and move to the city so our mother could work. I lost all my friends and got stuck in a crappy little apartment taking care of Matt. He was delicate as a kid. Always had colds or asthma. He cried if you yelled at him, but the kid had brains, and he was really good at making me take the blame for whatever went wrong. Mom never took the time to listen to my side. I was trouble, I admit it. I mean, look at me. I was a big, fat, ugly kid with attitude, and I’m still a big fat, ugly broad. Attitude? In spades. I’ve never been in trouble with the law, I don’t mean that. But I never caught on to the finer points of how to win friends and influence people. Matt did. But that was his downfall too. He never toughened up. He’d rely on his helpless act, and people would rescue him left, right and centre.”

      She blew out a lungful of smoke before resuming. “That’s why this trial thing killed him. Sure, he got all his colleagues to rally around, and he played his poor-little-me-wouldn’thurt-a-fly routine, and he got off. But then it all came apart. Suddenly he was alone. I’d had enough, and anyways if I’d tried to help him, my husband would have killed me. His teacher friends dropped him, the school board fired him, and everywhere he went, people pointed fingers. Hell, his story had been plastered over the news for months, and nobody believed for an instant that he was innocent. If this had been farm country and not Ottawa, he’d have been strung up by the balls behind a barn somewhere within days of the verdict.”

      She stopped as if suddenly realizing she’d lost her place, and her eye caught the frown of an employee behind the counter. Muttering, she busied herself mashing out her cigarette on the floor. Green waited patiently. He knew what he’d heard when he’d told her Fraser was missing, and no amount of blustery denial on her part would convince him this woman didn’t love her brother. And sure enough…

      “Well, you know,” she resumed, and her eyes didn’t meet his, “old habits die hard. I mean, I’ve been taking care of Matt since he was four, and I knew him inside out. I wanted nothing to do with him because what he did makes me physically sick, but I did wonder how the hell he was going to carry on when everyone dropped him. I mean, it was justice in its own funny way, right? I did figure he deserved it, but I got to wondering. I never contacted him, I never answered his calls, and pretty quick he got the message and stopped.”

      “Where was your mother during all this?”

      “Oh, Mom was in Florida with her new man, pretending she was twenty years younger than she was, and certainly never admitting she had any son at all, let alone a fully grown pervert.”

      “Are you the only other family he has?”

      She nodded, then stopped herself. “Well, Dad showed up for the trial. That was a treat. I hadn’t seen him in over twenty years, and Matt didn’t know him from Adam. ‘Just wanted to show my support, son’, and all that crap. I sent him packing.” She chopped at her drink with a vigour that shook the table. “All slick and polished like that, he’d do more harm than good to Matt’s case, and Matt just about came apart at the seams when he met him.”

      He propped his chin in his hand and smiled at her slightly. “So you really did look out for him, didn’t you. It’s second nature. And privately, even now, you still worry.”

      “Well... I wonder. I mean, ten years is a long time, and I got to wondering if he’d gotten himself together. After the trial, he tried to go away and make a new start, but the word always seemed to spread, and anyways he was no good at starting new. Matt was a kid who liked the same thing for dinner every night, and if you changed the brand of frozen orange juice, he’d notice.” She paused as if caught in the memory. “Anyways, I heard he came back here and found himself an apartment.” Her jaw jutted out again. “But I don’t know what he was doing with himself, and I don’t care. I almost forgot about him.”

      “But?” he prompted, not believing her for a second. She said nothing but chewed her lip as if wrestling with how much to reveal herself. He gave her a gentle push. “Something reminded you?”

      Her eyes grew shuttered. “He did. He phoned last week.”

      “What day was that?”

      “Wednesday.”

      Green’s pulse jumped, but he was careful to keep his tone neutral. “What did he want?”

      “I don’t know. I refused to talk to him.” She paused, her fingers gripping the cappuccino cup so hard it dented. “Look, he took me by surprise, okay? I hung up on him. I was thinking of calling him back.”

      “And now you’re worried that perhaps he was in trouble?”

      “Well, even Matt had his pride, you know? We hadn’t talked in eight years, so for him to pick up the phone, it had to be something important.”

      “You think he needed your help?”

      She frowned at him. “I don’t know. How could I know what the hell was on his mind? He sounded all earnest and desperate, like in the old days when he needed me to bail him out. He said, ‘Rose, I have something to tell you’, and I hung up.”

      “He had something to tell you. Like, news?”

      “I thought it was a confession. That’s why I hung up. All those years, he never once admitted he did it. Even just between us, when the truth wouldn’t have hurt him. But I didn’t want to hear it now, just ’cause it suited him. Fuck, it was over eight years ago, I’d put it all in the past, and no way was I letting him drag it all out again.”

      “But now you’re worried perhaps it was something else entirely?”

      She didn’t reply. Around them, the doughnut shop was empty and the staff was cleaning equipment. A Celine Dion ballad wafted over the air waves, crooning about love. Wrapped within herself, she seemed oblivious. She’d never been a pretty woman, but he saw there was a maternal strength to her when she wasn’t trying to bluster. Worry pinched her brows and quivered at the corners of her mouth.