It didn’t matter whether he had killed Jeffries or I had. He fought for my life. He saved me. As I sat watching him, I felt helpless; it was a favour I could not return. I wanted to hold him, to lie beside him in the bed as I had done as a child while he read to me. Instead I would read to him, my words soothing him to sleep. I would say “I love you” before he drifted off to sleep and he would counter with “you”, starting a battle that would not end until one of us gave in—the word “me” the coda said in concession.
It was a waking dream that I could not fulfill. My presence in his bed would terrify him, my words would have an effect opposite to what I had intended.
“Dad,” I said. “I wish you knew me still. There’s so much I need to ask you, so much I wish I could tell you. I’m so far gone I don’t know how to get back. Everything is falling apart.”
I choked back tears as I spoke to a man who seemed not to hear my words.
“I know something happened, years ago Dad. If only you could remember.”
I took his hand in mine, feeling his bones and tendons through the onion skin of his flesh. His eyes opened and I saw in them something I had not seen for years: a spark of understanding, of recognition, of unabated love. He moved his lips to speak but found no words. I saw the strain behind his eyes, the thoughts forming slowly in his addled mind.
“Lincoln,” he said.
My face was wet instantly, salted droplets rolling down my cheeks.
“Dad? You remember?”
“I’m sorry.” His eyes were welling up, tears I had hardly ever seen before dripped down, staining his pillow. “I did it for you.”
I could hear the dryness in his mouth, his lips looked as though they would crack if he smiled. I reached for a glass of water on the nightstand and helped him take a drink. The man he was to me right then, only a damp sponge on a stick raised to his parched lips would have sufficed.
“I wanted to tell you, Link, before it was too late. I was scared, scared what you would think of me. You’ve made me proud, son.”
I was sobbing at this point, my nose running as the tears flowed forward and back.
“It’s okay, Dad, it doesn’t matter anymore.”
“Well, you deserve to know the truth, but I’m too weak. I’ve always been too weak.”
Both of my hands now held his not wanting to let go for fear that this moment, a miraculous moment, would end.
“I love you, Lincoln.”
His eyes closed and he drifted off to sleep. He had gone too soon.
I sat back in the chair and closed my eyes, unable to believe what had happened. He had broken through, fought past the disease and spoken to me, remembered me. I had never thought it possible, but it happened.
I opened my eyes again and looked upon my father, sound asleep in a bed far too large for his slight frame. His face was dry and there was not a spot on the pillow below his head. I refused to believe I had dreamed it, refused to believe it wasn’t real. My face was still wet, my shirt soaked at the collar and my nose running.
I stood up and leaned over the bed, kissing my father on the forehead. “I love you,” I whispered as I stood back up.
His eyes moved beneath his eyelids and his mouth opened a crack. “You.”
“Me,” I said.
A slight smile formed on his face as he peacefully slept.
—31—
The drive home took far longer than it should have as I pulled over on the highway twice. There were no windshield wipers to clear my eyes. The weather always intrigued me, how our emotions are so closely tied to it: a rainy day brings us down, a sunny day boosts our spirits.
Today the weather seemed to be reacting to me.
It had been sunny when I drove down to Chatham and now, as I drove home with tears in my eyes, the clouds grew dark and the rain began to fall. When the tears became too thick to see through and I found myself stopped on the shoulder, the rain came down in a deluge, drops the size of golf balls pounding on the roof and windshield.
The rain didn’t cease as I pulled into the driveway and stepped out of the car. I made no attempt to move quickly to evade the water. Instead I stood in it, looking to the sky for answers as the water poured over me. My clothing became heavy and dragged down on my shoulders. I was fixated, unwilling or unable to move for minutes until my phone ringing broke through. I answered the phone, hoping it hadn’t been ruined in the rain. It was a call I had to take.
“Kara?”
“No, it’s Chen.”
A bolt of lightning struck in the distance and the thunder rolled in.
“Sounds like this weather is province-wide,” he said. “We found the bodies, Link, buried beside a large rock.”
I could only mumble a sound of understanding. At least it had been a rock, not the tree in my dreams.
“The rain came in right after, with any luck we’ll excavate tomorrow. The one boy’s clothing was pretty intact, took a sample from what looked to be his underwear and it’s on its way to CFS right now.”
The killer’s DNA, Jeffries’s DNA, would be on it.
It was a fate I had narrowly missed.
“Good job, Chen.”
“Keep you posted?”
“Sure, thanks.” I hung up the phone.
I dialed Kara next but there was no answer. Her home number yielded the same result. I would have left a message if I’d had any idea what to say.
I unlocked the door and stepped inside trailing water behind me. My clothes clung to my body. I wrestled them off and left them in a heap at the door then walked upstairs to the bathroom and toweled myself dry.
The pillow was soft beneath my head as I fell asleep.
* * *
The phone rang beside my head and woke me to face the red glare of my alarm clock: 9:07 p.m. I had slept through the rest of the afternoon and nearly into the night. The phone rang again, reminding me of its presence.
“Hello?”
“Link, it’s Kara.”
A million questions came to mind but only one was important.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m great, better than great.”
She sounded incredible, a new woman.
“I spent some time thinking, Link, a lot of time.” I waited, holding my breath. I heard no breathing on the other end either. “I don’t want to be that woman, the one that breaks up the marriage and ruins everyone’s life.”
“You wouldn’t be doing it alone.” ‘It takes two to tango’ sounded too clichéd.
“Doesn’t matter. You’re right, Link, you need to stay with Kat. Make it work. If you can’t, I’ll still be here… for a while anyway.”
“Thanks, Kara.”
My heart was breaking. I felt like such an ass, blamed myself for the entire thing. If only things hadn’t happened the way they did—if only I hadn’t been so weak.
“I saw my father again today.”
I had to speak, eager to share my news and apprehensive of what it might mean.
She said nothing, waited for me to continue.
“He recognized me, Kara. He spoke to me and apologized for what had happened. He slipped away again before he could tell me what happened.”
“Don’t stop going. Maybe you can get him to break through again.”
“I hope so. He remembered it. Christ, he remembered. I need to know the truth.”
Neither of us knew what to say, and we each hung up in near silence. I took hold of my crutches and brought myself out of the bed and downstairs. I was still nude and saw no reason to dress, the hot tub and stress relief were my only destinations for the night. Pouring a dram of scotch into a glass, I made my way outside with a single crutch and a desire not to spill my drink.
The water wrapped around me as I sunk into it, its warmth soothing my body and mind. With glass in hand I raised my arm to the sky, a toast to myself, to my father and to the universe or whatever power had given us that one moment together. Maybe that power could grant us one more.
/> I sipped the drink, not wanting a repeat of the last time my emotions left me thirsty. The stars in the night sky disappeared before my eyes behind thin wisps of clouds only to reappear later. If I focused on the clouds, barely moving in the windless night, the stars themselves seemed to move as the clouds stood still.
Everything comes down to perspective.
—32—
The phone woke me the next morning just after seven. I didn’t want to answer it, I just wanted to sleep. I rolled over and checked the caller ID. My father’s retirement home.
“Hello?”
“Lincoln? It’s Anita.” She was the woman I had first seen when I returned to visit my father, the one that drew the attention of my father’s roving eye. “I’m sorry to tell you this, but your father passed away last night.”
A lump formed in my throat and I couldn’t speak. She waited. The professional in me, who had made calls and visits like this, recognized her silence as a sign of experience. It took a minute before I was able to speak.
“Was it the fever?”
“The doctor thinks so, he was getting very weak.”
I had investigated dozens of deaths from a variety of causes: homicide, suicide, natural causes. The role of the police was simple: determine if there was anything suspicious, assist the family, await the coroner’s attendance and, if the coroner deemed it natural, help the family get in contact with a funeral home. Once the body was removed, my job was done.
Now, faced with the terrible news I was used to bringing to others, I was lost. Their role had become mine and I didn’t know what to do.
“What’s next?”
“There’s a very good funeral home in town. We can call them if you like. Your father didn’t have anything arranged.”
“Okay,” I said. “Call them, please. Should I come down?”
“It’s not necessary. The funeral director will likely have your father removed before you would arrive. I’ll have them call you and you can arrange to see him there, if you’d like.”
“I’d like that,” I said. “Thank you.”
I hung up the phone and cried myself back to sleep.
* * *
My father was buried three days later. I had called Kat and the kids to tell them, but there was no reason for them to come home. Link had only met my father a few times and Kasia never. Once the Alzheimer’s took hold, Kat and I felt it would be too difficult for them to understand.
Kat wanted to come, to stand by me, but I told her to stay. The kids were enjoying themselves and I didn’t want to spoil that. And I wasn’t ready for her to come back yet, there was still more I had to do to prepare myself.
My knees weren’t used to begging. Practice would make perfect.
The church was full of people—friends and family I hadn’t seen in years and a number of coworkers who had come to give their condolences. I made the rounds, accepting their sympathy and thanking them for coming. It was still hard to accept. I had just come back into his life and now he was gone. The things we take for granted.
The time came for me to speak. I made my way to the front of the church, laid my crutches beside the altar and rested on it just enough to support my weight.
“I lost my father a long time ago,” I said. “Many of you knew of his battle with Alzheimer’s disease that left him a shadow of himself. I gave up on him years ago, finding too much pain in never being recognized when I went to visit. I was selfish, and it was out of selfishness that I recently found myself back at the nursing home trying to reconnect with him.
“I spent a lot of time with him in his last few weeks and I was able to see in him the man I had once known, the man I had always loved and looked up to. He did so much for me, took huge risks in order to protect me. Right or wrong, his reasons were just.”
I looked out over the crowd and saw the familiar faces I had needed to see. Kara sat with her eyes fixed to me as if channeling the strength I would need to finish the eulogy, and Chen sat, hat in hand, in his dress uniform. I looked back down at the altar.
“The last time I saw him, he was lying in his bed sick with a fever. Maybe I dreamed it, maybe somehow the fever broke through the barriers, but he knew me, he spoke to me as his son for the first time in years. Even though I have barely set foot in a church in all my years and question the nature of miracles, I know that somehow, wherever it came from, I was given one. I should have known then that it was the last time I would see him. It was as if he had one last thing he needed to do, one thing he needed to say before he could finish his journey.
“Thank you all for coming; you have honoured his life with your presence and kind words.”
I made my way back to the first pew, taking a seat beside Kara. Her hand on my leg told me I had done well and I hoped, if my father was listening, I had done him and his legacy proud.
The service finished and everyone began to file out of the church. Only very close family and friends would be attending the internment. Kara and I were last to leave and we took her car, Kara driving behind the hearse to the burial plot. The preacher spoke, read verses from the Bible and shook some dirt over the casket once it had been lowered into the ground.
I stood transfixed on the grave, an open hole with my father lying inside it. As time went on Kara and I were left alone with my father’s body, the gravestone bearing a fresh inscription of his life and death.
Beloved son, father and husband. October 26, 1936—July 2, 2011.
Piles of dirt surrounded the grave and two shovels lay off to the side. I walked over to one of the shovels and traded it for a crutch. I was able to balance well enough on my cast now.
I dug into the dirt and spread the first pile on to the casket, a cacophony of sounds as dirt and rocks hit the wooden exterior. I kept shoveling until the casket disappeared beneath the dirt. Kara joined me, the other shovel in her hands, helping me fill the grave and say goodbye to my father in my own way.
Death wasn’t clean. He had dirtied his hands for me once, and now I would do it for him.
The sun was setting as the last pile of dirt disappeared. A mound of fresh soil and a stone were all that remained, an eternal marker to my father’s life. I knelt down in the grass and pressed my hand into the mound of dirt.
“Goodbye,” I said, and removed my hand, leaving the print behind. I stood up and looked at the fading sun, bright orange as it fell beneath the horizon. Kara put her arm around my waist and I reciprocated. She had stood fast as my pillar today.
We brushed the dirt off of ourselves and stepped into the car. The next step, and it was one I was dreading, was returning to the nursing home to collect my father’s belongings. I had buried my father beside my mother, in a cemetery in Chatham not far from the house I grew up in. It was only a short drive to the nursing home and the few minutes passed almost instantly.
I wanted to do it myself—go in, get what I needed and get out—but I couldn’t. Kara had to help, I couldn’t carry a thing and still use my crutches. Anita had called yesterday and told me everything was packed up and that there wasn’t much. She was right.
When we walked into his room, I saw what remained of him—two boxes and a duffle bag. There was a faint smell in the air, aftershave or something, but it was enough to bring the memories flooding back. I began to cry, short-lived tears interrupted by a knock on the open door.
“Mr. Munroe?”
“Oh.” I rubbed the tears away. “Hi, Anita.”
“When we were packing everything, I found a letter in his drawer. I’m assuming it’s for you. It’s inside the smaller box, right on top.”
“Thanks, I’ll take a look at it.”
“I just wanted to let you know. Sometimes people don’t look in the boxes for a while. It’s too painful, maybe.”
I could see that she was getting upset. As painful as it was for family to go through the boxes, it was probably just as painful for her to pack them. In the last few years she’d seen my father a thousand times more than I had.
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I walked up to Anita and took her hand in mine. “Thank you, for everything.” For taking care of him when I couldn’t, for seeing him every day when it had been too painful for me, for being strong when I was weak.
Anita smiled and nodded then turned and walked down the hall back to her desk in the lobby. She had barely taken her first step before I had the box open and the letter in my hand.
I stared at the yellowed envelope, the faded ink, the unmistakable handwriting—“Lincoln” on the front in my father’s sloppy yet distinguished cursive. I held the letter up to the light but nothing showed through. I flipped the envelope over and smiled at the red wax seal, an ‘L’ pressed into the wax. How old-fashioned.
The wax crumbled as I opened the envelope and removed the hand-written letter.
“Lincoln,” I read aloud. “I’m sorry I never told you the truth. I’m a coward and if you’re reading this I’ve gone to the grave a coward. Our camping trip, we were in Algonquin Park, summer of eighty-four. You walked away from the tent one night, I never understood why, but I woke to you screaming. The moon was full, enough light to see by. I ran after you, trying to find you in the night.”
I paused and Kara stayed silent, waiting for me to regain my composure and continue.
“I searched and searched and couldn’t find you. Then I heard you scream again and a man yelling. He called you a filthy nigger, said that you ruined everything, that he wanted a white boy. There was so much anger in his voice, and it made me so angry to hear him call you that after everything our family has gone through. When I got to him, you were lying on the ground, unconscious and beaten. He was cutting your pants off, Lincoln, with a large knife. I had no choice. I jumped on him and hit him as hard as I could.
“We fell to the ground fighting. I was losing, he was stronger than me. He’d dropped the knife when I hit him.”
The letter stopped here, briefly at least. It was a slight break, imperceptible to some perhaps. Like the way the ink that followed was just barely darker, the writing more deliberate.