“Calling someone is always the right thing to do. Promise me you’ll call any time you feel things are getting out of hand. I’d like to think you’d do the same for me.”
Steve smiled ruefully. “Yeah, right — like you’ve got problems, Mr. Everything’s-Under-Control.”
Dan wondered if that was really how he appeared to people who didn’t know him.
“I think I’m all talked out.” Steve yawned. He seemed calmer, a different person from the man who’d walked in the door an hour earlier. “I think we’d better get some rest.”
“Are you sure?” Dan said. “I’m not in a hurry.”
“Thanks. I’m sure.”
They left the donut shop and walked up the street. Ked faltered behind them, as though he couldn’t coordinate his footsteps.
“I want you to promise me you’ll talk to your doctor about this,” Dan said. “You do have a doctor, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Talk to him. Make an appointment today. Maybe a month or two on anti-depressants would help.”
“I will,” Steve said gratefully. “I promise I will do that.” He was nearly Dan’s age, but over the last hour he’d assumed the role of dutiful son.
They reached Dan’s car. Ked slid into the backseat and lay down without a word.
“I can give you a lift if you want,” Dan said.
“I’m only a block away.” Steve waved in the direction of Donlands.
The storefronts along Danforth were taking shape, losing shadow in the coming light. A car slid past, somnolent in the pre-dawn hush.
“You should see this place,” Steve said. “It comes fully furnished with artificial flowers. Did I tell you? It’s like a hotel lobby. It’s sort of wonderful and horrible at the same time. You’ll have to come over some night. We’ll put down a bottle of wine.”
For an instant Dan glimpsed the old Steve — friendly, chatty, kind. He was a good person. Someone who should never have to feel alone, with no one to help him sort out his problems.
“I’m always up for a drink and a chat.”
Steve shook Dan’s hand. “Thanks,” he said. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this, Dan. I feel much better. Truly.”
“Good. Keep in touch so I know things are all right. I’m home tonight after work and I’ll be in the office Friday morning, but I’m gone for the weekend.” Dan pressed a card in Steve’s hand. “Here’s my cell number. If you need to talk, just call me. Any time. I’m there for you.”
He watched Steve walk away, then got in the car and started the engine, hoping he could still catch an hour’s sleep. He turned to see Ked slumped in the back.
“How ya doing, kiddo?” he asked. “Gonna make it?”
With eyes closed, Ked nodded his head against the seat. “I love you, Dad,” he said softly.
Four
Dreams and Schemes
Sometimes going back to bed for that extra hour was the right thing to do and sometimes it was the wrong thing. Today it had been the wrong thing. Dan fumbled with a dull razor and dressed without realizing he’d put on mismatched socks. At nine o’clock, he spilled half a cup of coffee on his shirt. By ten, the entire day looked like it would be out-of-kilter. His reading glasses felt like a giant pair of daddy-long-legs straddling his head as he finalized the reports on the missing Kitchener woman with her fondness for jewellery and the young Serb who’d placed his faith in God and had the misfortune to come to Canada looking for work.
Shadows passed over the frosted glass with the mumbled goings-on of morning voices outside Dan’s office. For a firm that performed feats as miraculous as raising the dead, it might have had a colour scheme to match — beatific tropical shades, joyful rainbow hues. Instead, the offices were battleship grey — dull and cheerless as a December morning. Still, Dan consoled himself it was nothing so invidiously depressing as bubble gum pink or mustard yellow. It was simple, utilitarian, functional. Perhaps that precise shade of grey had been chosen to remind them of the dreary perseverance with which so many of the firm’s clients spent their days.
After fourteen years, Dan was one of the senior investigators. Some came and went in the space of a few years after finding more prestigious placement, while others burned out from the perennial themes of human misery that befell so many whose lives they tracked and whose stories were all that was left to record.
Dan had an impressive record of finds behind him and no reason to leave. There were always bigger firms and more prestigious appointments, but he’d made a decent life for himself and Ked. And he hadn’t lost interest in his work, which had always been his biggest concern. He didn’t need to feign enthusiasm or be admired. He was, despite the predictions of others, unaccountably successful. After all this time watching the others come and go, he had to ask himself: what else was there for him to do?
Dan was on his third cup of coffee, but the caffeine stubbornly refused to kick in. What he really wanted was a drink, but it was only ten thirty — far too early. A bottle of Scotch lay wrapped in a Sobey’s bag in the bottom of his desk. He’d hidden it like a schoolboy tucking cigarettes and condoms in the back of his socks drawer. In his mind’s eye he watched little feet duck outside and scrabble around the corner to the bar. Let them stay there then.
He tried Bill’s number and got the answering service. Bill never slept in, even after a late night, which meant he’d already left for the hospital. If he’d made it home the night before.
“Hiya,” Dan said into the phone. “We missed you last night.” His voice was gravely with fatigue. He tried to make himself sound jovial. “Give me a call about the weekend. I still don’t know who’s driving.” The plan had been to drive to Glenora on Friday and stay overnight with Bill’s friend Thom, the groom. As usual, Bill had been so hard to pin down that basic questions like whose car they were taking were still up in the air. “I’ll wait to hear from you. Ciao.”
He took another hopeless sip of coffee and opened the file on Richard Philips, the missing fourteen-year-old. The boy’s birthdate caught Dan’s eye — he was exactly one year less a day older than Ked, which meant that he was now a fifteen-year-old runaway. Happy birthday, Richard.
He read on. The boy had been missing for two months. There’d been no body recovered and thus no closure. At the end of August, an anonymous caller phoned Toronto police to say the boy was fine, giving details only someone close to him would know, and adding that Richard had no intention of returning home. He’d been labelled a runaway, plain and simple. Until the police had anything further to go on, the case was shelved.
Dan flipped through the pages to the transcript. The call had been traced to a diner on Church Street in the heart of the gay ghetto. That narrowed the possibilities drastically. Unless a kid had friends to turn to in the city — preferably with money — then hustling was a likely avenue. It was a choice Dan wouldn’t wish on anyone, but it was a direct source of income if a kid decided to disappear. It happened often enough, though the parents just couldn’t understand why their kids would choose sex with a stranger over the “love” they found at home. Dan could.
He’d had plenty of time to think about it before leaving Sudbury at seventeen. The issue had been simple — why stay where you weren’t wanted? He’d said goodbye to his aunt and cousin the night before, then told his father at breakfast he was leaving. Gaunt and grey-faced, the man grunted a response — whether in acknowledgment or disbelief, Dan couldn’t tell, just as he could never tell what any of his father’s cryptic communications meant.
After an exhilarating day hitchhiking, Dan found himself in Toronto with an empty belly and no bed. He bought three chocolate