Will is a purebred book hound. He’s one of a dwindling species of book merchants who read everything they sell. I used to play a game with him back at the old shop. Each time I had a few minutes to kill before Helen knocked off, I’d drag out an obscure volume from the back shelves and ask him whether he’d read it. Without fail, he’d give me a synopsis of the text, offer his sly appraisal of the work, and throw in a few shocking tidbits about the author. It didn’t matter if it was the latest new-age take on the Kama Sutra, a Mavis Gallant anthology, or a medieval pilgrim’s guide to cathedrals. I used to think he was snowing me, until I perused a few of the books at home. Then I didn’t question it any more.
He sat me down in a quiet corner, at one of the few tables not taken over by students. Before he started talking, he studied my face, assessing the ravages of my year as a widower and single parent.
“I want to apologize, Irving. They’d already called the cops when I came on for my shift. When I saw it was Severn—”
“She didn’t deserve any special treatment,” I said, perhaps a little too abruptly.
“What’s it been now?” he ventured. “A year?”
I remembered then that he’d spoken to me at the visitation, sounding equally earnest in his sympathy. To be perfectly honest, I couldn’t recall much about that day, except the closed coffin and Severn stiff and brittle beside me as we endured wave after wave of condolences.
“How are things at home?” he asked. He expected the real story, unlike most people who asked.
I shrugged. “She’s a teenager who’s angry with the world. Hardly sets her apart from the crowd.” I realized I was drumming my fingers on the table. I curled them in a fist and set them on my lap, out of view.
I could see that my answer didn’t satisfy him. I was being too glib for his taste. But I wasn’t about to relive the past year with him. “There was a boy with her,” I said, getting back to business.
He blew on his coffee. “You want to know if he put her up to it.”
I said nothing. I didn’t have to. He understood me.
“No,” he said. “I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“You want a biscotti? I should have asked when we were getting the coffee.”
“Will,” I said impatiently.
He let his eyes wander through the store as if he was looking for a volume that would help him find the right words for what he had to tell me. But there was no inspiration on the shelves. His gaze settled back on me.
“I don’t think the boy was all that interested in the book,” he said. “But Severn was.”
“How can you be so sure?”
He sat there sizing me up, deciding whether to be straight with me. Finally he got to his feet. We left our coffees on the table, and he led me back through the stacks to the information desk. He pulled a hardcover from the shelves where they kept special orders.
“I set it aside,” he said, then handed it to me. “Have a look at the author.”
The title was Northwest Passage. I read the name below it and felt my cheeks burn.
“He was in the store autographing copies that day,” Will explained.
It was as if a long-buried prehistoric beast had reached out of the dirt and grabbed me by the ankle, pulling me down into a terrible volcanic layer of my past. Jack Livingston’s smug face smiled back up at me from the jacket flap. His photo was an old one, even though the novel was new. He looked just as he had the night Helen brought him home all those years ago—a man of forty, with Samson-like hair and a supercilious glint in his eye.
Will’s lips twitched sympathetically. He knew that Severn’s shoplifting was the least of my concerns now. “He signed it.”
I opened the front cover. There was Jack’s signature, and above it the words “Dear Irving—Glad to have you on the voyage.”
Will eyed me cautiously. “The book’s outselling Atwood and Ondaatje,” he told me. “It’ll probably be nominated for the Governor General’s Award. You can take it, no charge. With the inscription, it can’t be sold or returned to the publisher anyway.” And then he added meaningfully, “I think you’ll be interested in the story.”
I handed it back to him without even reading the synopsis on the inside flap. It wasn’t hard to figure out from the book’s title where Livingston had got his inspiration, but I wasn’t about to let the bastard taunt me any further. Not after nearly twenty years.
* * *
I’ve just hung up from calling in sick to school when the phone rings. It’s Avery mother.
“They’re in Toronto,” she says.
She explains that she remembered Avery has a debit card for one of her accounts. She checked the Web for recent transactions and found that he spent fifty bucks at a bistro in Toronto. In the Beaches, to be more precise. It was more than he’d spend on a meal if he were on his own. A piece of shrewd detective work I wouldn’t have expected from a woman I’d always taken for a bit of a flake.
“It’s not far from his dad’s place,” she says. Avery normally visits his dad on weekends, she adds. She’s tried the condo, but there’s no answer. Dad’s often out of town on business, but Avery has a key.
“What’s the address?” I ask.
“We still can’t be certain that Severn is with him,” she says.
“It’s a place to start.”
I can tell that she’s not keen to have me banging on the door to her ex’s condo. “There’s a blizzard on the way,” she says. “They’re advising people to stay off the roads.”
“I’ve already booked the day off work,” I tell her.
Despite her misgivings, I can sense that, like me, she’s not happy simply waiting by the phone. “We go together, then,” she says.
I’m not particularly enthusiastic about having her along for the ride. At the best of times, the drive down the 401 takes two hours. We’ll feel obliged to fill the long silences, to try explaining our messy lives to each other without really wanting to. Still, I don’t see a way around it. She’s not going to let me look for her son without her. And without the address, I might as well be searching for a contact lens in a snowstorm.
“I’ll pick you up in ten minutes,” I tell her.
Chapter 3
As I grab my car keys from the dresser, I ask myself why I never confronted Severn once I discovered who she’d gone to see at the bookstore. Maybe I figured the only thing I’d get from her was an impenetrable scowl. Deep down, though, I knew the opposite was true; I was afraid she’d tell me exactly why she’d had him sign his new book for me. It was my nightmare scenario come to life.
I sink to the bed, overcome with exhaustion. The bedcovers are still twisted into the same knots I left them in yesterday morning. My pillow is mashed and herniated from its case. Helen’s pillow is plump and undisturbed. Even during my roughest nights, I avoid her half of the bed like it’s a foreign land from which I’ve been deported without appeal. It’s the same bed that Severn used to come to in the middle of the night, seeking refuge from the monsters in her closet. She’d curl up, the warmth from Helen and me sheltering her on either side. Snug as a bug in a rug. Was it ever really like that? I begin to wonder. Or is nostalgia playing tricks on me, colouring my memories in warm sepia tones?
“I hear that Jack Livingston goes through wives like he goes through ballpoint pens,” Will told me. “Word is he’s shacked up with some