Extensions (2 page)

“Terrific place. For sure you'll want to retire here.” I followed Monty to the deck where spicy meat cubes were cooking on skewers.

“Put your feet up.” He gestured toward a chaise lawn chair and handed me a glass of cold beer. “This is recuperation time for you.”

The best mirror is an old friend.
That line was used to introduce one of the many eulogists at Mom's funeral, and never had anyone confirmed it more than these two. Here they were propping me up again. Macy was born six weeks before Mom's crazy death on Valentine's Day, but that didn't stop Gail and Monty from flying out for the funeral. I raised my glass. “Here's to your new home.”

Monty raised his bottle from the barbecue. “Life can start for us now that you're here to baptize it. How are you? And your dad?”

“Confused. Both of us. Six months haven't made it any more real.

Dad's still at a loss. He's practically given up golf without her, and crosswords just don't fill the days for him. I think I've persuaded him to take a course in cartoon drawing.”

“Cartoons?” Monty almost lost a mouthful of beer.

“He needs a project and has always been creative. Even though Mom was the art teacher, he was the one who drew the most wonderful comic strips for me as a kid. Great fantasy stories, lovable characters. He even made up songs for them to sing.” Monty smiled, sliding the kabobs easily from their skewers into a stainless steel bowl. Whenever I tried that, they ricocheted into the barbecue lid. “And I might take a history course. Get started on the academics both my parents wanted me to take instead of becoming a cop. Aren't I contrary? Now that Mom's gone, I'm ready for the course she would have died to have me take.”

Mom
and
died
. I still could not speak that combination of words without a choking feeling starting in my throat and ending up in my eyes. I saw death regularly and remember my first next-of-kin notification two weeks into the job, when I had to tell a mother her sixteen-year-old daughter had been killed in a car accident. Tears fought to get out then, but within a couple of days, more sad files had pushed that memory aside. I could not bury my mother's file so easily. I was barely getting used to the idea that Sara was gone and that was already seven years ago. Dying seemed such a secretive betrayal, a covert operation. Each on her own, no consultation with Dad or me.

Monty shook his head. “I still can't believe it. I'll never forget Retha jiving with your dad at our wedding. She looked like a teenager.”

“How do you think it felt being mistaken for sisters when your mother is in her fifties and you
are
a teenager?”

Not that we looked alike. I was a Dryvynsydes in height and fine hair, whereas the petite Retha had a thick, manageable blonde bob all her life. Her size four had not changed since she was fifteen, even after she had me at age thirty-six. In her fifties she started running, first half marathons, then full, always ending up in the top ten for her age division. Perfection did not stop with her body. She regularly won awards for imparting a love of art and music to her students in an innovative way. To which could be added: first-class hostess, patient mother, uplifting wife. After Dad retired as high school principal, she made sure they took at least one enlightenment trip a year — a museum tour of Spain and France, an archeological dig in Egypt. She would never go for the idle beach vacation in Mexico or Hawaii, though she did accompany Dad on a golf holiday to Palm Springs every year, and learned enough of the game herself to challenge him on the odd hole. Efficiency on every front. Her supreme act of efficiency was to outrun, outexercise, and outstep old age by dropping dead on her treadmill just after she turned sixty-seven. The only role Superwoman Retha Dryvynsydes could not have played was a feeble old lady, so she added an early death to her list of achievements. Congratulations, Retha.

“You ready with the meat, honey?” Gail bounded onto the deck with two bowls of salad and a basket of rolls, Clancy behind her. Two sweeps of her arms and the cedar picnic table was transformed into something out of
Chatelaine
— fruit-spangled tablecloth, glasses, plates, and napkins in assorted solid fruit colours. By the time the adults sat down, Clancy was eating quietly and neatly at one end of the table, and Macy was cooing contentedly on a blanket nearby.

“You're another Retha,” I said.

“I wish,” said Gail, “but not with these thighs.” Monty gave her bare tanned legs an approving pat.

“So how's Willow Point so far?”

“Pretty quiet at work,” said Monty. “A few impaireds, B
&
Es, gas theft from farms, vandalism. Hey, it's a service town for farmers — the better criminals go elsewhere. Last week we got called to get a cat out of a tree.”

Gail shook her head as Monty spoke. “That garage sale is about as lively as it gets. Maybe once Clancy is in school and I start teaching skating, I might find some kindred spirits tucked away. So far it's only been hockey mothers — Joyce was one of those. As usual, I'll end up on more committees than I want, because there are too few women to go around.”

I thought of Gail and me as teenagers, both of us privileged — no, make that pampered. She concentrated on figure skating and I spread myself thin into everything. As an only child I was encouraged to sample both parents' passions: dancing, figure skating, piano, art, sports, along with decent grades, which I barely and lazily maintained. In our own ways, Gail and I had both rebelled from a life where rebellion was not necessary. Though never forced upon us, a university degree was certainly encouraged, so what did I do? Waited tables at the Cactus Club for a couple of years while waiting for my acceptance into the
RCMP
, which, after waitressing, was the second most unexpected line of work either parent would have considered for me. And Gail's parents, both pharmacists, had envisioned a profession for their daughter in pro skating, journalism, or pharmacy, where bake sales, hockey camps, and community skating lessons were on the edge of a rewarding career and family life, not the focus. Not that they were disappointed with Monty as a son-in-law, but they had not expected Gail to find him so soon.

“We won't be here forever, thank God,” said Monty, helping himself to a second plate of food.

“If we ever get close to a large centre again, I'm going to take some courses.” Had Gail heard us talking? She had started an arts degree before she got married. “In journalism. Amazing how raising a family brings out the urge to do something for your own development. Seems you're always tending to someone else's needs.” She wiped Clancy's face with a napkin and released him to play in the back yard.

Monty escaped from this discussion into the house for more beer.
RCMP
spouses make as big a commitment to the force as the members, and he knew it.

“I wouldn't know about that,” I said.

“No one setting your heart aflutter?” Just as Macy was about to fall forward on her face from a sitting position, Gail scooped her up and plunked her on her knee.

“Only as in ‘How do I get rid of this loser?' There are lots around, and I could be a magnet if I don't watch it.” One way I had not let my parents down was in marrying too early. In four months I would be thirty-one and had lost my only prospect.

“Is Ray still on your mind?”

“Yeah, with all the other creeps. He doesn't stray into my good thoughts anymore, but he has left me with a healthy suspicion of his gender.”

Ray Kelsey was my first and only love. In high school I hardly dated and like to think it was because I was too tall for all the boys. Ray Kelsey was 6'4". He came to my rescue when I was a rookie cop going to court for the first time. He was a rookie Crown Prosecutor and helped me through my jitters. We did not get together then because he was going out with a woman he had met in law school. Too clingy, he told me when they broke up. “What I like about you, Arabella, is your independent spirit.” Three of the best years of my life later, my future was all planned in my head. We had even lingered at the ring section in jewellery stores not long before he dropped the bombshell about the blonde bombshell in his office. “The problem with you, Bella, is that you're too independent.”

Monty reappeared with two bottles of beer. “Spoke to Chad Simmons last week. He got a corporal's posting in Porcupine Plains. Asked how the best-looking member of our troop was doing.”

Trust Monty to give me a lift.

“Your best-looking troopmate bought something at the garage sale today,” said Gail.

“What could Willow Point offer a woman from Vancouver?” asked Monty, then looked at Gail and wished he hadn't.

“An old photo. It looks identical to one I have of my grandmother and her twin sister.”

“Maybe it is.”

“How could it be? She told me her mother had it taken when she and her sister were four. It's the only picture of them in existence. Just before their mother died of the flu, she gave them each a print. The girls were only eight and were sent to live with different relatives. Her sister died of the flu a year after that.”

“It still could be a match.”

I shook my head vigourously. “What are the odds of that? Both sisters ended up with aunts who didn't want them, so there's little chance either would keep a photo of a dead girl. These were poor families. Besides, this all happened on Vancouver Island, around Nanaimo. Almost a hundred years ago. This is Saskatchewan.”

“You're talking in terms of odds. I took a course last month in Regina on the patterns of criminal behaviour. There are a few maybe, just enough to confuse you. More weird things happen than anyone could ever make up if he wrote a book. I guess we need guidelines to get our leads, but at the back of my mind I'm always thinking, the solution to this case is going to be something we least expect.”

“So that's why you're such a young corporal.”

Macy had fallen asleep on Gail's knee, and she rose carefully to slip into the house with her.

“You'll get there,” Monty said.

“I'm not sure I want to. I'm not sure about anything anymore.” I had written the corporal's exam and my mark was mid-range, like all the other marks in my life. The next step was to apply for a corporal's position when one became available. Experience, references, and other qualifications played as much a role as exam results, but I was still missing one important requirement: the motivation to put my name in.

“Then you're headed in the right direction.”

“Seriously. I often wonder what I'm doing on the force. Lately I feel the way I did on the basketball court in junior high.” Gail returned with a tray of strawberry shortcake and whipped cream just as Clancy arrived panting at the deck. “Gail can tell you about that. The coach made me centre, captain even, because I was so tall. I was terrified when the ball came to me, because I didn't know what to do with it. Possession of the ball brought the opposing guards, waving their arms in my face, threatening me with B.O. fumes, trying to freak me out. Finally, I pretended to be busy guarding someone whenever I thought the ball might come my way. My back was always to the passer. I should never have been there in the first place.”

Monty laughed and heaved Clancy and two plates of shortcake onto his big knees. “Must be a slump. You seemed a natural at Depot. In scenarios, we hated following you because you had such good instincts dealing with people.”

“Maybe since Mom died I've been questioning everything. Did I join for the right reasons? I can't even remember why now.”

“I can,” said Gail. “I remember the exact day. It was fall. We were in Grade Eleven, walking home through dry leaves. We came to that old house with all the junk in the backyard, and a crowd of people were standing along the sidewalk. The ambulance was already there and two police cars drove up. A male and female officer jumped out of one and went into the house; a third man kept the crowd away. A few minutes later the paramedics brought a covered body out on a stretcher and we heard someone behind us say, ‘Suicide. She blew her brains out.' The female officer went back and forth between house, car, and ambulance, and you were awestruck. You said, ‘That's what I'd like to be, because you get into places no one else does.' You wanted to know what the dead woman was wearing, what was in her fridge, if she had left dishes in her sink. You hoped she had at least spared herself some housework.”

“What recall. You
should
be a reporter,” I said, setting my empty plate down. “Or a chef.”

Monty slid Clancy off his knee and came back with a thermos pot of coffee and three cups. “And I'm witness to another reason you gave at Depot. You were the only one in our troop who said you had joined to help lost children.”

I covered my head in my hands. “Right. Aren't those two solid motives for upholding law and order: nosiness and pity. Remind me to watch what I say around you two.”

The sun was casting carnival-coloured flames in the evening sky, so brazen you wanted to stop talking — even breathing. Gail lit a citronella candle at our feet. I almost said I had joined the force so I could meet Monty, and Gail could marry him, and I could nourish myself forever with moments like this in the company of these two. But my tear ducts had been working overtime recently so instead I said, “Whoever said the most beautiful sunsets in the world were in Saskatchewan and some corner of India was at least half right.”