The Cardinal Divide (21 page)

He steadied himself with another deep pull from his beer, hid his face with the dessert menu, and watched. He held his breath as the hostess turned down his aisle. Maybe it wasn't her. “Jesus Christ,” he muttered, and drained his beer. It was. Nancy Webber had just walked into the Big Sky Restaurant and back into the ruin of his life.

Nancy Webber had walked into Cole Blackwater's life for the first time seven years before. She had walked into a press conference Cole was giving, along with Jennifer Polson and two other national level activists for the federal Species at Risk Act, sat down in the front row, and proceeded to rake Blackwater and the others over coals, peppering them with question after question. The others, Polson included, had grumbled about the new
Globe and Mail
reporter after the news conference, but Cole sat silently, sipping his beer at a corner table at Darcy McGee's. He was still buzzing with adrenaline from the news conference, the glare of public-ity washing through him like an aphrodisiac, and he sat silently watching the others debating questions and answers, and plotting parliamentary strategy to pass the law protecting Canada's endangered plants and animals.

“You're awfully quiet,” said Polson, turning to him.

“What?”

“You out to lunch or something, Blackwater?” Mike Bonnet asked. He was a big man and smoked constantly. He was drinking a rum and coke.

Cole rubbed his eyes. “You're damn quiet, I said,” Polson repeated. “What's the matter with you?”

Cole sipped his pint and looked at his friends, and at Polson. “Nothing's the matter,” he smiled. “I just met my match.”

Neither he nor Polson could know it at the time, but his words bore a double meaning. In the meantime, they carried on as they always had.

Jennifer Polson and Cole Blackwater had met when he took the job of National Conservation Director for the Canadian Conservation Association. She was Communications Director for The
International Fund for Animal Welfare. Jennifer was on the eleventh floor, he the tenth floor of the “Green Building” in Ottawa, a ten-minute walk from Parliament Hill. They started collaborating on a legislative agenda shortly after he took the job, and soon found themselves collaborating on much more. A steamy romance ensued that produced grist for the Ottawa rumour mill and, within a year, a baby girl. They got married. A shotgun marriage, Cole joked. They had mock wedding invitations made up with a picture of Jennifer's father pointing a 12 gauge at a startled-looking Cole Photoshopped into the background. That's how it started. It was all a good laugh. They moved into the home Jennifer owned, just a twenty-minute walk from Parliament in the Glebe, a trendy downtown neighbourhood. Sarah was born, and for the first few months the young family enjoyed a blissful honeymoon at home together.

But something changed for Cole soon after he returned to work. Sure, he slipped back into career mode. Now he had his share of a mortgage to pay, and it seemed that baby Sarah churned through an extraordinary number of diapers. And organic baby food cost an arm and a leg. He felt the dual pressures of saving the world and having to save his money at the same time.

But career pressure was only the most obvious of the troubles vexing Cole Blackwater in the months after Sarah was born. He felt unnerved by the responsibility of being a father. It was an awesome task. His friends who were also fathers said it changed them. Turned them into better people: more reasonable. This was not his fortune; what fatherhood brought him was fear. Fear that he was not up to the task of raising and caring for a baby. Fear that he would, in some inexplicable way, let Sarah down.

Fear of himself.

So he worked late and spent weekends at the office. While his relationship with his family didn't advance, his career did. He became a media darling because of his impassioned work on National Parks, endangered species, and a host of other environmental issues. He spent more and more time at the National Press Club across the street from Parliament Hill.

His became a household name in Canada, or at least in the households who cared about nature. He had access. The Prime Minister's office called
him
. He had the ear of the Minister of the
Environment. He was drunk with the sense of accomplishment that it provided.

And he was often simply drunk. Darcy McGee's, behind the Blackburn Building and the
PMO
, was just a small detour on his way home, and it was rare that he didn't stop in for a pint or two on his way. The place was often packed with political staffers, members of the Prime Minister's office or Privy Council office, and the air was charged with political gossip. Cole Blackwater lived for that. He consumed it. He would sit at the bar, or a corner table, and hold court.

And he fell prey to other distractions.

Nancy. His match. They were sitting in a basement lounge, the room thick with the sound of jazz, the table crowded with tumblers and beer bottles.

“You really get off raking me over the coals, don't you?” said Cole, looking across at Nancy Webber, her hair so black that it seemed to be absent of colour. In the darkness of the room she blended into the shadowy walls.

“I'm just making you earn your living, Blackwater. Everybody around here treats you like you're some kind of superstar.”

He smiled. “But not you?”

She stirred her drink. “No. I'm not a member of the fan club.”

“But here we are,” he said, looking around. They had started the night with half dozen other reporters and advocates after a meet-and-greet at the Press Club. They were the last two standing.

“Maybe I'm just waiting for you to say something off the record. Something I can use as deep background.”

Cole shrugged. “I'm willing to take my chances.”

“Like to live on the edge, eh Blackwater?”

“If you're not living on the edge you're taking up too much space,” he recited.

She threw her head back and laughed, the light catching in her raven-black hair, a shining, iridescent blue. “You really are something.”

They made love that night on her living room floor, and he stumbled home at three to a silent house. Baby Sarah was asleep with Jennifer in her bed so he lay down on the couch and slept in his clothes.

Ottawa wasn't a city for clandestine activities, and his affair with a national correspondent for
The Globe and Mail
was soon the worst-kept secret in town.

What drove Cole drove him and Jennifer apart. By the time Sarah was three years old, Cole Blackwater was sleeping on the couch nearly every night he slept at home. By her fourth birthday he had moved out of their place in the Glebe and taken an apartment across the river in Beachwood.

When he moved out of Jennifer Polson's life, he was almost relieved. His affair with Nancy had been on again, off again for so long that he couldn't keep track of where he was supposed to be sleeping anymore.

The relief, he reflected, was a temporary emotion. He had been more than a little distracted from his relationship with his wife for some time. What had drawn them together – the hot spark of passion for their work – repelled them after a time. Sarah had been unplanned, and Cole believed Jennifer blamed him for what he imagined was an inconvenient interruption in her non-profit ladder climbing. But they never spoke of it. And the unspoken anger silently corroded them.

Despite the split, it came as a shock to him when she phoned one afternoon a year after he moved out to tell him she had taken a position with a west coast environmental group and that she and Sarah would be moving to Vancouver. In a month.

He was sitting at his desk on the tenth floor, and his first instinct was to say, “Jesus Christ, why now woman? I'm up to my armpits in Bill
C
-65
.” He wisely suppressed that. His second instinct was to run up the flight of stairs and confront her. But his call display showed him that Jennifer was calling from home. So he just sat there, the phone against his ear.

“Are you there?” Polson asked.

“I'm here.” “

Of course, you can see Sarah whenever you want, Cole.”

He couldn't entirely suppress a harsh laugh. He said, “It's a long way from Ottawa to Vancouver. Who's going to pay for the flights?”

A long silence followed. “Cole, we both know what you've been up to. I've known about Nancy Webber from the start. Don't insult me by trying to deny it. We both know where your priorities lie. If
you had cared about me or about Sarah you would have kept your pecker in your pants, and made your daughter a priority.” It was a matter-of-fact statement. She was moving across the country, with his daughter, and there was nothing he could do about it.

It was, he reflected later, the beginning of the end for him in the nation's capital.

“Here's your dinner, Cole,” said Pat, suddenly at his side. Cole flinched to hear his name broadcast. He watched through shielded eyes to see if Nancy Webber turned to look, but the kitchen noise and the sound of fifty dinner conversations saved him. He nodded his thanks to Pat and reached for his beer.

How long had it been?

Three years since he'd left Ottawa, almost to the day. A year before that while he looked, unsuccessfully, for work in the nation's capital. A week before that between the time he was fired and when he had last slept with her. Four years, give or take a week or two. Four years since things began to come undone. Four years since the gradual downward spiral of his life accelerated to the lie that ended his career and the affair that ended his marriage.

He put his beer down and picked up his fork, but his hunger was suddenly gone. He stared at his food. How could he get out of the restaurant? The room tilted again and he knew he should eat something. He took a bite of mashed potatoes and cut into the steak.

He chewed but all he could think of was her. One glimpse of her brought long-buried memories to the surface. The smell of her hair as it lay across his face. Her smooth skin against his weather-beaten hide. Her taste. How she tasted when he kissed her sweaty body after a wrestling match on her living room floor.

He ate his steak.

His phone rang. He ignored it and swigged his beer. Like every-thing else in his life, their affair had ended with a phone call.

Cole ate the steak and started in on the potatoes. His hunger returned as he began to eat. He had to get the heck out of dodge before she discovered him. Otherwise there would be a scene that the Big Sky patrons wouldn't soon forget. He scoped out the emergency exit at the end of the corridor by the bathrooms.

She must be here because of the murder. Just his luck that she was a reporter and his client was about to be featured in a national story.

He reached into his pocket, fished out a crumpled wad of bills, and spilled a few coins and gum wrappers onto the floor. He reached down to retrieve them and banged his head. “Son of a – ” He caught himself, remembering his oft-overlooked promise to Sarah.

Sarah, sweet Judas; he hadn't phoned her. He dropped a twenty and a five on the table and stood to leave.

“How was dinner, Cole?” Pat's voice, still pleasant, rang shrill as it called attention to him.

Cole flushed, glanced over at Nancy's table, and replied with his head down: “Just fine, thanks, Pat.”

“You were very well-behaved.” She winked.

“I try.” You don't know how hard.

“Follow me to the till,” she said. “I'll make change.”

Only if you can change me into someone Nancy won't recognize. He checked again. From where he stood he saw the back of her head, her raven-black hair tucked behind her ears.

“I don't need any change, Pat, thanks. And I've got to, you know....” he nodded toward the washrooms. He thought maybe he could escape out the fire exit that he'd seen at the end of the hall that lead to the washrooms.

He turned and slunk down the hallway. The corridor was empty, all that stood between him and a clean break. Five feet from the exit he heard a voice behind him: “Can't get out that way.” Cole stopped in his tracks. At least it was a man's voice.

“Door's alarmed. Stops people from dining and dashing.”

Indeed, he could see the white sign with bold red letters: “Use in case of emergency only.” “Thanks,” he said, but his good Samaritan was already in the john.

The jig was up. He was not going to get out of here alive. Did he think he could hide from Nancy Webber in this one-horse town? She would turn up his name the minute she began to dig. That was, after all, her speciality. She was one of the best, even reporting on hog prices in Saskatoon. Which is where she had been banished when yours truly had pretty much ruined her career.

He turned to exit the restaurant as any other free man would do. He hoped beyond hope that she wouldn't notice him. He longed
to disappear into the night, lie low for a few days until the
RCMP
said he could go, then slip back across the Continental Divide, down the Fraser River, and back to his life, such as it was, in Vancouver.

She was twirling a forkful of noodles against her spoon – she always did that with long pasta – when he walked past her, head averted. It looked like he was about to get away with it when she raised the spaghetti to her mouth and looked up to meet his last backward glance.

Her eyes widened. “Cole Blackwater?” Her voice, deep and distinctive, that he'd heard in all manner of passionate moments, was incredulous now and fierce and very, very loud. “What the hell are you doing here?”

He froze, a deer in the headlights of her big green eyes.

“Nancy!” He attempted surprise. But he was a lousy actor and he came across as a jack lighter, caught red-handed hunting at night.

“What the hell are you doing here?” She was as lovely as ever. Her black hair hung to her shoulders; her skin was sun-browned and smooth. And by the sounds of it, she was no less angry than she had been four years earlier.