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I was staring at the photo when Molly came in. She looked pale and tired, but she was immaculate: fresh makeup, hair carefully tousled, a champagne silk blouse with matching trousers, and her trademark stiletto heels in creamy leather.

She leaned over my shoulder to stare at the page. “The technology is amazing, isn’t it?”

“Neo-Natronix’s or Mother Nature’s?” I asked.

Molly gave me a wan smile. “Both.”

She made no move to sit down. There was a room filled with people waiting for her to diagnose, absolve, prescribe, or doom. She was allotting me precious time; it was up to me to use it.

“Did you know that Ariel was pregnant?” I asked.

One of Molly Warren’s gold and pearl earrings dropped from her ear and clattered onto the floor. “Damn,” she said, and there were tears in her voice. She bent to pick up the earring, then went over and sat in the chair opposite me, the doctor’s chair. She slid the earring back through the piercing in her lobe. “I’d suspected,” she said. “Ariel and I were supposed to have lunch together last week. I had to cancel on her. Maybe she was planning to tell me then.”

“Molly, I came down today because I wanted to talk to you about the baby’s father.”

Her azure gaze grew cold. “What about him?”

“Solange told me there was room on the plane for another passenger. I think the baby’s father should be there.” I could feel the chill so I hurried on. “I know him,” I said. “He teaches in the Theatre department. He really is a very fine man.”

Molly’s eyes grew wide, and she leaned forward in her chair. “You mean Charlie wasn’t the father?”

“No. Ariel wanted a child, and she asked a man she knew and respected to help her.”

Molly’s hand wandered to her earlobe to check that her earring was in place. It was, in every way, an uncertain world. “Ariel was always a mystery,” she said softly. “I never quite understood what made her tick.”

“Would it be all right if I asked Fraser to come tomorrow?”

“Is that his name? Fraser?”

“Yes,” I said. “Fraser Jackson. One other thing you should know. Fraser is black.”

“I couldn’t care less about that,” Molly said. “Just as long as he isn’t Charlie. I’m glad my daughter found someone else. Charlie was destroying her.” Molly’s face crumpled. “I guess in that archive room he just finished the job.”

CHAPTER

9

I called Fraser Jackson from the public telephone in the lobby of the building in which Molly Warren had her office. Phoning the father of Ariel’s baby was the right thing, but it was hard for me to do. I knew that Howard would see the call as a betrayal of Charlie, of Marnie, and of himself, and as I caught my reflection in the mirrored wall by the elevators, I thought that Howard might not be far off the mark.

Fraser Jackson seemed grateful to hear from me, but as I extended Molly’s invitation and ran through the travel arrangements, he was mercifully to the point. The trip north would be heavily freighted with emotion, and it was apparent we both wanted the logistics handled with dispatch. After we had arranged the details about where to meet the next morning, I thought I was home free, but Fraser had one final question.

“Is the service a burial?”

“Of the ashes,” I said. “Ariel will be cremated later today.”

There was silence, then a gentle correction. “Ariel and the baby will be cremated later today. When we fly north, we’ll be taking them both, Joanne.”

As I pulled onto Albert Street, I shrank at the thought of the next day. There was no getting around the fact that, in the words of that long-forgotten play, it would be filled with love, pain, and the whole damned thing, but for me there would be an extra agony, one that was both personal and shameful. I would be spending much of the next day in airplanes of one size or another, and I was terrified of flying. I went to embarrassing lengths to avoid even the most routine commercial flight, and the idea of being in a tiny float-plane hovering over the vast, unforgiving water of Lac La Ronge filled me with dread.

I had no choice about the flight north, but it was still in my power to make the next few hours bearable. If I could manage an afternoon in the sun, a pleasant dinner with the kids, a stiff drink, and an early night, I might just survive.

I parked in front of Pacific Fish, paid Neptune’s ransom for five tuna steaks, then walked across to the supermarket for new potatoes, baby carrots, asparagus, and a jar of giant olives. To complete the meal, I needed a bottle of Bombay Sapphire and a good Merlot; the liquor store had both. Finally, obeying my old friend Sally Love’s dictum that “Life is uncertain; we should eat dessert first,” I drove to Saje Restaurant, and bought a chocolate truffle cake. As soon as I got home, I put the gin in the refrigerator, made a marinade of soy sauce, ginger, and rice vinegar for the tuna, scrubbed the potatoes and carrots, snapped the woody parts off the asparagus stalks, and went out to the deck with a cup of Earl Grey and a stack of essays from my Political Science 101 class.

For the next two hours, I sniffed the lilacs and wandered through the maze of freshman prose. It wasn’t fun, but it was familiar turf, and I felt my mind slip into cruise control. Halfway through the stack, I came upon something that pulled me up short: a truly original paper titled “Funkional Politix.” The essay took issue with the idea that in our post-ideological age, it was savvy to be without either ideals or ideas. It called for a new politics, characterized by civility, co-operation, and commitment. I read the paper through twice. It was the work of a student named Lena Eisenberg. Surprisingly, considering I had only met the class twice, Lena’s name conjured up a face, that of a whip-thin, tightly wound girl with dreadlocks and clever eyes. I was grateful to her. For almost an hour, her obvious delight in the workings of her mind kept my mind from thoughts of hurtling through space in a pressurized metal tube.

I was halfway through a turgid analysis of the role of the Speaker in the Provincial Legislature when Taylor peeled out the back door.

“There’s a lady on the phone,” she announced breathlessly. “She says she wants to talk to you about Barbies. I told her she must have the wrong number because you hate Barbies, and she said she had the right number and nobody hates Barbies, and I’d better get you lickety-split.”

Bebe Morrissey was direct. “Who was that kid who answered the phone?”

“My daughter, Taylor.”

“How old is she?”

“Seven.”

“Aren’t you a little old to have a seven-year-old?”

“Probably,” I said. “But I do my best. So, Bebe, what’s up?”

“You are,” she cackled. “You’re up to bat. I’ve gone through the paper and discovered three garage sales with Barbies.”

“Okay,” I said. “Give me the addresses and I’ll be there first thing Saturday morning.”

“You really are a babe in the woods,” she said. “By Saturday morning, even the Barbies with their legs chewed off to their kneecaps will be gone. You should get there tonight. The paper says six-thirty, but six would be better. What time do you feed your kid?”

“Kids,” I said. “I have three at home.” I looked longingly at the refrigerator with its bottle of Bombay Sapphire chilling. The gin would have to wait. “I could be at the first garage sale by six. Can you give me the addresses?”

By 5:55, Taylor and I had inhaled our barbecued tuna and were pulling into Braemar Bay, a swank crescent of shining mock-Tudor homes on the east side of our city. The owner of number 720 told us she had only one Barbie, and it had been sold, but that she had some grapevine wreaths and wickerware we might be interested in. Taylor picked out a Thanksgiving wreath with fake Chinese lanterns and plastic turkeys, and a wicker cat-carrying case for Bruce and Benny, who were never carried anywhere except in Taylor’s arms.

Our next stop was an estate sale. One glance at the gleaming oak, bevelled glass, and paper-thin teacups and saucers led me to conclude that Bebe was a woman who savoured a practical joke. The woman in charge of the sale was a person of such pearled refinement that I was certain Barbie wasn’t even a figure in her cosmos. But she did have a tiny Lalique sparrow for sale. It wasn’t a nightingale, but it was the best Lalique bird I could afford, and Ed and Barry had been generous in lending us their cottage.