Howard dropped to his knees and held the canvas out in front of him. “Jesus,” he said. “It’s Mouseland. Look, Jo, there’s the Legislature and there are all the mice, running the show. It’s great, Taylor, but who’s that old mouse – the tough-looking one with the snarl?”
“You!” Taylor crowed. “You’re in charge.”
“Maybe I’ll do a better job this time,” Howard said. He turned to me. “So fill me in. What’s this all about?”
“Actually, it was an idea Ben Jesse had to get kids thinking about studying government. All the grade twos from the city were eligible to submit projects. Livia chaired the committee that judged the entries. I knew she was going to be at the presentation tomorrow, but she didn’t breathe a word about Taylor winning.” I looked at my daughter. “Neither did you. I can’t believe you didn’t spill the beans.”
Taylor clenched her fists in triumph. “Angus says I can’t keep a secret. I kept this one right till the day before you were supposed to find out.”
“A record,” I said.
She ignored me. “The prize is you get to meet your Member of the Legislature and then you and your parent have refreshments with her or him.”
Howard hooted. “So, Jo, you’ll be breaking bread with Bev Pilon. That’ll be nice for you.”
I had tried hard to defeat Bev Pilon in the last election. She was smart, rich, and unswervingly committed to the proposition that the sleek should inherit the earth. In a real-life Mouseland, she would be Queen of the Mean Cats.
“My cup runneth over,” I said.
Taylor scrunched her face. “But you are glad I won.”
I reached out and touched her cheek. “I couldn’t be more proud. Now we’d better get that painting in the house before the mosquitoes splat into it.”
When I returned, I thought for a moment that Howard was asleep. He was stretched out on the lazy lounge with his eyes closed, but when he heard my step, he turned his head towards me. “There are good times,” he said.
I reached over and took his hand. “Plenty of them,” I said. “And there will be more.”
Across the yard, Charlie and Eli were getting out of the pool – Eli picked up a towel, tied it around his waist in the way of teenage boys, then threw another towel to Charlie. Charlie wrapped himself in his, instinctively covering as much of his body as he could.
When Eli started towards the house, Charlie called out after him. “Thanks,” he said. “That helped. It really did.”
Instead of following Eli, Howard’s son veered towards us and squatted cross-legged on the ground, turning his face so that the birthmark was away from us. “Not many people are smart enough to know that sometimes the best thing you can do to help is just be there and be quiet,” he said.
His tone was wistful and reflective, but Howard didn’t get past the words. “Goddammit, Charlie, do you think the cops are just sitting there being quiet, or do you think they might actually be out there asking questions and getting answers?”
“I just meant I was grateful to Eli, Dad.” Suddenly, there was an edgy danger in Charlie’s voice. “I understand that you need me to work out answers for the police’s questions before they ask me,” he said.
“I need you to tell the truth, son.” Howard’s words had a simple Biblical force.
So did Charlie’s response. “I’ll tell the truth,” he said.
The darkness had settled. It was a relief to listen without the distraction of Charlie’s face. Nightfall seemed to free him, too, allow him to become a truer self, one in whom I began to discern flashes of the boy Marnie had raised and, for a time, Ariel had loved.
Howard breathed deeply. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s start with the big one. Did you kill Ariel?”
“No.”
Howard nodded, seemingly accepting his son’s one-word answer as sufficient. It wasn’t enough for me, but I could feel myself moving towards belief in Charlie’s innocence.
“Then the next step,” Howard said, “is to find out if you know anything that will help the police find out who did kill her.” “All right,” Charlie said.
There was an awkward silence. Howard shot me a look that called for help. “So, Jo. You’ve been closer to this than we have. Any thoughts?”
“That was smooth,” I said. Charlie laughed quietly. Encouraged, I continued. “I guess my first thought is Solange,” I said. “Charlie, when you two clashed today, you told Solange that Ariel was afraid of her. Was that just a heat-of-the-moment accusation or was it true?”
Charlie made a gesture of dismissal. “There’s so much about the past that just doesn’t seem relevant any more,” he said. “Solange is going through her own hell.”
“I know,” I said. “But that doesn’t exempt her, and it doesn’t make what happened in the past irrelevant. We’re not just talking about being dumped here; we’re talking about murder. If Ariel really was afraid of Solange, it matters.”
Charlie drew in his narrow shoulders and looked down at the grass. “Ariel and Solange had an unusual relationship.”
“Unusual in what way?”
He looked thoughtful. “In its voltage,” he said finally. “It was far too intense – at least on Solange’s side. It wasn’t always like that. At first, Ariel and Solange were just friends, the way any two people who work together are. Solange even came by the house and had a drink with us a couple of times, but after they went to Mount Assiniboine it was different.”
“Solange told me that Ariel found herself on Mount Assiniboine.”
Charlie shook his head with the weariness of a man forced to explain a self-evident truth. “Ariel found herself with me. I gave her everything she needed or wanted. She’d lost sight of that, but we would have worked it out if Solange hadn’t come along with her insights.”
“So you don’t believe that Ariel was liberated by her experience on Mount Assiniboine.”
Charlie’s eyes widened in disbelief. “Liberated. That has to be Solange’s word, and it couldn’t be more wrong. Joanne, we’re not talking about girl power here. It’s something more complex.”
“Then explain it to me,” I said.
“Solange loved Ariel,” Charlie said. “Ariel felt that brought certain obligations.”
Howard’s reaction was a sputter. “You mean Solange and Ariel were
…?”
“They were nothing.” Charlie’s voice was low with fury. “Solange was temporary. An abberation. Ariel’s destiny was intertwined with mine from the day we met. She was just confused.”
“You and Ariel talked about this confusion?” I asked.
“We didn’t have to,” Charlie said. “I didn’t need flaming letters in the sky. When you’re as close to someone as I was to Ariel, you learn to read the signs. After Mount Assiniboine, the signs were there. She didn’t want to be with me. There was never an angry word, but one night I brushed her arm and she flinched. It wasn’t calculated. It was the response a person has to touching something they find repugnant, like a snake or a slug. I ignored it. I knew that if I just kept loving her…”
“But loving her wasn’t enough,” I said. “She wanted out.”
“She thought she wanted out. But even when she was saying we had to break it off, her real feelings were apparent. She told me that her life had been immeasurably enriched by knowing me, that she couldn’t have asked for more in a lover or a friend.” He rubbed his eyes with his fists, like a child fighting sleep. “That’s why I couldn’t let her go. I knew neither of us could have a life without the other.”
“Jesus!” Howard’s curse was an explosion in the tranquil air. “I can’t listen to this.”
When Howard jumped from his chair, I grabbed his arm. “Let Charlie talk,” I said.
Howard’s son continued like a man in a trance. “So she stayed. I tried to anticipate everything she could possibly want: food, flowers, music – even Fritz. She’d always wanted a dog, so we went to the Humane Society and got Fritz. I thought our relationship was working.” He hunched into a position that was almost foetal. “Two weeks ago I came home, and she was moving out.”