LITMIR.BIZ

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out. I turned the doorknob and found it locked.

      I was surprised she wasn’t home. It couldn’t be much beyond seven-thirty, a full hour before she usually left for work. I knocked again, but the empty silence continued. I began to wonder if she’d spent the night elsewhere.

      I peered through the front windows. The room looked much as it always did, empty but for a few items of basic furniture; a threadbare sofa, three spindly metal chairs and an Arborite table. In the corner stood an ancient television set. Since Louis had never gotten around to having the electricity hooked up, it served no purpose other than as a place to display family photos. In the opposite corner, the wood stove looked cold and forlorn.

      The room may not have offered much comfort, but it was immaculate in the same way as the windows were immaculate. I didn’t expect any less from Marie. But it was too clean. There was no empty coffee cup, no sweater draped over a chair. There was nothing to suggest that Marie had been here earlier this morning.

      “What are you doing here?” spoke a voice suddenly from behind me. I jerked around to see Tommy walking up the drive. Feeling like a child caught with her hand in the cookie jar, I backed away from the window.

      “I’m looking for your mother,” I replied.

      “What for? She’s at work.” He looked at me suspiciously, through those startling blue eyes that I could never quite reconcile with the rest of his dark features. For Marie’s sake, I hoped that was all he’d inherited from his father.

      He was dressed in a dark suit with a white shirt and very bland tie. He reached up and pulled hard on the knot to loosen the stricture around his neck. His body seemed tense, as if unused to such conforming attire. I imagined it wasn’t. A recent law school grad, he probably preferred the pro forma uniform of jeans and sweatshirt.

      “Was she here last night?” I asked.

      “I assume so, but I’ve been away. Just getting back now.” He unlocked the door, swung it open and stepped inside, sports bag in hand.

      Not sure if I should follow, I waited on the doorstep. I didn’t feel the warmth of an occupied house or smell the smoke of a recent fire.

      “I don’t think she stayed here last night,” I shouted to his retreating back.

      “You’d better come here,” answered his voice from another room in a tone that only intensified my concern.

      “Where are you?” I called out.

      “In the kitchen.”

      He was lighting the kerosene lamp as I entered.

      “Look.” He held the lamp high to light up the dark room.

      My heart sank at the sight of cupboard doors gaping open, dishes scattered on the counter, drawers lying upside-down with their contents spilled over the floor. Tommy’s feet crunched over splattered coffee grounds. He bent down to pick up the overturned coffee tin and stopped when he spied something else. He pulled up a piece of material, filthy with coffee. He shook it. With dread, I realized it was Marie’s red dream scarf.

      Without saying a word, he looked up at me. We both knew what the mess pointed to. Seeing Marie’s scarf without Marie confirmed it. She was in trouble.

      “Where’s your father, Tommy?” I asked, very worried that Louis had beaten her up in a drunken rage.

      “Supposed to be in the bush.”

      “Not any more. No one else would do this.”

      With his young face a mask of stone, his fists clenched, Tommy brushed past me into the main room.

      “Dorothy,” he said, walking out the front door. “Dorothy will know.”

      I ran after him.

      By the time I reached my truck on the other side of the woodpile, Tommy was backing his mud-spattered Honda Civic down the drive. He rolled down his window and shouted, “I’ll take it from here.”

      But he wasn’t going to get rid of me that easily. I had just as much right as he to make sure Marie was all right. In fact, I was feeling guilty I hadn’t ensured she was okay the night before.

      I tried to keep up with him, but he soon left my truck in a whirl of dust. At least I knew Marie’s friend, Dorothy Tremblay, lived in Eric’s Acres, as the band jokingly called Eric’s improved housing initiative.

      I manoeuvered my truck around the potholes of the one and only street of this miniature replica of faceless suburbia and headed towards the last square bungalow on the street. While they wouldn’t win any awards for innovative design, they were a considerable improvement over the older form of reserve housing.

      Dorothy had tried to give her bungalow a bit of flair with a coat of pale yellow paint and dark green trim. A small flower garden wound its way along a brick path leading to the front door. Next to the house stood one of the village’s few garages, which I attributed to her status as a teacher at the school.

      The front door was closing as I stopped behind Tommy’s car. I raced up the walkway, as Dorothy swung the door back open.

      “Meg Harris!” she exclaimed, clearly surprised by my presence. Tommy glared at me from over her shoulder. “What brings you here at this hour?” She turned around to Tommy. “Both of you?”

      A few years older than my early forties, Dorothy was tall, with a certain feline elegance to her walk. She was dressed in a simple earth-tone skirt and turtleneck sweater. Her thick hair flowed over her shoulders and down her back like a shawl of ebony satin.

      I didn’t know her well, but what I’d learned from Marie I liked. I had the impression Marie confided much of her troubled life into Dorothy’s care and saw her as a sanctuary when things became just a little too unbearable.

      “You’re lucky. I was about to leave for school,” she said. Her warm brown eyes arched in worry. “It has to do with Marie, doesn’t it?”

      She led us into the front room.

      While the outside of her house was sedately suburban, inside was an exotic world. The walls were a riot of rainbow coloured creatures. Some I recognized as paintings by the native artist Norval Morrisseau. Others were less familiar, but equally dramatic. Sprinkled amongst the cavorting creatures were other staring faces with empty eyes peering through cornhusk masks, their tongues sticking out in mock derision.

      In the window hung a dream catcher. The circle of delicate webbing with seven long slender feathers flirted gently with the sun. Dorothy had hung it where Marie had told me to hang mine, in a spot where the morning sun could turn the bad dreams trapped overnight by the web into dew. It had worked. I was no longer bothered by nightmares.

      “I want you to tell Meg to leave, Auntie,” said Tommy. “This has nothing to do with her.”

      Before I had a chance to state my case, Dorothy replied, “Meg’s presence says it does. Quit your complaining and tell me what’s happened.”

      Dorothy gestured us to sit in the two wing-backed chairs, one on either side of the fireplace, dark but for the faint glow of a few dying embers. I took one of the chairs, while Tommy remained standing, arms crossed in front, an angry scowl on his face.

      “Mooti’s not at home. I’m hoping you know where she is,” Tommy said.

      “What has Louis done now?” Dorothy said in a voice that suggested more resignation than surprise.

      “Hell, how should I know? Probably nothing, but it looked like there was some kind of argument or fight. Thought she might’ve come here.”

      “God, the number of times I’ve prayed he’d just disappear into the bush and never come back.” Dorothy shook her head. “Sorry, Tommy, but your father should have been locked up years ago.”

      “I’d just as soon not get into that now, if it’s okay by you.” Tommy’s blue eyes flashed quickly in my direction, then back to Dorothy.

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