LITMIR.BIZ

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wouldn’t know it to look at me now, but I used to be very good looking. Turned a few heads in my day. Forty years of smoking will do it to you. I quit the day I got my death sentence.” Dan looked up from the photograph to the emaciated skull regarding him. Magnus nodded. “Terminal lung cancer. Well, here I am five years later with everyone telling me how lucky I am to be alive. ‘What’s so lucky about it?’ I ask them. ‘I haven’t had a cigarette in five years.’”

      His fingers went on scratching through the piles. He plucked out a page and stopped to read it, the contents unknowable from his expression. It could have been a laundry list or a love letter, an unpaid bill or an obituary. His hands shook with the weight of all those years of missing cigarettes. A tremendous burden.

      From out of the mire he lifted another picture, this one of two young men. Dan recognized a slightly older Magnus standing beside Craig Killingworth at roughly the age he’d appeared in the missing person report. But this was a transformed Craig Killingworth, smiling broadly and looking for once as though he knew how to enjoy life rather than just endure it. He seemed alive and vibrant. Dan thought of the hushed light falling in the Adolphustown sitting room.

      Magnus’s rasp intruded on his thoughts. “That’s Craig.”

      “Where was this taken?”

      He filched the photograph out of Dan’s hands and squinted, though he seemed to be focusing his memory more than his eyes. “Picton Town Fair sometime in June — maybe ’84 or ’85.”

      Dan looked up. “Do you recall the last time you saw him?”

      Magnus screwed up his face, summoning the recall. “Yes, I do. Twenty years ago this coming November first. That was the day I left Prince Edward County. I never saw him again.”

      It jived with the police reports, Dan noted. “Did you expect to?”

      Magnus turned a sorrowful gaze on him. “Son, I expected to hear from him every day for ten, maybe fifteen years. On a bad day, I still do.”

      “Why is that, if I may ask?”

      A spasm of emotion charged Magnus’s face. “That’s the day we were supposed to leave together.” He looked at Dan. “Me and Craig …”

      For a moment, nothing registered. Then suddenly the piece fell into place. “You were … together?”

      Magnus nodded. His eyes misted over, his voice came out a croak. “We had it planned. I couldn’t believe when he didn’t go through with it.” He sniffled. “It was Craig’s idea. He wanted us to be together, but because of his family we had to go far away. It’s why we planned to come out here. So that’s why I wondered, when you said his name on the phone, if you had some news of him.…”

      Dan leaned against the counter. Somewhere far away a dog howled. Twenty years ago a man had planned his escape, chosen his companion for another chance at life, and disappeared. An hour ago Dan had had no clue what had been going on in Craig Killingworth’s mind. Now here was the answer, but he was still no closer to knowing what had happened to him.

      “Did you ever try to get in touch with him again?”

      Magnus shook his head softly. “No.”

      “Why not?”

      “At first I just assumed he’d either ditched me or decided not to leave his family. He was awfully keen on his boys. It was harder back then to make such life-altering decisions. It’s easier today. Kids nowadays know what they want and go out and get it. Will and Grace and all that.”

      Easier for some, maybe, but not all. Dan thought of Richard Philips, newly christened Lester Higgins.

      “Back then if you were gay, you constructed a family life on top of what you were inside and prayed no one ever found out. We had no choice, see? We covered our tracks so no one would know. If you weren’t careful, you could get fired or beaten up. Or, if you were someone like Craig Killingworth, you could lose your family. Oh, yeah, the authorities were only too happy to take your kids away from you. It happened all the time.”

      Dan felt shot through with emotion. What would have become of him and Kedrick twenty years ago? Impossible to say. He considered the question before he spoke. “Did you ever suspect that Craig was murdered?”

      Magnus’s face exploded with anger. “Oh, he was murdered all right.” Dan was startled by the vehemence in his voice. “But you’ll never be able to pin it on the bitch!”

      “Lucille?”

      Magnus nodded. “Oh, no — she was too smart. And she had help in high places.”

      Dan wondered if Magnus was referring to Burgess, the OPP commissioner with the barracuda eyes. “But why do you still hope he’ll turn up alive if you know he’s dead?”

      “I’m getting ahead of myself.” Magnus nodded toward the creased piles on the shelf. “The letter. I got it two, maybe three weeks later. It took me a while to get out here, but it was waiting for me when I did.” He held up the piece of paper he’d been scratching through the debris for and offered it to Dan. “You can read it for yourself.”

      November 1st

      My dearest, darling Magnus,

      Forgive me. I should be with you instead of sending you this sorry letter. I know how hard this is going to be for you. I am a weak man. I can’t spend the rest of my life with you.

      An hour ago I told you I was leaving with you tonight. I lied. I know now I can never do that. She’s won. I cannot live without my sons. It’s all in the diary. Do what you see fit with it.

      Please forgive me. I’m going to give her what she’s always wanted. By the time you get this, I will be a dead man.

      Love always, Craig

      Dan looked up. “Suicide?”

      Magnus nodded. “It’s what she wanted. Craig talked about it often enough. Even said how he’d do it, if it came to that. He said if he ever disappeared, he’d be under the ice in the bay. In the winter the reach freezes over. Only the ferry passing through every half hour keeps the channel open. The ice is thick. Thick enough to keep you under till it thawed. It would keep you down all right. Your bones would stay covered over till spring.”

      “You think he’s at the bottom of the Bay of Quinte?”

      “He told me he’d kill himself if she managed to keep him from his sons. And she did.” Magnus nodded to the picture in his hands. “And she did.”

      Dan was prepared for a long wait, but Magnus started in again, the telling easier now. “Twenty-three years ago we met at Lake on the Mountain. I was the gardener up at the lodge. Have you been there?”

      Dan nodded.

      “He’d just separated from his wife, but he hadn’t told her he was gay — just said he had things he needed to work out. We had an affair. It was going along fine until he decided to tell her about it. He thought she’d understand. So he told her — and she threatened him. She said she’d never let him see his sons again. And she had ways to make sure that happened. He was terrified. He broke things off with me and went back to her. It hurt, but I understood how he felt. I didn’t hear from him for a year. She got him into some kind of therapy, one of those programs where they try to change you. But you can’t change these things. I know it’s hard for your sort to understand, but that’s just how it is….”

      “I’m gay, Magnus.”

      Magnus gave him an appraising stare. He nodded. “All right. Then you know.”

      “And I also have a son who means more to me than anything in the world. So I know what that would mean to a man like Craig Killingworth.”

      Magnus nodded. “Anyway, he wasn’t cured. He just buried it inside. One day he snapped. He drove his car over the side of the road trying to kill himself. For four days they couldn’t find him. He lay in that car, pinned against the

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