The Glass Coffin

CHAPTER
9

Bryn’s convenient conversion might have brought her peace, but it did not usher in a period of amazing grace for the rest of us. From the moment we came back from church, the evening grew steadily worse.

I hadn’t even taken my coat off before Angus grabbed my arm, pulled me aside, and whispered, “I need to talk to you, Mum.”

“Go for it,” I said.

“In private.”

“Come upstairs, then,” I said.

My son didn’t beat around the bush. After we walked into my room, he closed the door, threw himself on the bed, and started talking. “We didn’t do that much, Mum. It was just – you know – the usual.”

“You’ve lost me already,” I said.

He kept his eyes resolutely on the ceiling. “Bryn and I didn’t do anything that should have made her flip out like that during communion.”

I sat down on the bed. “You think what happened with Bryn tonight was your fault?”

“You’re the one who told me there was more to sex than mechanics,” he said. “Remember ‘always treat the other person responsibly and respectfully.’ ”

“I remember,” I said. “But don’t be too quick to don the hair shirt about this one, Angus. Bryn’s had a lot to deal with lately. I think everything just caught up with her tonight.”

Relief washed over my son’s face. “So it wasn’t what we did?”

“You’re not off the hook,” I said. “You’re eighteen years old. You know how powerful sexual feelings are.”

“That’s why I thought it was my fault,” he said. “Bryn told me…” He flung his arm across his forehead. “I can’t talk to you about this.”

“Okay,” I said. “But, Angus, we’re dealing with major problems here. If you know anything that can help, maybe you should reconsider.”

“Can you promise to keep this between us unless it’s absolutely necessary to tell somebody else?”

“That seems reasonable,” I said.

Angus took a deep breath. “This afternoon Bryn told me she was still a virgin, but she didn’t want to stay that way.”

“So you were about to grant her wish when we came in,” I said.

“No.” He slammed his fist into his hand. “I wasn’t about to do anything. Look, Mum, I’m not going to bullshit you. Bryn is really hot. But she’s a sketch…” He picked up on my blank look. “You know, off centre. But the big problem is she’s just not Leah.”

“I thought Leah was over,” I said.

“So did I,” he said. “But this afternoon… fuck, Mum, it’s so weird talking to you about this. But with Leah, everything, not just – you know – intimacy, everything felt right. This didn’t.”

“Trust your instincts,” I said.

“Back off with Bryn?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Be her friend, but don’t be alone with her.”

Angus gave me a lopsided grin. “Of course, I would have figured this out myself sooner or later.”

“Probably later rather than sooner,” I said, then I gave him a quick hug.

When Angus pushed open the door to leave, Bryn was standing so close he almost hit her.

I walked over to her. “Are you all right?”

“I was just going to get ready for bed,” she said.

Jill came up the stairs, took in the situation, and dropped a protective arm around her stepdaughter. “Wrong door, sweetie. Our room’s next door.”

Like a weary child, Bryn lay her head against Jill. “I’m tired,” she said. “I guess I just got confused.”

Five minutes later, Jill was back in my room. “Bryn’s asleep. She was so exhausted I had to help her get into her pyjamas.”

“It’s been a long day,” I said.

“They’re all long days for Bryn,” Jill said. “Jo, what am I going to do?”

It was an opening, and I took it. “You’re going to get her some help.” Jill’s gaze never wavered as I told her about Dan’s call. When I finished, she said, “Bryn’s run out of options, hasn’t she?”

“Dan seems to think so.”

“She doesn’t trust anybody,” Jill said. “How can I get her to talk to Dan?”

“I’d start by telling her that Dan has seen the footage Evan shot and that he believes what her father did to her was heinous. I’m not an expert, but I think Bryn might open up to someone who knows the worst and is still on her side.”

Jill leaned towards me. “You’re right,” she said. “But the person Bryn opens up to should be me. I’m the one who should tell her that I know everything and I still love her. I’m going to call Dan and ask him if I can come over and look at the films tonight.”

“Not tonight,” I said. “You’ve had enough. We can slip over there tomorrow afternoon. Barry and Ed have invited the kids and me to their brunch, but Angus and Taylor will have a great time on their own – so will Bryn.”

Jill raised an eyebrow. “Why wouldn’t they? Barry and Ed give the best parties in Regina. You, of course, have no interest in champagne splits, lobsters flown in from Nova Scotia, and Barry’s famous croquembouche.”

“We can stop at Tim Hortons on the way home from Dan’s,” I said. “You can buy us each a box of Timbits.”

After I’d showered and put on my most comforting nightie, I settled into bed with A Christmas Carol, hoping that the words I had read and loved every Christmas since I was ten years old would work their magic one more time. But even the thrilling resonance of “Old Marley was as dead as a doornail” couldn’t banish the memory of Bryn, prostrate beneath the altar. As I pulled up the comforter, I wondered if, like Ebenezer Scrooge, I was destined to carry my own low temperature always with me. My sleep was spectre-ridden, but my spooks weren’t guides to enlightenment – just embodiments of scary possibilities. I awoke the next morning heavy-limbed and heavy-spirited. It was a Christmas morning I would gladly have skipped, but Taylor was one of life’s celebrants. She burst into my room with a holiday shine. “Time to get up. I thought we could take our stockings into the hall, so we could listen to the new tree while we looked at our stuff.”

“Swell,” I said.

“I knew you’d love the idea,” she said. “Now come on!”

As we huddled in the hall in front of a tree glittering with images of the famous dead, listening to endless tinny repetitions of “The Way We Were,” I was not optimistic about my chances of making it through the day. But my spirits improved when we moved into the living room. It’s hard to be gloomy when people are ripping open presents, and we had a mound of presents to rip through. We had all collaborated on Angus’s gift, the electronic drum kit that Dan Kasperski had assured me was the very thing for a beginner. Because we’d planned to be at Mieka’s for the holiday I’d given him the gift early. By Christmas morning, Angus had already been through three sets of sticks and cracked a cymbal, but he had gag gifts to crow over, and he did loudly and lustily.

Taylor’s eclectic interests were reflected in her presents: cool clothes from Jill and Bryn; uncool clothes and an art print of Pegasus by Frank Stella from me; a Barbie with a homemade dress for every day of the week – all crocheted in the same retina-searing bubble-gum pink – from our friend Bebe Morrissey. A first edition of Noel Streatfield’s Ballet Shoes and a pair of aqua dance slippers from our old friend Hilda McCourt; a painting of the bears of Churchill from my son Peter, who was working in the north; and a gift pack of glitter nail polish from Angus.

When the pile beneath the tree had diminished, Jill went upstairs and returned with a large flat package. She handed it to me and said, “For you.”

“You already gave me that gorgeous sweater.”

“Anyone with a wallet full of plastic and impeccable taste could have chosen that. This is something I made myself.”

“Since when did you get crafty?”

Jill scowled in mock exasperation. “Just open your present.” I tore off the paper, prepared for a joke, but Jill’s gift touched my heart. It was a collage of photos of the two of us, starting with the days when I had been a young political wife and mother and Jill had been my husband’s press officer. In the twenty-five years of our friendship, we’d shared some amazing moments, and Jill had selected photos of both the public and private times with care. There were photos of the nights when we won elections and of the nights when we’d lost; of my kids knee-deep in the gumbo of a prairie barnyard during a campaign when the rain never stopped; of Jill and me at a glittering dinner with a prince; of all of us at a deep-fried turkey potluck in a town that no longer existed; of births and deaths; weddings, funerals, baptisms – in short of all the small ceremonies that make up a life. Across the bottom, spelled out in letters cut from shiny paper, were the words “The Best of Times.”

I was fighting back tears when I turned to Jill. “I love this,” I said.

“I’m glad,” she said. “I was going to call it ‘The Best of Times. The Worst of Times.’ ”

“But you ran out of shiny paper for the lettering,” I said.

She grinned. “Nope. I just realized that even the bad times were good because we were together.” Jill caught Bryn’s gaze. “That’s the way it’s going to be for us too, baby.”

“You’re embarrassing me,” Bryn said.

“Sorry.” Jill knelt and reached far under the tree. “A final present,” she said, “and it has your name on it.” Bryn took the package and opened it. Inside was a silver bracelet: wide, handsomely designed, and clearly pricey. Bryn balanced the bracelet on her fingertip for a few seconds, then dropped it back in its distinctive David Yurman box. “I don’t want it,” she said. “I’m not my mother. I have nothing to hide.”

Taylor frowned at her. “When you get something you don’t like, you’re just supposed to take it and say, ‘Thank you for thinking of me.’ ”

Bryn threw the bracelet into the pile of discarded wrapping. “Thank you for thinking of me.”

Jill swallowed hard, then retrieved the box and took Bryn’s hand. “You’re welcome,” she said. “Come on, let’s get some food into us.”

“Then we go tobogganing,” Taylor said. “We always do that on Christmas morning, then we come home and everybody’s supposed to have a long bath so we’re not bouncing off the walls at Mr. Mariani’s party.”

“Sounds like a plan to me,” Jill said.

It was the most glorious morning of the winter: a Grandma Moses landscape with a high blue sky, a round yellow sun, and snow so white it hurt my eyes to look at it. As we walked along the creek path, Taylor took the lead, planting her feet carefully to make footprints that were clean in the snow. As Bouviers do, Willie used his front paws to swim through the drifts along the way. Bryn started out with Jill but fell back to walk with Angus, who was dragging the big toboggan.

When they came to the first and most dangerous of the toboggan runs, she grabbed his hand. “Let’s go,” she said.

Jill stepped closer to check out the ice-slick slope. “This is your first time, Bryn, maybe you should start with something gentler.”

“Jill’s right,” Angus said. “That slope’s a killer.”

Bryn wrenched the sled from Angus, ran to the top of the hill, and threw herself on the toboggan. Within seconds, she had bellied down the hill and across the frozen creek where she rammed the bank and was thrown back on the ice. For an agonizing minute, she lay there, then she pushed herself to her feet, dragged the toboggan back across the creek, and climbed the hill. As she stood before us, flushed with triumph, she was lovelier than ever. The cold burnished her beauty, drenching her cheeks with colour, glancing off the sheen of her hair, but there was a wildness in her eyes that was hauntingly familiar. As she pulled the toboggan to the top of the run, I felt a chill that had nothing to do with the weather. The day before she had told my son that she wanted him to take her virginity. Clearly, Annie Lowell’s daughter had entered the high-stakes game of reckless hedonism that had killed her mother. Dan Kasperski had called Bryn a time bomb; it seemed that somehow the fuse had been lit.

Jill’s mind had obviously hit the same groove as mine. “Evan’s death has transformed her,” she said. “She was always so careful. Now it’s as if she doesn’t care what happens to her. I’d think it was grief except that she hated him.”

“Whether she hated him or not, her father was the dominant force in her life,” I said. “She’s lost her moorings.”

“How do I get her back?” Jill asked.

“You’ve already made a start,” I said. “Your handling of that business with the bracelet was exactly right – firm but low-key, and this afternoon we’re going to find out how to help Bryn deal with what happened in her life before you knew her.”

“If the past is prologue, how can we change the future?”

“Angus’s football coach always says, ‘Never give up. Never give in.’ ”

Jill grinned. “Thanks,” she said. “I’ll be sure to write that on our locker room wall.”

Dan and Kevin Hynd were waiting for us when we got to the house on Wallace Street. There was a welcoming fire in the stone fireplace and the smell of fresh coffee in the air. Dan’s living room was warm with homemade quilts and framed photos of people in happy times. It was a space that spoke of comfort and family, but as Kevin flicked on the video machine, it was clear that the footage Evan MacLeish had shot of his daughter’s life was a violation of both.

The tape we were watching was one of a dozen. It was labelled simply “Girl,” and it was clearly part of a work-in-progress. While the screen was still black, Evan’s voice, intimate, absorbed, read what appeared to be notes to himself about editing and mixing the rough cut, then he announced the date of the edit: December 12 – ten days before his marriage to Jill. I glanced over to catch Jill’s reaction; her face was stony.

From the opening frames, “Girl” was a jolt. The films Evan made about his first wives had been conventional in form: roughly chronological, the story of a life. In each case, the power had come from Evan’s stark, unwavering focus on a woman in the process of destroying herself. Linn Brokenshire’s biography followed the inevitable arc of the life of a saint: religious ecstasy; testing; suffering; death. The film about Annie Lowell had been infused with the hectic, anarchic spirit of a woman who refused to live by the rules her medical condition dictated. Both were stunning emotionally, but technically conservative.

In “Girl,” Evan was using form to reveal dysfunction – film as psychopathology. He crosscut present and past to mimic the jagged bursts of memory that imprison even the healthiest among us. He began in the present with Bryn, in black, sitting on a window seat, framed against a grey late-autumn sky. Given her outbursts, I expected that she would be an unwilling subject, hunted down and run to ground, but she had a model’s easy relationship with the camera.

As she hugged one leg, she was almost seductive. “He told me to think of her as a mother,” she said. “That is such a sick joke. The only thing my mother ever did for me was kill herself.” Bryn tilted her head and a mocking smile curved her lip. “Oh right,” she said. “Annie did give me the gift of life.”

Immediately, Evan cut to a scene that celebrated motherhood so exquisitely that Mary Cassatt could have painted it. Annie and Tracy Lowell were picnicking on a spring green lawn. Both were in white, both wore daisy chains in their hair. They were identical in every way except that Annie was hugely and triumphantly pregnant. They were grown women and there was something consciously girlish about the way in which they drew together whispering and laughing. Finally, Tracy leaned down and put her face against Annie’s belly, and Annie’s hand came up and stroked her sister’s hair. It was a moment of such astonishing intimacy that I felt like an intruder witnessing it. But I wasn’t the intruder. Evan MacLeish was.

Bryn at seventeen was on screen. “I just don’t get this whole mother thing. Somebody gets pregnant – that’s her trip, not mine. If it’s supposed to be about love, then I totally don’t get it. From what I hear, Annie never loved anybody but herself.” Bryn checked her nail enamel. “That’s actually not true. She loved Tracy, and Tracy loved her. At least I think so.”

We were back in Bryn’s past, excavating her life through footage that showed the astonishing closeness of the sisters. There wasn’t a single scene of Annie alone with her daughter. Tracy was always present, and the dynamic between the two women and the child was disturbing. When Annie and Tracy linked arms to form a hammock for the baby, they rocked the child so violently that her small face was contorted with terror. There were other vignettes – all theatrically perfect, all oddly creepy. It took me a moment to pinpoint the source of my unease, then I noticed that as the sisters built a sandcastle on the beach or sang children’s songs or played with a little puppet theatre, they were so obsessed with one another, they forgot that Bryn was there. The Lowell sisters’ pas de deux allowed no room for a third. When the inevitable scene of the car crash shattered the silence of Dan’s living room, my heart ached not just for Bryn but for Tracy and the magnitude of her loss.

On screen, the seventeen-year-old Bryn had half-turned from the camera; against the dark and roiling clouds, her profile was an ivory cameo. “They tell me I didn’t talk for a year after it happened. I don’t remember. They say I never sat still. I just wandered through the house looking. I don’t remember. I don’t remember that time at all.” She brought her face close to the camera’s lens. “Don’t worry,” she whispered. “Daddy got the footage.”

Indeed he had, and it was harrowing. As he followed Bryn through the rooms of the museum in which she lived, Evan kept the camera at her level. The little girl’s search became our search; we saw the rooms and the people in them as she saw them: distant and unknowable. Claudia, thirteen years younger, her fair hair in a thick braid, kept reaching out to the child, trying to comfort her. Every time her aunt’s fingers touched her, Bryn screamed. A fashionable woman with a wedge of shining silver hair and a curiously unlined face often followed the child, but she made no attempt to either communicate with the little girl or to touch her. Only once did the woman speak, and it was to the camera. “Chesterton says that suicide is a far worse crime than murder, because the murderer kills one person, maybe two or three. The suicide kills everyone.” The woman stared thoughtfully at her jewelled hands. “I wonder if Annie knew or cared what she was doing?”

The only person Bryn seemed interested in was Tracy. The little girl would crawl up on Tracy’s knee and run her hands over the face that was a duplicate of the face that had disappeared forever. Tracy never responded to the child’s touch. She seemed catatonic. Finally, the child exploded, punching her aunt with her small fists. “Where’s the other one?” she demanded. “Dead,” Tracy said. And that was the end of Bryn’s childhood.

By the time she was eleven, Bryn had created inner walls that were high and thick. Seemingly confident that the camera couldn’t reach anything that mattered, she ignored it. But like the worm that inches towards the heart of the rose, Bryn’s adversary moved inexorably towards her core. The scene in which the camera finally penetrated Bryn’s private world was beyond brutish. Evan had caught his daughter at a pivotal moment on the cusp between childhood and adolescence. She was standing naked in front of a full-length mirror. The only light in the shot came from sunshine pouring in through an open window, dappling a body that, in Karl Shapiro’s memorable phrase, was “smooth as uncarved ivory.” The camera lingered as Bryn’s hands tenderly explored the changes in her taut body. Eyes half-closed, dreaming her private dreams, Bryn was slow to pick up on the camera’s presence. When, finally, she did, she crumpled: folding her body in on itself, attempting to cover her nakedness, pleading, “Daddy, don’t. Please. Just don’t. The other kids – their fathers don’t do this to them. Please. Please. Just stop.” But the camera continued to roll until Bryn fell to the floor, naked and weeping.

There was a final scene, Bryn at seventeen talking to the camera. “I wish he’d die,” she said. “He used you on my mother too, you know. And against the wife he had before. He’s a parasite. He can’t live without us. But my mother and the wife he had before got back at him. They killed themselves and that moved them permanently out of the range of your lens. I could do that too.” She tossed her head. “If I took him with me, it might be worth it.”

As soon as the film was over, Dan leapt up and turned on the lights. Seemingly, he didn’t want to leave us alone in the dark with our thoughts. “There are other tapes,” he said, “but this picked up the coping mechanism I wanted Jill to see.”

“The way Bryn addresses the camera directly – as if it were separate from her father,” Jill said. “She’s so… seductive with it. What’s that about?”

“She’s trying to use the only tool she has to bring the camera over to her side against him,” Dan said. “I’ve never seen anything like it. Of course, I’ve never had a patient who was abused the way Bryn was abused.”

“How could they let him do that to her?” Jill said. “They were there – Claudia, Tracy, Caroline – I could fucking kill them all.”

Kevin patted Jill’s knee. “Chill,” he said. “Also, atomize. Break the problem down into manageable parts. What’s your first priority?”

“Bryn,” Jill said.

“Good choice,” Dan said. “We’ve left it a little late today. My parents are expecting me for dinner. If you can bring her by at eight tomorrow morning, I can see her before I start my regular day.”

“You work Boxing Day?” I said.

“My busiest day,” Dan said. “For the kids in my practice, Christmas is never a holly-jolly experience.”

“And Bryn and I are adding to your workload,” Jill said. “I appreciate this, Dan. I honestly don’t know where else I’d go.” When she stood, she seemed to lose her balance. Kevin’s hand shot out and grasped her elbow. “Steady as she goes,” he said.

Jill closed her eyes and leaned into him for a moment. “Words to live by,” she said.

“Hey, I almost forgot,” he said. “Christmas isn’t over yet. I have a present.”

“For me?” Jill said.

“Nope,” he said. “For Joanne’s tree.” He handed me a Day-Glo painted sunburst. Inside was a photo of Jerry Garcia. “I noticed you didn’t have a tree-topper,” Kevin said. “Nothing’s going to bring him back, but it’s good to have a reminder that his sweetness will live forever.”

By the time Taylor and her swooshy dress swished exuberantly past the doorman at the Hotel Saskatchewan, Jill had come up with an agenda for the evening. She had abandoned her plan to kill the people who hadn’t protected Bryn in favour of cozying up to them. Dan had convinced her that knowledge was power; the more she knew about her troubled stepdaughter, the more she would be able to help her.

The dining room into which we walked would have warmed Ebenezer’s frozen heart. The hotel was celebrating a true Victorian Christmas: dripping candles, real holly, mistletoe balls, fat geese, turkeys, glazed hams, silver tureens of potatoes, turnips, Brussels sprouts, and, for dessert, trifle and flaming plum pudding. Dickens might not have been able to lull me to sleep, but his iconic feast still had the power to set the Ghosts of Christmases Past rattling.

Tracy and Claudia were waiting at our table. A tiny red teddy bear holding an envelope lengthwise between his paws was on the table at the empty place between them. Both women had taken pains to look festive. Tracy was wearing the sequined white shirt she had worn to the rehearsal dinner, but she’d added an armful of silver bangles and a pair of earrings that looked like links of frozen silver teardrops. Claudia was wearing a tailored jacket and slacks in metallic emerald green; her hair was smoothed into a chic chignon, and for the first time since I’d met her, there was mascara on her pale lashes and a flume of shadow on her lids. When they saw us, they rose expectantly.

“You both look beautiful,” I said. “I love what you’ve done with your eyes, Claudia.”

“Thanks,” she said. “I’m glad my mother didn’t hear you say that.”

“She doesn’t approve of makeup?” I said.

“Au contraire,” Claudia said. “From the time I was three years old, Caroline put mascara on me. She said I was so fair that I looked like a lashless chick. She found it painful to look at me.”

Her comment sucked the wind out of my conversational sails, but other people’s sorrows didn’t register with Bryn. “We’ve had a real family Christmas,” she said happily. “Church and stockings and tobogganing and then a really cool holiday party. This is the happiest Christmas I’ve ever had.”

“You had some lovely holidays with us,” Claudia said. “Remember when I took you to that matinee of Peter Pan and you liked it so much we went again that night.”

“I don’t remember,” Bryn said.

“How can you not remember?” Tracy said. “I gave you that dress Annie wore when she played Wendy.” Tracy smiled at her memories. “She was just sixteen, but the audience absolutely ate her up. I can still remember how the applause would roll over her every night when she stepped forward during curtain call.”

“You went to see your sister every night?” Jill asked.

“I was in the company,” Tracy said. “One of the Lost Boys. How’s that for typecasting?” She sipped her espresso. “One night, Annie and I decided to switch roles – just for fun. By the end of the first act, we both knew the audience hated me, so we switched back.”

“I always thought changing places with a twin could be a lot of fun,” I said. “Did you two do it often?”

Claudia cut Tracy off before she could answer. “Almost never,” she said. “Now, let’s see if we can find a waiter. It’s time for some Christmas cheer.”

The waiter appeared and immediately fell under Bryn’s spell. We had to repeat our orders three times, and even then, Taylor, who had ordered her Shirley Temple with great precision, ended up with an umbrella-less rye and Coke. When the drinks were finally straightened out, Claudia raised her glass. “To better times,” she said. “Speaking of… Joanne, we have to thank you for recommending Lauren Ayala. She’s one sharp lawyer, not to mention a generous one. Not many lawyers would see a client on Christmas Day.”

“Choosing a lawyer on the basis of how she does sun salutations obviously has something to recommend it,” I said.

Claudia laughed. “Whatever criterion you used was obviously spot on, because Tracy and I are finally getting out of here tomorrow.”

“And Lauren says that’s all right?”

“She says Tracy’s empty prescription bottle is worrying but hardly conclusive, especially since Tracy and I were together during the period when the police say Evan was murdered.”

“I didn’t know that,” Jill said.

“Well, now you do,” Claudia said matter-of-factly.

“That’s right,” Jill said thoughtfully. “Now I do.”

The pause that followed was awkward. Luckily, Taylor, as she frequently does, leapt into the breach. “Do you think we could go to the buffet now? I’m starving.”

Angus shot her a glance. “How could you be starving? Three hours ago you ate an entire lobster, a mound of potato salad, and two helpings of croquembouche?”

Taylor shook her head in wonder. “Beats me,” she said. “I just know that that turkey smells really good.”

“If I were a well-bred host, I’d insist we wait for Felix,” Jill said. She glanced at her watch. “But he’s twenty minutes late, and Jo and I skipped lunch. Let’s eat.”

By the time we had made our way through the buffet line twice, it was clear the evening was not working out as Jill had hoped. Her plan to elicit information about Bryn’s past had been torpedoed by a choir in full Victorian dress who sang lustily and at great length, and Felix was still a no-show.

When he finally did appear, he looked as if he had stumbled into the wrong party. Felix took pride in his appearance, but as he walked into the glittering dining room, he was wearing his ski jacket and he was tieless and unshaven. He was also agitated. He went straight to Jill. “I checked the phone messages at our office,” he said.

“On Christmas Day? Now that’s devotion.” Jill indicated his empty place at the table. “Sit down and tell me what’s going on.”

The moment Felix sat down, Bryn’s waiter was at his side. Felix ordered a double-vodka and swivelled his chair to face Jill. For all the attention he directed our way, the rest of us might as well have been cardboard cut-outs. “There were a number of calls for Evan,” he said. “Urgent calls.”

Jill tensed. “Personal or professional?”

“Professional,” Felix said. “ NBC is picking up the series. Evan signed an agreement with them. The telephone calls that came after his death were nominally condolences, but everybody wanted to talk to the widow. It’s clear they’re hot for this, Jill. They want to use the material Evan sent them.”

“There is no material,” Jill said. “All we gave them was a proposal. How can they be hot for a program that doesn’t exist?”

“Because,” Felix said tightly, “the program does exist. Apparently Evan gave them a fully edited first show for ‘The Unblinking Eye.’ The network people are over the moon about it.”

Jill picked up on the implications immediately. “Evan submitted something he’d already shot,” she said.

“It will be about me,” Bryn said in a voice dead with resignation.

“I won’t let them use it, baby,” Jill said.

“You may have to if Evan signed a contract,” Felix said.

“Did he?” Jill asked.

“I don’t know. I didn’t pick up our messages till late yesterday afternoon. By then everyone was gone for the holiday. The only person I could get in touch with was Larissa.”

“Our office manager,” Jill explained. “So was she able to help?”

Felix shook his head. “Not really. She told me that everything connected with Evan’s current projects had been carted off. I said I presumed the Toronto police were acting on orders from the department out here. Larissa said that was a sensible assumption.”

The slightest hint of a smile touched Jill’s lips. “Good old Larissa,” she said.

Felix’s head shot up. “What?”

“Nothing,” Jill said. “So there’s no way to know what Evan sent to the network until the holiday’s over?”

“Which could be tomorrow, and could be after the weekend,” Felix said, and I was surprised at how fretful he sounded. His lean, boyish face was suited to whimsy, but that night the creases around his mouth had deepened, and he seemed grave and preoccupied. His response seemed excessive for a problem that, by my reckoning, concerned him only tangentially. When his cellphone rang, he started, and despite furious glances from the diners at the next table, he picked up. As soon as heard his caller’s voice, he leapt up. “I’ll talk to you outside,” he said. “There are people around.”

Without explanation, he left the dining room. Jill raised an eyebrow, and I followed him. Felix had stopped just outside the maitre d’s station, and as people do when they’re talking on cellphones in public places, he had turned to face the wall. I stopped behind him, pretending to study a menu. He was almost whispering, but I overheard him make a lover’s promise. “I’ll never let anyone hurt you,” he said. “You are my lifeblood.”

When I got back from the ladies’ room, it was clear the party was over. Felix had already downed his vodka and pulled on his ski jacket. “I’m going up to my room to make some phone calls,” he said. “There must be somebody at NBC who’s taking care of business.”

Claudia followed his lead. “I guess we should go upstairs too. We have to pack.” She took Jill’s hand. “Thanks,” she said. “Given the circumstances, it was a very pleasant dinner. I’ll call you before we go to the airport.”

Tracy went to Bryn and stroked her hair. “Your mother always wanted the best for you – it wasn’t her fault that her life didn’t work out.”

“There’s nothing you can tell me about my mother that I have the slightest interest in hearing,” Bryn said, and she jumped up and ran from the room.

Taylor, oblivious, reached over and nabbed a chocolate truffle from Bryn’s plate. “Boy, this was some Christmas,” she said.

“You’ve got that right,” I said. “And do you know what the best part of this particular Christmas is?”

Taylor popped the truffle in her mouth and shrugged.

“In four hours, it will be over,” I said.

After the kids were in bed, Jill and I took a bottle of Hennessey and two snifters into the living room. I turned on the tree lights and lit every candle in sight. Jill handed me my drink.

I took a sip and sighed with contentment. “There’s nothing like Hennessey,” I said. “And we earned it. We got through the day.”

“We did,” Jill agreed. “Now there’s only the rest of our lives to worry about.”

“It’ll get better,” I said.

Jill gazed at the candelabra blazing on the mantelpiece. “I love candles,” she said. “They always make me think of college.”

“Stuck in Chianti bottles and lined up along your dorm window to prove you were a woman of the world?”

Jill smiled at the memory. “For me, candles meant Edna St. Vincent Millay – I loved her image of burning the candle at both ends, so you could make a lovely light.”

I swirled my brandy, watching the amber waves hit the curved sides of the snifter. “Living at full throttle becomes less appealing as the years tick by,” I said.

“Maybe,” Jill said. “But a wise man once told me that when it comes to life, ‘the bigger the investment, the bigger the payoff.’ ”

“So was this sage one of your long line of lovers?” I asked.

“No, but he was one of the few men I’ve ever truly admired. It was Ian, Jo.” The candlelight glanced off Jill’s diamond solitaire. “Did you ever realize how lucky you both were to get it right the first time?”

“I realized,” I said.

Jill stared at the flickering fireplace, mesmerized. “Sometimes watching your life with the kids and each other, I felt like the Little Match Girl pressing my nose against the window. I wanted that life, Jo – I still do. That’s why I’m ready to invest everything I have in Bryn.”

“Every investment carries the possibility of loss,” I said.

“I know. I’m not a complete idiot.” She laughed softly. “But hey, I’m the last of the red-hot Edna St. Vincent Millay fans – want to hear the best two lines she ever wrote?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“Of course not.” The tone was congruent with our usual easy mockery, but when Jill turned to me her eyes shone with a terrifying hope:

“Safe upon the solid rock the ugly houses stand:

Come and see my shining palace built upon the sand!”