Children in the Morning (10 page)

Brennan raised his eyebrows but didn’t speak.

Maura answered: “I’m not aware of any news item like that, but then I just tune that stuff out.”

“Well, you can be sure Normie wouldn’t tune it out if she heard or read anything of that nature. Most likely it would feed into this whole picture that’s developing in her mind.”

“Why don’t you ask
him
?” She gestured towards Brennan.

“Ask me what?”

“Fill us in about satanic cults, devil worship . . . child sacrifices . . .”

The priest rolled his eyes. “As far as I know, these satanic cults, so-called, are few and far between, with the exception of some teenage amateurs. I think most of these tales of ritual abuse are horseshit. We certainly have to suss out what’s troubling Normie, but I wouldn’t waste time worrying about devil worship or child sacrifices.”

“I’m sure you’re right,” I said. “These visions could have an innocent explanation.”

“Since when do you find innocent explanations for things, 50

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Collins?” my wife asked.

“I invent them every day in court, remember?” I reached for my wineglass and said: “It’s probably something less exotic, and closer to home, that’s working on her mind.”

I looked up from my glass and caught a glance passing from Brennan to Maura. “What?” I asked. “Is there something?”

“No, no,” Maura insisted.

But I wondered. We were separated and had been heading for a reconciliation when she found out she was pregnant by another man.

That certainly derailed the homebound train. (Not that I was blame-less myself in our travails.) Now, even though tensions between us had eased somewhat in the months since the child was born, I didn’t delude myself that I knew everything that was going on in her life.

But maybe, knowing Brennan, he’d been on her case to get to the bottom of Normie’s trouble, and there was no more to it than that.

“So,” I said, “the dreams began around the time she met Jenny and Laurence Delaney. Is that fair to say?”

“I’d say so,” Maura replied. “It would make sense that her connection with them, and no doubt her concern for them and their father and the turmoil in their family, would increase over time. She still sees them regularly at the Four-Four Time program. They’ve become friends. She’s even been over to their house.”

Brennan got up then, and gave us a little salute as he left the restaurant. I thought I saw him shoot another look at Maura, but it could have been my imagination. A vision, perhaps! I raised my hand in farewell, then returned to the matter at hand.

“The fact that Delaney is accused of being a murderer could be the key to this. Obviously. Children whose father may be a killer. The stuff of nightmares, for sure. But we’ve always stressed Delaney’s innocence.”

“There’s another thing now,” Maura said, in a quiet voice.

“What?” My reply was far from quiet.

“Over the last few days, she’s reported headaches.”

“It’s causing her physical pain now!”

“The headaches may simply be a result of the loss of sleep caused by waking up from these awful dreams.”

“We don’t know that. It’s like the chicken and the egg.”

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“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying we don’t know whether the emotional turmoil is causing the headaches or the headaches are a symptom of something else entirely, and the whole thing is manifesting itself as emotional disturbance.”

My wife’s face registered her alarm. “You’re not saying it’s . . .”

“Something organic. Something physical.”

“What?” Her voice was uncharacteristically high-pitched. “You’re not saying she has a brain tumour or something!”

“I’m not saying that and I don’t think that. But the responsible course of action is to have the doctor look at her, and make a referral if that seems wise. To rule anything out.”

“I was going to take her in, but I was convinced — I still am! —

that it’s something she’s upset about. Like, well, the Delaney kids and where they might end up, or . . .” Her voice trailed off. She sat there, staring ahead, her face pale. If there was anything my formidable wife could not face, it was the idea that something might be wrong with her children’s health.

Two days later we were on our way to see our family doctor, Lise Gaudet. We got Normie into the car without telling her what it was really about. Lise was quick to reassure us, after examining Normie, talking to her, and sending her out to the waiting room with a kids’

magazine.

“You’re almost certainly right. She’s a sensitive little girl, and all this about the murder of the mother of a large family, the father being charged, his family being split up — all of this is likely the root of it. I don’t mean to make light of it, of course. But I wouldn’t be concerned about anything physical. I’d give you a referral to neurol-ogy, but I have a better idea. I have a patient who’s lined up for a cat scan and, well, he’s not going to need it.”

“Why not?” Maura asked with trepidation.

The doctor just shook her head. “So, I’m going to do some fancy footwork, and get Normie in for that appointment. I honestly don’t believe there’s anything sinister going on. But this is the way to rule it out. I’ll call you tomorrow morning.”

On Tuesday the following week, we were trying to reassure our terrified little daughter that entering this gigantic tube would not 52

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hurt, and would not result in any dreadful diagnosis being made.

And that she would have something fascinating to tell the other kids about her morning off from school. I thought I was going to have to request sedation for her mother, but she did her best to hide her fears from Normie. Though a bright, cheerful, smiley Maura MacNeil should have been enough to make anyone sit up and pay closer attention to the radar screen. But anyway, the little one allowed herself to be extricated from our embrace and placed on the moving table for the scan. Our son, Tom, showed up at the hospital just after his sister went in for the test.

“This is just procedure, right? There’s nothing really wrong with her . . .”

“I’m sure that’s right, Tom. They have to rule things out, is all.”

He looked around, and his thoughts were there to be read by one and all: there would be no medical school in the future for Tommy Douglas Collins. His namesake, Tommy Douglas, was the father of universal free health care in Canada. Our Tommy would be content to see others deliver the service. And others, presumably, were welcome to receive it. He sat down beside his mother, swallowed, and didn’t say another word.

The doctor called with the results later that week.

“Nothing wrong at all, Normie,” I assured her. “But we knew that. Doctors have to be extra cautious, and give tests to prove that there’s nothing wrong. You’re fine.”

Her brother chimed in: “You can tell everybody they did a brain scan and they couldn’t find anything.”

She stared at him blankly for a few seconds, then: “Ha ha, very funny. You’re saying I don’t have a brain.”

“I’ve been saying it for years, and now we know for sure. Nice hair, though.” He ruffled her curls and, try as she might to maintain a pose of righteous anger, she couldn’t help but smile.

(Normie)

They put me in that great big machine. They slid me in there on a moving table, and I nearly had a heart attack I was so scared. But it 53

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showed there was nothing wrong. That didn’t mean people left me alone about it, though. I guess they couldn’t, because I made the mistake of telling Daddy about another thing I saw in my mind one day after school.

I told him I was wide awake and still at the school, and I had a bad dream anyway. My mind saw a little kid standing in a room, and suddenly this big shadow came over him and the little kid was crying and screaming. I felt he was scared and sad, and feeling pain. And I thought I heard a kind of echo sound of people laughing. It was laughter, but it sounded mean. I had an awful feeling that something had happened. Or maybe something was going to happen!

After I told Daddy this, he went and called Mummy on the upstairs phone. I heard him whispering something; then he came back down to the living room.

“Mum and I are worried about you, angel. We know there’s nothing wrong with you, with your brain or anything, but it still might be good for you to see someone who can help you.”

“Who?”

“Well, maybe a different kind of doctor.”

“What kind? I don’t want to see any more doctors! And I don’t want any more tests!”

“This doctor wouldn’t do tests; she would just talk to you.”

“You mean a mental doctor! You think I’m crazy!”

“No, Normie, you’re not crazy. We know that. But these doctors can help. When there’s something bothering you, a psychiatrist can help you deal with it.”

“Nobody can help me deal with it until we find out what really happened. Or what’s going to happen!”

“But, sweetie, we don’t know whether anything happened.”

“I know it did! Or it’s going to! You don’t believe me! You think I’m mental!”

“Come here, angel. We won’t talk about it anymore now.” Daddy pulled me onto his knee and held me, and I felt a bit better. I was still mad, though. Who wouldn’t be?

I was even more upset after they took me to a
psychiatrist
! You wouldn’t believe what went on in there. Me and Mum and Dad were in the waiting room, and this man with his hair all shaved off went 54

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crazy, right there in the room with everybody looking! He started bugging the nurse at the desk about the doctor keeping him waiting.

She tried to calm him down, but he picked up her papers and threw them at her. Daddy got up and told him to take it easy, and the guy started screaming in Daddy’s face. Then he turned and shoved the desk towards the nurse, and she nearly fell off her chair. Daddy went behind the desk and helped the nurse. I think she pressed some kind of secret buzzer, because she reached under the desk, and then made a little nod at Dad. The guy started screaming even louder, and tried to go behind the desk and grab the nurse, and then Daddy grabbed him, and wrestled him down on the floor and held him there. Mum went over to the nurse. A policeman or a security guy came in then, and the doctor came out of her office, and they all went outside into the hallway, and a few minutes later the doctor came back in by herself. All the time this was going on, a little old lady in one of the seats kept giggling, as if it was funny. Well, it wasn’t.

I was shaking by the time it was all over. The man had said all kinds of things that didn’t make sense. But one thing I got, loud and clear. He yelled at the doctor that he had been coming to see her for two years, and she never cured him! Two years! So I knew it wasn’t going to work for me. When Mum and Dad got up to help the nurse fix up her desk and papers, I made a run for it. I ran out of the office and down the hall, and down a whole bunch of stairs till I was outside the doctor’s building on Spring Garden Road. I couldn’t remember where we parked the car, so I sat outside on the great big steps the building has. Mum and Dad came flying out the door two minutes later, and tried to talk me into going back in. But I’m not stupid. Either that doctor was no good, or mental patients can’t be cured. So there was no point in them dragging me back inside. I made a big, loud fuss, and they looked at each other over my head, and said we’d just go home for now. Sometimes you have to put your foot down, and say no!

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Chapter 5

(Monty)

That night at our local, the Midtown Tavern, Brennan lifted his pint, took a long sip, and asked: “How did things go today?”

“A patient freaked out in the waiting room, tried to trash the place and attack the receptionist, and I had to subdue the guy till security came, and the guy revealed he’d been under treatment with this particular shrink for two years, and Normie saw and heard it all, and bolted, and refused to be dragged back inside kicking and screaming, so we took her home. That’s how things went today.” I picked up my draft, and downed a third of it.

“Ah. A less than successful outing.”

“So I don’t know where to go from here.”

“Well, it just so happens that I called Patrick a couple of nights ago, and filled him in.” Patrick was his brother, a psychiatrist in New York.

“Oh! What did he say?”

“Paddy thinks there could be something to it. The visions, I mean, not anything physical. The child is certainly not making it up. Her 56

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tests are normal. She’s having visions of past or maybe future events.

If they’re in the future, there’s nothing we can do unless they’re detailed enough to tip us off. If something has already happened, perhaps we can track it down.”

“She’s heard so much about Delaney, and his wife dying, and all the children being without their mother. She’s become friendly with Beau’s kids. It can’t be anything Beau has done; they wouldn’t keep sending him foster children without being absolutely sure he’s above reproach.

She’s met Beau. She knows he’s a lawyer who’s handled some disturbing cases.”

“As have you.”

“True, but surely she’s not having nightmares about me! She may be picking up images or emotions from some of the cases Beau’s done, those involving children.”

“Or it may be something else.”

“Like what?”

“Well, who knows?”

“That’s not getting us anywhere, is it?”