Fit to Die (13 page)

Her foot caught the tip of a stick and she stumbled, pitching towards the edge. She grabbed a low-hanging branch to stop her fall. Her whole body shook, her heart pounded in her ears. It was a long way down to the shoreline. She bent over from the waist, breathing hard.

She couldn't catch her breath. She never ran out of breath. Hadn't since her early days of running. She straightened, avoiding looking straight down, and did some leg stretches, then sat on a log well back from the edge, staring out at the ocean.
Breathe slowly. Relax.
She used to love coming here to sit and watch, sometimes to dream about sailing across that open expanse of water to whatever was beyond. Maybe all the way to Japan.
Just relax.

Of course, in those days, she'd fantasized about a special guy going along with her. Well, guess what, he'd never materialized. Lots of false tries but never Mr. Right. One analyst had said it was because no one could compare to her father, the father she never knew, a memory she'd assembled
from bits and pieces of other men. The warm laugh of a friend's father. The dark, haunting looks of a magazine model. The togetherness of television's Walton family. She didn't know anything about him; her mother had always refused to discuss him. She didn't even know his name, but that was okay, he was always “my daddy”. She'd woven a rich fantasy life for the three of them. Before Dan had come along.

He couldn't compare to her daddy. And she had refused to call him that. He had pushed his way into their lives, taking up all her mother's time, and driving her daddy further away from her thoughts. Hannah had hated him for five long years. Until he had left. And her daddy was able to return, to be with her. And she was happy.

•  •  •

“Hannah, do you think we could have a talk?” Dan asked as he cleared the dinner dishes from the table. It had been a quiet meal, just the two of them, eating a nuked frozen lasagna and fresh green salad she'd tossed together with makings from the garden.

“I don't think we have anything to talk about.” She ran the dishwater to drown out his words.

He went back to sit with Carolyn while Hannah fumed. Her mom. She was the one who should be sitting with her, not cleaning up after
him.
She finished the dishes then went in to get her mom ready for sleeping. Dan disappeared until later that evening, when Hannah sat reading in the living room.

“You can't avoid me for the entire time I'm here, Hannah.” Dan sat down beside her on the couch before she had time to object. “I know you think I didn't belong in your lives, but I did love you both, you know.”

Hannah closed her book and turned to face him. “No, I don't know and it doesn't make any difference anyway. You're here to visit with Mom. Let's leave it at that. I do appreciate having my privacy, if you don't mind.” She heard the chill in her voice and was glad of it.

Dan shook his head. “Okay. Okay.” He stood slowly and retreated down the hall. She waited until she heard the door to his room open and shut, then she opened her book and stared at the pages. An hour later, she closed it, not having progressed from that single page, and went to bed.

•  •  •

Hannah dreamed again that night but could recall only bits and pieces of it in the morning. She'd been with her mom, somewhere. Just the two of them walking along the river.

Her head throbbed. Another tension headache in full control. Run. She needed to run. Dan's door was closed as she crept down the hall. Her mom slept noisily but soundly. Her Rykas crunched loudly on the gravel laneway, drowning out the sound of the nuthatches as she jogged over to the road. After ten minutes of full out running, she cut back to a medium paced walk for one minute, then another ten minutes at full speed. By the time she reached the cliff, her breathing was measured, her mantra keeping her pace.
No-body-loves-you-like-your-Mom.
Run for ten minutes, walk for one, then…she stopped at the sight of Dan sitting on her log, staring out at the water.

Her heart battered the walls of her chest making it hard to breathe. Her log. Her mom. Nobody loves you like your mom.

She ran straight at Dan and pushed. He pitched forward, his yell becoming more faint as he plummeted the hundred
metres to the rocks below. She bent over from the waist and gulped air. After a few minutes, she sat on the log and stared across the ocean. The silence surrounded her. No birds chirping. No waves intruding. No thoughts invading her head. She eventually roused herself and headed back to the house.

•  •  •

Hannah sat on the edge of her mom's bed and held her hand. The funeral had been held that morning, and Carolyn had insisted on attending. It had drained all of her strength, even on a gurney with an ambulance transporting her.

“I can't believe it.” Carolyn sobbed, gasping for air. Hannah grabbed the mask from the portable oxygen unit and placed it over her mom's nose and mouth until her breathing became less laboured. After a few minutes, Carolyn pulled the mask aside.

“I had so hoped you two would get to know each other again.”

“Please, don't try to talk. Just rest, Mom.” Hannah reached for the mask, but Carolyn grasped her hand.

“I have to talk. To tell you.”

“It can wait, Mom. Just lie quiet now.”

“No. I have to tell you, now. Hannah, don't hate me, baby. Please. I did it for you.” Her fingers actually dug into Hannah's hand, and her voice sounded stronger. “You'd built up such an image of your father. Of what you thought he was like. Except…Dan and I. We…we'd been lovers. My husband found out. Dan left. He was in the military. They sent him away to Cyprus on a peacekeeping mission. And my husband left because I was pregnant.”

What are you saying? It can't be true. My daddy wouldn't leave me! He died. He wouldn't leave.

Tears rolled down Carolyn's face as she reached out her right hand to touch Hannah's face. “Dan didn't know I was pregnant. When he came back, he found me, us, and then we got married. We'd hoped it would work out. He tried to be a father to you, but you never—” she coughed and took a few minutes to get her breath back “—never let him get close to you. We couldn't make a life together knowing you were so miserable. So he left, too.”

No. My daddy was dead!

“We should have told you. But I didn't want you to know what we'd done. At least, not till you were older.” She shook her head. “But we should have told you.”

“Told me what?”
I don't want to know.

“Hannah, baby, Dan was your father.”

LINDA WIKEN
is owner of Prime Crime Books in Ottawa. She's written for radio, newspaper and magazines, and has published a number of non-fiction books. Her short stories have appeared in the anthologies
The Ladies' Killing Circle, Cottage Country Killers
and
Menopause is Murder, Murderous Intent
magazine, and her mystery novel is in search of a publishing date. She also writes articles for the Ottawa Police and adds her voice to their choir.

The detective looked at the splattered gore

On the walls, the windows, and the floor.

There wasn't much left of the late Mr. Horner

Except for his wife alone in a corner.

“I confess to the deed,” Ms. Horner lamented.

“He did nothing but exercise. He was demented.

He was a fitness freak in a fitness fog.

All night he'd lift weights; all day he would jog.

He'd rather score on the court than score with me,

So I put nitroglycerine in his last herbal tea.”

The detective looked round and then said with a wink,

“Guess that was a pretty dynamic Power Drink.”

JOY HEWITT MANN

VIOLETTE MALAN

Oh, no,” Carlotta's laugh tinkled musically, “I do not need to lose weight. I need a place to exercise. The toning of the muscles, the flexibility. These things are important for a woman, you know.” The look on the younger woman's face quite amused Carlotta. It was well known that everyone in North America was obsessed by his or her weight. At home in Spain they couldn't understand it. Everyone here was much too skinny. Why, Rodrigo even refused to watch television, especially that lawyer's show that Carlotta found so funny. “It hurts me to look at those women,” he would say to her in Spanish. “They are starving.
Las flacas,”
he would call them. The skinnies.

“Oh, but you'll want to sign up for our Super Weight Loss Special,” the young blonde woman insisted in the chirpy voice Carlotta was beginning to associate with North American working girls. She seemed to have far too many teeth. “Twenty pounds for twenty dollars. It starts tomorrow, so you're just in time.” The young women held out a clipboard and offered Carlotta a pen.

“No, no,” Carlotta said, her own smile becoming just a little forced. “Exercise is so much more important for a woman of my age.” At first Carlotta couldn't understand why
the girl raised her eyebrows in that unattractive fashion. But then she realized. Of course! The poor girl was only twenty—perhaps twenty-two at the most. She thought she was always going to be flat in the right places. She thought that older women were rounder because they were fat. Carlotta smiled more easily. Poor child. She would learn soon enough.

And there were so many wonderful things about not being twenty any longer, though that was also something they seemed to have wrong here in North America. She shook her head. Strange people. After all, with age come status and dignity. Maturity and understanding. Carlotta thought of herself at twenty-two, still in the university, living with her aunt Emilia in Madrid, which was exactly the same as living with her parents. Never enough hours in the day for study, for friends, for romance.

And Carlotta considered herself now, almost thirty years later, a partner in the first all-female law firm in Barcelona, her daughter Antonia studying to be an architect like her father, and Emilio—well, Carlotta didn't understand why her son wanted to breed dogs, but at least he made enough money to support himself, which was more than the sons of many of Carlotta's friends could say. And, according to some of those same friends, maturity could also bring you younger lovers, who appreciated women who knew a thing or two.

Not that Carlotta had time for that, herself. Her own husband, her Rodrigo, was still very attentive, very attentive indeed, Carlotta thought with a satisfied smile. When the needs of her firm had required her to move to the Canadian capital of Ottawa for several months, Rodrigo had packed his briefcase, his AutoCad programs, his computer disks and moved his architecture business to Canada with her. Rather than do without her for what he had described as “an eternity”.

Ridiculous to suppose that she was fat!

Later that night, as she and Rodrigo were having dinner, she amused him by telling him of her day.

Rodrigo shook his head. “Watch out for that girl,” he said. “She sounds like my mother.” Carlotta knew exactly what he meant. Rodrigo's mother was one of those made stupid by the force of their own certainty. Who always thought they were right, and never for one moment considered the feelings of others. A woman to be avoided. Carlotta shook her head. She wondered if people had already begun to avoid the little blonde. Poor child.

That first week, several other lithe young persons in spandex suits that looked hideously uncomfortable mentioned the weight loss class to Carlotta. Clearly these people were obsessed. It was somewhat annoying at first—the obsessions of others so often are—but most of the staff at the gym learned to just smile and nod at her as Carlotta came in every day at one o'clock. Perhaps, after all, she thought, they were not to blame. Victimized by their unpleasant advertising and browbeaten by their fashion industry.

But that first young woman—Tiffany her name seemed to be—she was different. Still chirpy, her blonde ponytails always bouncing, her gold earrings swinging, even when she was standing still.

“Oooo, hurry, you're going to miss your ‘weigh in',” she would say, very loudly and slowly, as Carlotta walked into the fitness centre in plenty of time for her Nautilus class. At first Carlotta would smile and remind the girl that she wasn't signed up for the weight loss class, that, her accent notwithstanding, she spoke and understood the English language perfectly well. There was no need to speak in those exaggerated tones.

But as time passed and the girl Tiffany did not change her behaviour, it became harder and harder to keep smiling.

One day Carlotta spoke to the manager, just casually, remarking that on occasion Tiffany appeared to be abrasively aggressive. The manager nodded and smiled very brightly, pointing out that it was the girl's job to be concerned for the clients. And so many people resisted the idea that they needed to lose weight. So many were in denial. Didn't Carlotta agree?

Well, no. Carlotta didn't agree. She thought the manager unnecessarily obtuse. She went back to her office that afternoon and asked several of her Canadian colleagues about other fitness studios, but, as she had feared, this centre was closest to her building. There was nowhere else she could go at lunch and return to her office in time for the afternoon meetings.

As well, Carlotta thought, there was the yoga instructor whom she liked so much. A woman of her own age, comfortable, strong and with what flexibility! Ah, if only Carlotta had the time to apply herself, she too could achieve that divine level!

•  •  •

In the weeks after Christmas things became, if anything, worse. The suggestion, it seemed to Carlotta, was that everyone had behaved like starving wolves gorging on a carcass for the entire month of December, and now required drastic work in order to be returned to their normal size. Or perhaps even thinner. To be ready for the February cruises, and to get what they called a “jump start” on the summer bathing-suit season. Well, Carlotta thought, to be fair, it is true that more food than usual seemed to be eaten at the holiday season. She had noticed this herself. Perhaps they had some reason to be concerned.