Watcher

watcher

Also by Valerie Sherrard

Kate
Sam's Light
Sarah's Legacy
Three Million Acres of Flame
Speechless

The Shelby Belgarden Mysteries

Out of the Ashes
In Too Deep
Chasing Shadows
Hiding in Plain Sight
Eyes of a Stalker
Searching for Yesterday

Books For Younger People

There's a COW Under my Bed!
There's a GOLDFISH in my Shoe!
Tumbleweed Skies

watcher

valerie sherrard

DUNDURN PRESS
TORONTO

Copyright © Valerie Sherrard, 2009

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.

Editor: Allison Hirst
Design: Jennifer Scott
Printer: Webcom

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Sherrard, Valerie
      Watcher / Valerie Sherrard.

ISBN 978-1-55488-431-5

      I. Title.

PS8587.H3867W38 2009           jC813'.6           C2009-903263-5

1   2   3   4   5         13   12   11   10   09

We acknowledge the support of the
Canada Council for the Arts
and the
Ontario Arts Council
for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the
Government of Canada
through the
Book Publishing Industry Development Program
and
The Association for the Export
of Canadian Books
, and the
Government of Ontario
through the
Ontario Book Publishers Tax
Credit program
, and the
Ontario Media Development Corporation
.

Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credits in subsequent editions.

J. Kirk Howard, President

Printed and bound in Canada.
www.dundurn.com

Parental Alienation is a form of abuse
involving the destruction of a child's relationship
with one parent by the other.
It is, for the most part, an unpunished crime.
Those who pay the highest price are its victims:
the children,
who often become innocent participants.
Our courts have failed them.

This book is dedicated to those children.

      Justice is truth in action.
    — Benjamin Disraeli

contents

prologue

chapter one

chapter two

chapter three

chapter four

chapter five

chapter six

chapter seven

chapter eight

chapter nine

chapter ten

chapter eleven

chapter twelve

chapter thirteen

chapter fourteen

chapter fifteen

chapter sixteen

chapter seventeen

chapter eighteen

chapter nineteen

chapter twenty

chapter twenty-one

chapter twenty-two

chapter twenty-three

chapter twenty-four

chapter twenty-five

chapter twenty-six

chapter twenty-seven

epilogue

acknowledgements

prologue

I
called him The Watcher.

He appeared to be in his early forties, casually dressed and basically nondescript-looking. I might never have noticed him except there were too many times that he was just
standing
around. I think that's what grabbed my eye. In the city, everyone seems to be in motion most of the time. Still, I think there was something else.

It could have been that kind of crawly feeling you get when you sense someone watching you. I caught him at it a couple of times, but usually when I swung my head around he'd be checking his watch or looking somewhere else or walking away without so much as a glance in my direction. I decided that he was slick, but no pro.

There was something familiar about him. I could never say exactly
what
, but it bugged me enough that I eventually ran it by Tack.

Tack, besides being my best friend, is definitely my oldest one. He's been around since I learned how to tie my own shoes. Back then we played together on the patch of ground that's supposed to pass for a lawn between our apartment buildings.

The yard might have had grass at some point in time, but not in my recollection. A few tufts jut up here and there but the rest of the surface is dirt that clearly has no intention of growing anything. You can tell, the way it's hard and pale, not rich and dark like the soil in the flowerbeds of classy neighbourhoods. You can find them anywhere. They're just a short subway ride and about a universe away.

Tack isn't his real name, by the way. You probably already guessed that. His actual name is Jeremiah, but the only person I've ever heard call him that is his mom. To the rest of the world, he's been Tack for as long as I can remember. Don't know how it got started, but it would be weird to call him anything else.

I'm tougher than Tack, though you wouldn't believe it if you saw us together. He has a good forty pounds and five inches on me, with all kinds of muscle and tone, while I look more like a pencil-necked techie.

I suppose we look funny when we hang out — Tack, tall and buff with his black skin glowing; me, thin and so white in contrast that I probably look as if I'm about to pass out.

I'm tough, though. You can ask anyone, and they'll tell you the same thing. I never bail out for any reason. I'd pick fight over flight any day of the week and never think twice about it. Matter of pride or honour — call it what you want, but I'll throw down with anybody, anytime.

Guys can tell, too. They can smell fear, taste it even, and if they catch so much as a hint, they'll circle you like a pack of wolves and tear you to shreds. But when they see that you're ready to stand, unafraid, almost
eager
to dig in, that makes them think.

Usually.

There are exceptions, and that can cost you. I've been hurt a few times, but I took three guys once and two another, and they paid for the damage they did to me.

Our apartment was on a Toronto street I'd rather not name, in an Ontario Housing complex. There was a “government-funded” look and a perpetual foul smell in the hallways, like somewhere in the building someone was cooking cabbage every minute of the day. The apartments themselves weren't really that bad, but the only people we ever invited over were each other, by which I mean other occupants of the same collection of concrete boxes.

In a neighbourhood where the faces were constantly changing, it was a bit surprising that Tack and I had both been there for as long as we had. That was because our mothers were both single parents who'd found themselves trapped in the low-income cycle. They were always claiming that they were going to get out of there. As if that could ever happen without an action plan that goes past words.

Our fathers were what you'd call absent, though Tack saw his a couple of times that I can remember. The first time didn't go so well and he never mentioned the last visit. Not a word and I never asked. It's his story to tell when he gets it settled in his head.

My memories of my old man were kind of murky since my folks split up when I was pretty young. The year before I started kindergarten. The few memories I had of him weren't what you'd call pleasant. Mom always said we were much better off without him. She would say, “Who needs someone who left his family to rot on welfare for the rest of their lives?”

I knew one thing — I wasn't going to be rotting in that place the rest of
my
life. I was getting out of there. That place turned people into the living dead. I saw them everywhere, the ones who'd given up, their eyes emptied of hope. I was getting away from them, away from the yelling and crying that came at me through the thin walls, away from the sounds of despair — sounds that echoed like lingering ghosts on summer nights when it was too hot to sleep.

In that neighbourhood, it was hard to hear
anything
that didn't carry the sound of defeat.