Watcher (19 page)

“Oh … yes. You and Lynn have another sister you've never met. I remarried seven years ago and my wife and I had Nicole the following year.”

I let that sink in. A six-year-old sister. Nicole.

“Does she know about me and Lynn?”

“Of course. She's always asking me
when
she'll
finally
get to meet you.” He said it with an emphasis that I knew was hers. Nicole's. My little sister.

“What's your wife's name?”

“Amelia. She's a good person. You'll like her.”

It was after that that we
really
started to talk. Dad told me a lot about himself and his new family, and I told him about me and Lynn. I couldn't believe it when he glanced at his watch and said it was almost four in the morning.

“Will your mother be waiting up for you?”

“Naw, she'll be sleeping.” I wasn't worried about Mom, anyway. There were things to straighten out, but I didn't even want to think about all that tonight.

Knowing what time it was seemed to have an effect on both of us, though, and we were soon yawning. Dad put his arm around my shoulder and said maybe we'd better head back. I was okay with that because this was just the beginning.

On the way home I recalled something. I asked him if he remembered the day outside the daycare, when I'd been coached to say I hated him.

He did.

“It wasn't true, Dad,” I said. “It was
never
true.”

“I know that, Son,” he said. “I always knew it.”

chapter twenty-seven

I
t was Lynn who found the letters.

Mom had been hanging around the apartment and I knew she'd sniffed something out — probably because of us going through all her stuff the day we were looking for the key to her cabinet. She didn't ask about it, but it was easy to see she was watching us, waiting to see if we might give anything away.

Even though I'd been out late the night before, I was up early that morning, my head too full of everything to let me sleep in. Lynn got up not long afterward, and once she'd had her breakfast I gave her a signal that I needed to talk to her.

“I think I'll head over to Tack's place, see what's up,” I said, lying for Mom's benefit. I caught Lynn's eye and pointed down, hoping she'd know to meet me in the lobby.

It was about twenty minutes before she joined me, bursting out of the elevator with a panicked look on her face.

“I thought for sure you'd be gone,” she said breathlessly. “What's going on?”

“Come on,” I said. “We can't talk here.”

We slipped out the back entrance, just in case Mom was watching out the window, and went through to the street behind our building. From there we made our way to the park and, finding the few benches there occupied, sat on the grass under a maple tree.

I started slowly, giving her time to take it all in. She kept interrupting, asking me questions that made me repeat what I'd just said. It was almost comical.

“You called our father?” she said, right after I'd told her that exact thing.

“Yeah, I called him.”

“You called
our father
?” Then, like that needed clarifying: “Our
real
dad?”

Eventually I got through the whole story with her. She sat very still, looking at the ground, her head suspended forward over her knees. She tugged at a few blades of grass, then she cried silently for a bit.

“He drew funny faces on balloons,” she said, without looking at me. “Do you remember?”

Something flashed forward from the memories I'd had to freeze out, but it was gone before I could get a solid image.

“Maybe a little bit,” I said.

“How could she?” Lynn said then. “How could she do this to us?”

“I've been wondering that, too. And why.”

“I mean it, Porter.
How could she
?” Her voice rose, caught in her throat, then turned into a moan, and more tears.

“Take it easy, Lynn.” I said a few other things to try to calm her and even went so far as attempting to put an arm around her shoulders, but she shrugged it off and rose to her feet. In an instant transformation, she became red-faced and ugly with anger.

“She's going to tell me
right now
why she did this to us!” she said through clenched teeth.

I went along with her, making half-hearted (and futile) attempts to talk to her while she stomped toward home. I'd never seen Lynn this mad before and as small as she was, there was something terrible and frightening in the way she looked — and even in the way she moved.

It wasn't until we were in the elevator on the way up to our apartment that I was able to make her hear me.

“Just don't do anything she can get you for,” I begged. Mom had called the police on Lynn once when there'd been a bit of shoving back and forth. Nothing had come of that, but I knew there could be big trouble if Lynn so much as touched her.

“Don't worry,” she said, breathing a bit more normally.

It was hard not to worry, especially when we got inside and Lynn exploded with a stream of name-calling and accusations. It took Mom a good three or four minutes to even
start
reacting.

“I knew this would happen someday,” she said, trying to yell over Lynn. “He got to you, didn't he? Got to you and filled your head with lies. Well, I—”

“
SHUT UP
,” Lynn screamed. “
YOU SHUT YOUR
LYING MOUTH
.”

Mom ventured a glance at me to see if she might find someone on her side. I guess she didn't see any sympathy in my eyes because she backed down and stayed silent while Lynn went on for the next few minutes.

It might have lasted longer but she stopped raving in mid-sentence and turned to me, her face wild with fury.

“Where's that key? I bet there's other stuff in her cabinet that she doesn't want us to see.”

Mom looked
really
scared when she heard that. She stood up and took a few faltering steps toward the hallway but stopped when Lynn spun around and faced her.

“You just try and stop me,” she said. “Go ahead and try.”

Lynn's voice had gone totally calm and quiet, which, in a way, was scarier than the screaming. Mom's mouth moved, fishlike, but nothing came out. Panic was written all over her face but even then I could see her searching for something to say.

I turned away, unable to find so much as a hint of pity for her, and followed my sister down the hall, stopping in my room to get the key.

I handed it to Lynn and stood at her side as she slid it into the keyhole and turned, pulled the drawers open, and started pulling things out and throwing them on the bed behind us.

It was surprising how much those two drawers held. There were all kinds of documents and court papers, Mom's income tax returns, cards, pictures and, nestled underneath everything else in the top drawer, neat stacks of letters tied in bundles.

Lynn snatched out the top bundle with a little cry and clutched it to her. I saw there were several other stacks addressed to her underneath and to the right of those, twin bundles with my name on them.

Letters. Dozens and dozens of letters. And every one of them had been opened.

“This is
my
room!” Mom, now in the doorway, did her best to put authority and indignation into her voice, but all she sounded was scared.

“And these are
our
letters,” I snapped. Then, curious, “Why didn't you just throw them out?”

“I was
protecting
you,” she said. Her eyes begged me to believe her. “I didn't want you getting confused or upset.”

“So, why keep them?” I repeated.

“In case …” She hesitated. “In case anything ever happened to me. I couldn't stand the idea of you in foster homes. I thought that
anything
would be better than that.”

There were things I would have liked to say to that, but I somehow managed to hold them in. Mom misunderstood my silence.

“You know, Porter,” she said, her face pathetic with hope, “you can't believe anything that monster says to you.”

I turned away from her and saw that Lynn had sunk onto the edge of the bed and was reading one of her letters. Tears streamed down her face and her shoulders shook. She looked so small.

“Lynn,” I said. “Come on, let's get out of here.”

She looked up, her eyes confused, like she was trying to focus on something after coming in from bright sunshine.

“I'm going to call Dad to come and get us,” I said.

Dad.

“Won't he be working right now?”

“Yeah, but he'll come. He gave me his card with his work and cell phone numbers.”

“You're not calling
him
from my phone,” Mom said. Her last pitiful attempt at control.

I shrugged, grabbed the rest of my letters, and walked, with my sister, down the hall and out the door.

Behind us, we could hear Mom yelling that we were fools if we thought we could trust our father, and that we'd be sorry if we didn't turn around right that moment.

We kept walking.

epilogue

I
f you ever want to plan a surprise party for someone, don't let my little sister, Nicole, in on it. Believe me, you'd have a better chance of keeping it under wraps if you put it in the paper.

I knew they would do something for my graduation, but I'd thought it would be along the lines of a family dinner out. We almost always go out for birthdays and other special occasions.

The first hint that it was going to be a party instead came when Nicole started guarding the deep freeze.

“Don't look in here!” she'd yell, throwing herself across the front of it.

“Yeah, okay,” I told her. I didn't give it much thought, since doing weird things isn't exactly unusual for her.

But other things started adding up — like the way she'd yell, “Oh, hi,
Porter
!” when I'd start to walk into a watcher room. It wouldn't have taken a towering genius to know something was up.

Still, I played ignorant and didn't even crack a smile when Dad asked me to drive out to a place in Caledon to pick up some garden plants for Amelia.

Of course, when I got back the house was very quiet — that is, until I walked into the living room. I did my best to look shocked when everyone yelled “Surprise!” and I think they bought it.

“We
surprised
you!” Nicole giggled, dancing around in circles beside me.

In spite of her numerous giveaways, it was true. I
was
surprised — not that there was a party, but at some of the people who were there.

Like Andrew Daniels, my old probation officer. Dad had been in touch with him, and we had all gone for lunch downtown at The Pickle Barrel not too long after I'd moved to my father's house. (Dad wanted — or maybe needed — to thank as many people as he could who had been there for me or helped me out during the years he'd been kept away.) Still, I hadn't expected Daniels to come to a graduation party for me.

He shook my hand and said he was proud of me.

“Yeah. Thanks, man.
Really
,” I said. I could tell, the way he nodded that he knew exactly what I meant.

Lester and Addie Phelps were there, both of them beaming from ear to ear. I'd never made it to another one of their “hot dog and Freshie” parties, but they'd been right at the top of the list of people Dad and I had taken out for dinner.

I talked to them for a while and was proud to introduce them to my grandparents. (It seemed strange that I'd known the Phelpses for so much longer than my dad's parents.) The four of them got talking about the way things were years ago, the way old people do, and I moved on to other guests. There were more relatives I'd met since moving there, and some neighbours, and a few people from church. We go every Sunday and it still seems a bit strange, but there's a nice feeling there, a kind of warm, family feeling, and I like that part.

When I was getting something to eat a bit later I saw that Addie had brought some of her famous oatmeal cookies. Amelia had made a lot of fancy things to eat (finger foods, I guess she calls them) but she'd cleared room on one of the platters for the cookies. I snagged a couple and saw Addie's eyes crinkle with a smile.

Lynn and her new boyfriend, Barry, were there, with Nicole pretty much tagging along behind them. (Nicole is like a one-person entourage to Lynn, who she thinks is glamorous and cool. She also says Barry is cute, but I can't quite get my brain to let that kind of talk in when it's coming from my eight-year-old sister.)

Amelia darted around everywhere, snapping pictures, telling us to never mind her, she wanted all natural shots and we should just act like she was invisible.

“That's a bit difficult when someone is half blinding you with a flash,” Dad pointed out.