Chapter 1
It wasn’t much of a letter, just four lines.
Dear Nick,
You have a son.
Sincerely, Evelyn Peat
Enough to thrust Nick Ackerman kicking and screaming into fatherhood.
When Nick first laid eyes on Billy, he felt a gurgle of relief in the back of his throat. It was all a whopping mistake. Anyone with half a brain could see the fourteen-year-old kid was not his. Where Nick was ruddy cheeked, stocky, weight planted low and built for defence, Billy was anemic pale, like he was allergic to the world, tall and weak and shaped like an out-of-control dandelion. Billy was the type of boy that Nick would have avoided at school. His voice too soft, eyes startling green, his face a kaleidoscope of expressions waiting to sync up.
Nick fought it far longer than was decent. After three months of waffling, DNA tests (two, to be sure), and heated conversations with the doctors and social workers, he still couldn’t build his case. Billy was his problem, and the woman came with him. Evelyn Peat, Billy’s grandma. She’d written that letter years ago, tucking it in a folder named About Billy. The social worker found it in a dusty filing cabinet during a house visit. In the folder was her letter. Her last will and testament. Her power of attorney documents. Nick named inexplicably on them all.
Billy wouldn’t leave without Evelyn, so Nick had the privilege of hauling them both out of there. A pig pile of a package deal.
They got off to a rocky start. By the time they had ransacked Billy’s house in Chetville, the truck was hillbilly stuffed. Nick had been expecting Billy’s things and a few dresses and toiletries for Evelyn.
“Billy, she’s only got a small room,” he kept repeating.
“It’s her life, not yours,” Billy grumbled, piling the last bag on the stack.
Nick put Evelyn in the back seat for the drive into Rigsbee, hoping to break ground with the kid, but Billy kept his head turned away and his mouth shut. It was a long and sullen three hundred kilometres.
He was exhausted by the time they pulled up to Prairie View Manor. At five stories, the building was the tallest in his mostly one-storey town; even the
hospital and the school spread out, not up). It stood like a sentry tower at the northern town limits, guarding against the gophers in the fields beyond.
Billy looked up at the balconies and their rows of hanging plants, coloured flags and pinwheels, butterflies on metal sticks.
“Your grandma’s room is on the main floor,” Nick said. If your brain and body still worked, you got sent to the top floor rooms with balconies. If you needed help with your socks or your bath, you were given floor number two. If you were inclined to yell for no reason or wander in your underwear, then it was the main floor for you, behind the heavy locked door. There was a depressing inevitability to the downward slide, a game of snakes and ladders played backwards.
Nick turned to Evelyn, who was rifling through her purse. “Ready to see your new place?” Billy didn’t move.
“I can’t find my key,” she said with panic. “The ice cream will melt, and I can’t find my key.”
Billy whipped around and said, “It’s okay, Grandma. I found it.” He produced an irrelevant key from his pants pocket and showed it to her.
“Should we check it out then?” Nick tried to sound hopeful as he got out of the truck. By the time he got to the sidewalk side, Billy was out too. Nick opened Evelyn’s door, and she smiled and dropped some change, a quarter and a dime, in his palm.
“God, Grandma.” Billy kicked his runner against the tire. “You don’t have to give him money.”
“Don’t be silly,” she said. “You must always tip.”
“Why don’t we show your grandma her room before we unload?” Nick said. Billy ignored him, pulling stuff out of the truck bed and piling it on the grass.
Nick helped Evelyn step from the truck and grabbed the old lamp from the back seat. When he turned, she was heading across the lawn.
Billy tossed a stack of blankets and pillows onto the sidewalk, which was starting to look like the dregs of a garage sale. Evelyn had wandered to the far side of the green space to examine something on the ground. Nick started to go after her, the lamp cord dragging like a leash missing its dog, when a man stepped out from behind the sliding door and yelled, “Excuse me. We have to keep this sidewalk clear.”
Nick backtracked. “Sorry. Moving day. Is there somewhere else I should park?”
“And who are you?”
“Nick. Nick Ackerman. And that is my . . . that is Billy, Billy Peat. Evelyn Peat’s grandson.” Billy disappeared behind the back of the truck.
The man studied his open binder, pulled a ballpoint from his pocket, and placed a check on the page. He looked at his watch. “We were expecting you this morning.”
And I was expecting not this, Nick thought irritably. “Who are you?” he asked the small man.
The man looked around, as if someone else could tell him who and where he was. “Lewis Clifton. Interim manager.”
Odd. Nick had met the interim manager less than two weeks earlier when he’d signed permission forms for Evelyn. A rattled woman who added a sorry to every sentence.
Lewis Clifton squinted as he pointed at Evelyn. “Is that the new resident?”
Nick squinted too. “Yes, it is,” he said, unable to move his feet.
“Well, perhaps someone should go get her.”
The two men stood stupid side by side and stared into the sun. There in the distance was Evelyn, plucking white clover from the grass beneath a resident’s window. Billy came around from the back of the truck, hissed between his teeth, and went to fetch her.
Clifton led them single file, swiping his fob to let them into the dementia unit, and stopped in front of Evelyn’s room. “I’ll let you get settled, Mrs. Peat,” he said too loud and slow. He disappeared, as if he couldn’t get out fast enough. Nick could relate.
“Come on then.” Nick herded Billy and Evelyn into her room and shut the door behind them. He’d bought her a bed and a couch, a shower curtain and wastebasket, toilet paper and toothpaste, sticking to the list the nurse had given except for a few framed prints he’d picked up in the city.
“Do you like it, Evelyn?” Nick asked.
“Oh yes, this is very nice.” She moved across the room to look out the window. The view included a skinny strip of mowed lawn, then patches of thistle and scrub brush, then the road out of Rigsbee.
He walked up beside her. “I hope the bed is comfortable.” Nick turned and said, “Got you the same one, Billy.”
“Great,” Billy muttered sarcastically. He was opening every cupboard, finding toilet paper rolls by the dozen.
A pulsing screech started up from outside the door.
Nick yelled above the racket, “It’s the door alarm.”
“Can’t we stop it?” Billy moved towards his grandma, who had covered her ears and squeezed her eyes shut.
“We’d have to know the code,” Nick said. “A nurse will shut it off.”
Billy squeezed his grandma’s arm. “It’s okay. It’s like the alarm in the kitchen when we
burn the toast.”
“Get the tea towel, Billy,” Evelyn said to the ceiling.
Billy yelled, “You expect her to live here?”
The noise was deafening. An ambulance, siren blazing, parked outside the door.
The racket stopped as suddenly as it started. There was a knock, and a woman poked her head in. Pretty, thirty-ish, with striking red curls. Nick hadn’t noticed her when he’d hauled in furniture a few days ago.
“Hello. You’re here,” she said cheerily. “We’ve been expecting you. My name is Sarah.” She walked up to Evelyn and rested her fingers on her arm. “And you’re Evelyn. Is that what you like to be called, Evelyn?”
Evelyn smiled. “My mother calls me Evie. I suppose everyone calls me Evie. Evie, now don’t you go near that thing. It was a wild cat you know, under the porch boards.”
“Well, it’s lovely to meet you, Evie.” Sarah turned to Nick. “And you’re the son-in-law?”
Nick leaned in and shook Sarah’s hand. “It’s complicated,” he said. “Nick Ackerman.”
Sarah turned to Billy and smiled. “Well, I know I’ve got this right. You’re Evie’s grandson, Billy. I hear you’re moving to Rigsbee too?”
He shrugged.
“It’s not as dead as it looks. Rigsbee has a new skate park.” She looked around the small room. “I just got back from a few days off. Evie’s room looks nice.”
“None of this is Grandma’s.” Billy slumped rudely against the wall. “Her stuff is outside.”
“He’s right,” Nick said. “It’s strewn all over the sidewalk. Lewis Clifton is not impressed.”
Sarah laughed. “Well, why don’t you two bring it in? I’ll stay with Evie, and we’ll boss you around. You’ve got a fob?”
Nick nodded, patting his pocket.
“Good. You can’t get in or out without it. And you have to watch before you open the door. If residents are too close, just give them a minute to move away. And don’t let anyone out when you leave, even if they have sunhats and purses and tell you a perfectly rational story about forgetting their key or needing a bag from their car.”
He and Billy made three trips to the truck and back, hauling in the ratty old armchair and Evie’s clothes and bags filled with knick-knacks and old copies of art magazines and God knows what else. Her room looked like a
junk closet.
Evie sat in her armchair as soon as they had it wedged between the couch and the window wall. A woman marched in while he and Sarah were hanging Evie’s clothes.
“Dorothy Daine, head nurse,” she said, eyes sweeping the room critically. She had her grey hair pulled back in a tight bun and remarkably big feet.
“Sarah, you’re needed down the hall. Clement has had another accident.”
After Sarah left, Dorothy Daine recited a litany of rules and observations without making eye contact. No glass containers. No scissors. Nothing loose on the floor. (That braided rug would have to go.) Showers twice a week. A locked bathroom cupboard for toiletries. Breakfast at eight. Supper at five. Residents were to keep their doors open and their windows closed.
Evie seemed like she was half-listening to a weather report for a place she would never go. “Thank you for the tea,” she said, which Dorothy Daine ignored.
Billy crossed his arms and stared at the floor, brows furrowed, his expression getting sourer by the minute. “It’s horrible,” he said when she finally left. “That nurse is horrible.”
Nick agreed but knew enough to not say it.
“You’ll drive us home?” Evie asked politely. “My purse is here somewhere.”
“I’m not going to leave her here,” Billy said.
Evie’s arms flew up, eyes wide. “My purse. I’ve lost my purse.” She jerked her head from side to side, scanning the room in panic. Nick was shocked how quickly she could fall apart.
“Your purse is right here, Grandma.” Billy grabbed it off the floor and handed it to her. He turned to Nick, eyes narrowed. “I’m not leaving her.”
To keep the peace, Nick agreed to let Billy stay with Evelyn while he drove home to wait an appropriate length of time before he could turn his truck around, retrace his route, and drag the kid out. This was his new life.
He owned the last lot on the south side of town. If Rigsbee were a boxing ring, Nick’s dilapidated bungalow and Prairie View’s five stories stood in opposite corners. The house stuck out on a point at the back of the
lot like it was trying to start a fight with the overgrown thicket. He had a half-acre in total, no neighbours to contend with.
Nick stepped through his door and surveyed his work. He’d reluctantly booked off two weeks—middle of their busy season and he got paid by inspection—and already he’d gobbled up two days trying to make the place less awful.
He’d emptied ashtrays and picked up Candace’s stray butts between the driveway and the front door. Washed dishes, boxed up the empties for recycling. Gutted the second bedroom, ridding it of boxes and the old mattress leaning against the wall. The small room now had a new bed, a dresser, a smoke detector, and a window that opened in case Billy chose to leave, which Nick could only hope for.
He’d bought the house four years ago, sight unseen. The original owner had expired in the backyard while holding an axe. By the time he was noticed missing, his body had started to decay, and his right hand had disappeared. “A handyman’s fixer-upper,” the ad had said. If a home inspection had been done, the house would have flunked spectacularly. It was an 800-square-foot safety violation, a dystopia of bad wiring, leaking shingles, failing beams, creaky flooring, makeshift plumbing. He’d found a certain satisfaction in squalor. It comforted him to come home to tangible proof that he could live with things broken.
He wasn’t much into decorating. Nothing on the walls but a torn horse calendar and the town’s wrinkled garbage schedule. The opposite of Billy and Evelyn’s place. When Nick first walked through their door, he felt like he’d stepped into a Grimms’ fairy tale. She’d been an artist who had given up on canvases and turned to the walls instead. Her hallway had become a vegetable garden, the living room a lakeshore. A vine had climbed up the fridge, along the cupboard and across the ceiling. Painted postcard-sized pieces were tacked everywhere—above the toilet paper roll, along the window frames.
He imagined his crumbling house with Billy in it. What would the kid do all day while Nick was at work? What would they do with each other at night?
Nick opened the freezer and peered in. He’d bought enough frozen meals to get them through a week. He took out the weighty lasagne package, peeled off the plastic wrap, and threw it in the cantankerous oven, waiting to see if there’d be heat.
The screen door slammed.
“Niiick.”
Candace Philips waltzed in, a new layer of pink in her thick blonde hair. He’d met her when she’d started at the Ploughman Tavern over a year ago. She was singularly focused on owning the dive (changing the name, the menu, the bar stools), a dream he admired in large part because it didn’t involve him. For now, she was his bar buddy, good ’til last call, and convincingly undemanding. She was the only person he’d ever let in his house, and even that was not on purpose. That first time, she’d grabbed his keys at closing time—you’re totally merked—and drove him home, then half pushed, half dragged him to the front door, where they both fell through the screen. She didn’t leave for two days.
Candace sidled up to him now and ran her finger down his cheek. She had new leaves and vines on the inside of her tattooed arm.
“That’s gotta hurt.”
She held her arm in front of his lips and waited until he kissed the fresh ink.
“I thought you might call.”
He didn’t know why she always said this. He made a point of not calling.
Candace pushed him against the fridge and kissed him hard on the mouth. She was remarkably fit considering she never worked out.
It often started this way. She would show up unannounced, waltz through his door, rip apart snaps and yank down zippers. They’d wound up in closets, the rusted shower, and behind the couch, seldom bothering to get all the way undressed.
Today it was the table, which until now had been too cluttered to consider. The wood squealed like a boiling lobster. When they were done, Nick slumped on top of her, her face smushed into the sticky grain of the beat-up pine. Candace squirmed underneath him, so he pushed away. They yanked up the tangle of underwear and jeans pooling at their knees and smoothed down T-shirts. She wrenched a Players package from her back pocket, but his hand stopped hers from bringing a cigarette to her lips.
“Sorry. No smoking.”
She tossed her head back, about to laugh, but he wouldn’t let go of her wrist.
“You kidding?” She threw the Players package onto the table. “Since when?”
“Since today.” He
shrugged. “Haven’t even got the sign yet.”
“Oh gawd. Of course. Because of the boy.”
He wished he hadn’t mentioned Billy to her. “Figured I should go that far.”
He could hear fizzing noises behind him, cheese breaking away from the lasagne and splatting to the oven floor.
“You must be nervous. A daddy now. Your place is looking great, by the way.”
He shrugged. They never could hold much of a conversation.
“So when do you pick him up?” she asked irritably. She needed a cigarette after sex.
“He’s already here.”
“Here?” Her eyebrows shot up like they’d just done the dirty with Billy pressed against his bedroom door.
Nick couldn’t blame her for thinking so little of him. “No, he’s not here. He’s with his grandma. At Prairie View Manor. I have to pick him up now.”
“Why don’t I go with you. I’d love to meet your boy. I’ll help ease you into daddyhood. My shift doesn’t start until seven.”
“Nah,” he said casually. He’d never intended an invitation. “Let’s go slow. Give Billy a few weeks.” Or never.
Chapter 2
Billy hated this place. The fake plants and fake smiling woman at the front desk. He hated Nick most of all.
Her room felt like a prison cell. A stupid blue couch, too small to lie out on. The paint a pukey green, same as her hospital room. There were a few ugly prints on the walls, pictures of puppies wearing hats and kittens in a basket, nothing his grandma or anyone with taste could stand to look at. The bathroom had no bathtub, just a showerhead and a drain like you’d find at a dog wash.
He wished they were still in Chetville, except there’d be no house to go back to. The Got Junk truck pulled up as they pulled away, swooping in to empty out the last traces of them. Their pail of striped rocks they had collected for no reason. His grandma’s ceramic mixing bowl. The broken cuckoo clock that never cuckooed. All of it to be thrown out like trash.
They’d have done okay in that house if people had left them alone. His grandma still had good days where she joked and laughed. Every morning he’d divvied out her pills and made her tea, hiding the old kettle under his bed so she wouldn’t let it run dry and start the house on fire. He reminded her to brush her hair and teeth and helped set up her paints, then hurried to and from school, which wasn’t a problem since he had nowhere else to go. He shovelled sidewalks and mowed grass and planted potatoes and dug up potatoes and did grocery runs and stood in pharmacy lines. Their system worked. She could still make great pies if he measured the ingredients, still make him laugh so hard he nearly peed himself. But when she wound up in the hospital everyone poked their nose in their business. Early onset Alzheimer’s, they called it. Captain Bananas taking charge. The social worker said they both suffered from neglect. This will be a fresh start. Right. It felt like the end.
It’s not like Nick wanted him, or his grandma, who he was only too happy to lock up and forget. Billy couldn’t remember his mother, but his feelings about her went down a notch when Nick showed up at the hospital. She chose this guy? Nick was accompanied by the social worker, who propped him up and pushed him through the door. He scowled and pumped his hand, mumbling incoherently about how great it was to meet. He looked scared of Evie, who was half his weight and wouldn’t hurt a bug.
Billy yanked the ugly purple blanket off her bed and stuffed it in the closet, replacing it with her comforter from the box.
“Billy, it’s time to go home now,” his grandma said.
He had no way to fix it. All he could do was tell her what she wanted. Yes, they’d go in a minute. Sure, he would water the garden. The beans would be up soon. They’d put the chicken in the oven. He’d learned to lie when she got scared. The first time was in the middle of the night when she woke crying for her mamma. He was so rattled he almost cried too. She died, like a long time ago, he told her, which made her sob louder. He finally figured out that she needed to believe her mamma was coming back. So that’s what he told her. She’ll be here for breakfast, and we’ll have pancakes. She says you’re supposed to sleep now. Which she did. He’d gotten better at telling stories since then.
He tore down Nick’s lame prints and stacked them by the door to dump in the garbage. Then he ripped open the artwork he’d brought from home.
“Check this out, Grandma.” He held up a still life of red poppies in a field of green and
hung it on a leftover nail over her bed.
“How about these?” He spread out the set of four miniature garden scenes, which she wanted next to her armchair.
Most were summer paintings, brilliant purple and yellow flowers tucked against wood fences or along curved pathways. She’d used oil on canvas back then, teaching him to sketch first with charcoal, then paint in layers, fat over lean. By the time Billy was in school, she’d switched to watercolours, so their mistakes could not be easily brushed over.
There wasn’t enough wall space.
“Grandma, I’m gonna look for a hammer and nails.”
He headed down the corridor with its horrible walls, peering through open doors. Old men shrivelled in wheelchairs, on beds. Old women slumped sideways in chairs. Some milled about in the hallway. One carried a baby doll by its feet, its plastic pink toes thumping against her chest. No one acknowledged him, or each other, as they moved past him like zombies.
Sarah came out of a bad-smelling room with a mop and a bucket, her face shiny with sweat.
“Billy, how are you making out with Evie?”
“I need something to hang her paintings. They’re not framed, so they don’t weigh much.”
“Then goop should do. Come on. I’ll find you some.”
She took his arm and guided him into a cramped room with washers and dryers and a row of baskets with names taped to each.
“I know it’s here somewhere.” She stood on her toes and peered into the highest cupboard. “There. Can you reach to the back?”
Billy stretched and brought down a package of mounting poster putty.
“Pull off a piece for each corner. Mush it in your fingers, then use your fist like a hammer and give it a good whack.” She demonstrated by banging her fist hard against the cupboard door.
Billy could hear a sharp scream down the hallway. ...
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