Linda Hall - Shadows On The River

On the couch, Maddy was dressed and signing, “When are we going to get skates?”

“Soon,” I said. Fact was, I needed to get caught up with a few e-mails and do a bit of work first.

I went back to my computer and while I should’ve been working on the boat design, and particularly the rudder, which I was having trouble with, I was thinking about Larry Fremont and Paul Ashton. Money, of course. If Ashton was Fremont’s financial adviser, and a Christian at that, you can bet he found some discrepancies in the books. I knew I would be proved correct. It would just be a matter of time.

It occurred to me that I could ask Mark about this. He might know something. Truth was, after he told me he knew Ashton, I’d become wary. I don’t know why. Not many people knew about the Larry Fremont episode of my life. Even my parents don’t even know the entire thing. Jolene does. I’d told her the whole thing back when we were in high school.

It’d taken me a while to open up to her. I had arrived at the high school on Prince Edward Island, a sad, scared girl from a little town in Nova Scotia, hurt and grieving and afraid of getting close to anyone. Jolene introduced me to sailing. Her family had a couple of little sunfish sailboats that we used to take out onto the Northumberland Strait in the summer. It was on one of these trips that I had told her my story, swearing her to secrecy.

I grew to love sailing. Gliding fast through the fierce waves was the only time I felt alive. I was in my own world out there, and when I could control nothing else in my life, I could control my boat.

I opened a few online newspaper articles, but couldn’t find anything additional on Paul Ashton’s death. By all accounts, he looked to have tripped on the edge of the hotel carpet and hit his head on the coffee table. I needed to dig deeper.

Because I didn’t want to risk losing this information, I printed what I found. I ended up with quite a little stack beside my computer.

I got so engrossed in this work that for several seconds I didn’t notice Maddy standing there beside me. Finally she tugged on my sleeve. “Mom, when are we going to get skates?”

“Just a few more minutes,” I signed. “And then we’ll go. And we’ll even stop for ice cream on the way home. Would you like that?”

She signed “yummy” by rubbing her tummy and smacking her lips—a family sign.

“I like Mark,” Maddy signed to me suddenly.

I looked at her. What brought that on?

“Really?” I said.

“He’s nice,” she signed.

“I’m glad you think so,” I said.

“It was fun yesterday,” she added, and I agreed. What was happening to me? I couldn’t afford to fall for a guy like Mark.

We were getting ready to leave when the phone rang and the second life-changing event happened.

It was Rod. He sounded breathless. But more than that, he was angry. And the always even-tempered Rod I know doesn’t get angry.

“Ally. Ally. You sitting down?”

“Yes, Rod, Rod,” I said repeating his name the way he had repeated mine. “I am sitting here at my computer.”

A pause.

And then suddenly I was concerned. “Rod,” I said. “What’s wrong?” Was something wrong with Jolene? Had something gone wrong with the pregnancy? They had been trying for so long. “Is everything okay?”

“Ally, brace yourself. We lost the project.”

“What?” At first I thought he said baby, that they had lost the baby. It took me a moment to realize that the word he had said was project.

“The project. We lost it,” he said.

“What are you talking about?”

“With Maine Boatbuilding. They gave it to someone else, get this, a bigger firm in California. California! How convenient is that? They wanted a firm with more resources.” He sputtered out the last word.

I gripped the phone with both hands. Maddy was beside me on the floor, playing with two of her toy ponies.

“Rod?” I said. “How could this happen? We already gave them the general design. Didn’t they say it was ours?”

“Yes, they did. They gave me every indication.”

“I don’t understand.” I put my hand to my head, looked away from my blue-eyed daughter who was tugging at my sleeve.

“They found a firm with more people, their bid came in under ours. I’ve been on the phone for the past hour.”

“You found this out today? On a Sunday?”

“I called Lew. At home. I was sick and tired of them not answering our calls. We should have heard a week ago. Two weeks ago, even. I thought, he’s got to be home on Sunday morning. So I called him. I said, ‘You owe us, Lew, what’s going on? Why haven’t we heard?’ And that’s when he told me.”

“I absolutely can’t believe it, Rod. We’ve done work for them before. Plus, we even hired Mark.”

“I know. And they always liked our work. Lew did say they loved your design,” he added. His voice trailed off and I knew what he was thinking. The project was major. It would have put us into the big leagues. Not to mention it would have paid a few bills.

“The whole thing stinks,” he said.

“We have no recourse?”

“They were pretty firm on it.”

“We should protest. Maybe we have a case.” I put my hand to my head because suddenly all I could think about was the fact that I had not seen a cent of child support since early fall.

“There’s nothing we can do about it. We can’t sue. We have no legal grounds. The bids were fair and square and Maritime Nautical just lost out. That’s the way it would play out with a lawyer.”

I sighed. “Great.” The two of us didn’t say anything for a while.

“Ally, I know this affects you, but I’ve been thinking about you. I’d like you back on board. I’d like the three of us to be Maritime Nautical again.”

“But you don’t have enough work.”

“I’ve been checking on a lot of stuff. There are a bunch of contracts we can bid on.”

I asked, “What about Mark?”

“We’ll have to let him go. I’m sure he wouldn’t want to stay, not with his credentials and talent.”

Why did the thought of not seeing Mark on a regular basis fill me with such sadness? I still could not quite believe it.

“Maybe we should meet this afternoon. I’d like to talk to Mark face-to-face. Jolene and I could come there, or you could come here.”

I said, “Why don’t you come over here? With Maddy, it would be easier for me.”

Rod said, “That’s what I figured. I’ll call Mark. See if he’s available.”

I felt my chest collapse. Finally I said, “He was just here yesterday. We went over plans for the interior.”

“Swell,” he said drily.

“How’s Jolene taking it?”

“I haven’t told her yet.”

“What do you mean you haven’t told her?”

“She’s out looking at baby furniture with her mother.”

“This doubly stinks,” I said.

“Ally?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m really sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.”

And when we hung up, Maddy came to me and I told her that we couldn’t go shopping for a while. I signed, “I have a very important meeting this afternoon here at the house. Rod and Jolene are coming over. And Mark, too.” And because we didn’t have an agreed-upon family sign for his name, I finger spelled it for her.

Immediately she grinned and placed the thumb and forefinger of each hand together at eye level, indicating that he wore glasses. She screwed up her mouth in the way that he smiled. Forever on, this would be our sign for him.

And then she paused, seemed to think and signed quickly, “It’s okay, we can get skates tomorrow.”

“Come here, pumpkin pie.” She did. And as I held my daughter, smelled the little-girl smell of her hair, I wondered how I was going to tell her that there would probably not be any new skates for a while.

When I backed away from her, I signed. “Maybe tomorrow we can go and have a look at Value Village for some skates.”

She immediately dropped her hands to her sides and stared at me. Then, frowning, she signed rapidly, “But you said new skates. New skates. New skates. New skates.” She kept repeating this last part, her fingers becoming wilder, stiffer with each repetition.

“I know, pumpkin pie, but sometimes things happen. And Value Village has good stuff. We go there a lot.”

She regarded me for a while without saying anything.

“A bad thing happened with my work,” I tried to explain.

“I know,” she signed without looking at me. “I heard you on the phone.”

I stared at her. Sometimes I’m astounded at how astute she is. She’s learned a fair bit of lip reading, plus she’s always been able to pick up on my moods.

“It’s not fair,” she said.

“I know,” I said. But by now my little daughter had shut her eyes tightly, turned her head away fiercely. When I tapped her shoulder, she held this pose. When I reached for her and stroked her hair, she jerked away.

Several times before my guests arrived, I went up to Maddy’s room, but as soon as she saw me enter, she would shut her eyes and scrunch up her face.

Downstairs, I cleaned up our lunch dishes and loaded the dishwasher. I got out the coffeepot. Maybe people would like coffee. Why did it ever occur to me that things would work in my favor? Why did I even bother trying?

I thought about Maritime Nautical and wondered if it was time to quit trying to survive on this freelance stuff and get a real job, like with a corporation, or a big company. I’ve got both a BA and an MA in Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering and I could be making a lot more money somewhere else. People with my kind of degrees are pulling in six figures at huge boat-building companies.

I slumped into my couch and got out the Halifax Chronicle and scanned the want ads. Not finding anything of interest in the Chronicle, I got up. Tomorrow I’d try to find a Saturday Globe and Mail. There are always more job ads in that paper. But there was one good reason why I wasn’t farther in my career, and that was Maddy. And for one awful minute I resented her. She was upstairs not speaking to me because I couldn’t afford new skates for her, and she was the reason I couldn’t make more money.

But that awful moment passed in an instant.

Just before Rod and Jolene were due to arrive I went up to her room one last time. She looked up from her ponies this time and signed, “Can I go to Miranda’s today?” Her mood seemed somewhat improved.

“I can’t drive you,” I said. “I have a meeting. And I don’t know if it’s okay with Miranda’s mother.”

“Can you phone her?”

I got on the floor and sat beside her. “How about if I call her when I go downstairs and see if Miranda would like to come over tomorrow. I’ll pick you guys up after school,” I said.

“Okay.”

I ran my fingers through her strawberry curls, untangling them. I signed, “What would you and Miranda like to do tomorrow?”

“Get new skates.”

“I don’t know about that.” But maybe I would rethink it. What was forty more dollars on my credit card?

I hugged her tightly for a few minutes before I went downstairs to call Miranda’s mother, Katie.

“I’ll pick her up,” I offered, after making the girls’ playdate.

“Great. Miranda will love that. Hey, did you get the notice about the deaf luncheon next month? It’s a fund-raiser.”

“Maybe. I think it came across my e-mail.” I closed my eyes. I may have deleted it.

Katie said, “But you’ve got that new job, right? So, you probably won’t be able to be involved? We’d love to have you come. How’s the job going?”