Indefensible (2 page)

Friday, 5:38 p.m.

E
lise Vanderzell stuffed a potato chip into her mouth. Damn, it tasted good. That's what she loved about road trips: the junk food. She knew she shouldn't indulge, shouldn't let her kids indulge, but this was their summer vacation.

And after the hellishness of the months leading up to it, they deserved to enjoy every salt-slicked, grease-laden bite.

She eased the car into the long line of rush hour traffic on Robie Street, glancing in her rearview mirror. Her son, Nick, lounged against the backseat. It was funny how you can see someone all the time and never notice anything different, but then throw a casual look at them one day and realize that the world had shifted.

It took Elise a moment to register what was different. Then it hit her: Nick seemed comfortable in his own skin. His body was filling out, no longer a tangle of gangly limbs connected to gargantuan feet. But it was more than that.

Relaxed
. Nick looked relaxed. Sated by his meatball sub, relieved by his mother's acquiescence to his plans for summer camp next week, Nick watched Halifax unfold past them with a look of near contentment.

Hope stuck a cautious toe into her heart.

Ahead, the traffic halted at the Willow Tree intersection. Elise stepped on the brake. It had been years since she'd been here, but she still remembered the Commons, stretching out in verdant green to their left. People played with dogs on the broad stretch of grass, runners doing laps around its perimeter.

Summer, Nova Scotia style.

She rolled down her window and breathed in. She'd forgotten how clean the air was here. No smog. Just fog. The silly rhyme made her smile.

Something loosened in her chest, the tightness that had been holding her together the past few months finally letting go.

She breathed in again deeply, feeling her lungs expand, anticipation giving her blood a little zing. The month spread out before her: no schedules, no routines, no demands. Just her, her cottage, her books for the first two weeks while the kids visited their father, and then hanging out with her kids for the last two. By the time they arrived at the cottage, she would be fully recovered and recharged, ready to enjoy them. She was looking forward to it. Even though the three of them lived together 24/7 in Toronto, the actual time she spent with her kids felt more like twenty-four seconds.

She reached over the gear shift and patted Lucy's knee. “This is going to be fun, Luce.”

Her daughter grinned. At twelve, Lucy was a looker.
Thick, wavy blond hair. Eyes that changed like the sea. A wide, smiling mouth. Her face was still childishly round, but Elise knew her daughter would eventually sport the same broad cheekbones as she. “I can't wait for riding camp.”

“You think that cute instructor will be back?” Elise teased.

“Mu-um.” Lucy rolled her eyes. “I don't care.” But there was a faint tinge to her cheeks. Her daughter was growing up. Nicely, Elise was proud to realize. She was mature, caring—despite what she claimed. Elise couldn't wait to see the woman Lucy would become.

“So when do we go to your cottage, Mum?” Lucy asked.

“In a few weeks. After you visit your dad.” Elise tried to keep her voice casual, but Nick shifted behind her. The conversation was nearing territory that neither she nor Nick had any desire to visit.

“Is it right on the beach?” Lucy asked.

Elise's shoulders relaxed at the reprieve her daughter gave her. “Yup. And I just read that the beach is renowned for its sand dollars.”

“Cool.” Lucy smiled. “I can add some to my shell collection.”

Elise squeezed her knee. “There's body surfing, too. And I thought we could plan a whale-watching excursion.”

“Did you know we saw a whale go by Grandma Penny's house once?” Elise's ex-mother-in-law lived in Prospect, a seaside community forty minutes outside of Halifax. “It was a finback whale.”

“No, it wasn't,” Nick said from behind her. “It was a right whale.”

“Oh, yeah, you're
right.”
Lucy smirked. “Get it?”

Nick reached forward and ruffled Lucy's hair. “No one could miss it.” Nick's tone was dripping with older-brother condescension, but it was also warm with affection. Elise's breath released. Nick wasn't completely cutting himself off from his family—or at least, not from Lucy.

“Are we almost there?” Lucy asked, making a show of smoothing her mussed-up hair but unable to hide her pleasure from Nick's unexpected gesture.

Elise couldn't remember the last time Nick had initiated contact with either of them. She hoped being away from Toronto would give her a chance with him. A chance to understand why Nick had done the things he did this year. A chance to change things for the better. Her heart lifted and she realized she was experiencing something she'd believed was out of her reach: happiness. “We're about ten minutes from Cathy's house,” she said to Lucy.

Cathy Feldman, Elise's old law school roommate, was now a professor at the law school. Cathy had not hesitated to offer her house when she heard Elise was coming to Halifax for the month. Elise's only regret was that her friend wouldn't be there—Cathy was on sabbatical in New Zealand.

“So when do we see Dad?” Lucy asked.

Elise kept her eyes fixed on the line of traffic queued ahead of her. “I'm not sure. I'm going to call your father tonight to let him know Nick won't be going sailing with him.” She threw Lucy a warning look:
don't say
anything
. “I'll ask your father to take you to riding camp so I can get Nick to his camp.” She glanced in the rearview mirror. Nick stared out the window, a mutinous look in his eyes, his jaw tense. He knew that phone call would not be pleasant, no matter Elise's attempts to sound unconcerned, and he was already girding himself for battle.

“Let's go out for supper tonight,” Elise said. “We could go down to the waterfront. Get ourselves some real Nova Scotian lobster.”

“Cool!” Lucy grinned.

No answer from the back.

“What do you think, Nicky? Up for a crustacean feast?”

“Whatever.” A chip bag rustled in the backseat.

Don't get angry, Elise. He's probably just as nervous as you about breaking the news to his father.

“Do you think Dad will get mad, Mum? About Nick's camp?” Lucy asked, her voice low. The silence in the backseat seemed to breathe with her.

“Don't worry. I can handle it.” That was a blatant lie—she'd never been able to manage her emotions around her children's father, but she didn't want to derail her kids' excitement about their vacation before it had even begun.

“It's just that the last time we saw him…” Lucy blinked at Elise. Unshed tears glimmered behind the worry in her eyes. “I don't want you guys to fight again.”

Guilt grabbed at Elise's heart, twisting it into an even tighter knot. As usual, her daughter seemed to read her better than Elise read herself. Her child was her mirror
image, except with one vital difference: Lucy was sunny where Elise was not. Funny how Lucy's infancy threw Elise into a depression so deep she barely clawed her way out of it and now her presence was the only thing that kept Elise from falling into it again.

And what had she done for this daughter who loved her with all her heart?

Not enough.

She was going to put the past few months behind her. Behind all of them. This was a chance to start over. She had made sure there would be no lasting reminders of what had transpired between her and her ex-husband in June. There was only one step left—

A car laid on the horn. She jumped.

Geez, Halifax drivers have gotten mean.

“Mum, it's a green light.” Lucy glanced at her with a familiar look of concern.

Elise hit the gas so hard that the SUV lurched forward. “Luce, read me the directions again,” she said, her tone reverting into we-are-starting-a-fun-vacation mode. She wished she didn't have to force it. A few minutes before, she'd been excited.
Just get the damn phone call over with and then celebrate by going out to supper tonight.

She could do this. She knew she could. Her therapist had coached her over the phone this morning on how to handle this. But anxiety nibbled at her. She reached for another potato chip. The bag was empty.

Lucy read the scrap of paper. “It says to go down Robie until you reach the lights at Inglis Street, then turn left. Go straight on Inglis until you reach Young Avenue, then turn left onto Point Pleasant Drive.”

Ten minutes later they reached University Avenue. On impulse, Elise turned right.

“Mum, that's the wrong way,” Lucy cried. From the back, Elise could sense Nick's sudden alertness, but he said nothing.

“I know,” she said. “It's just a slight detour. I want to see my alma mater.” She drove down University Avenue, the long boulevard framed with trees, hospitals on either side and a fire station on the corner. Elise slowed when they neared the law school. It had been years since she'd been a student there, almost twenty, but they had been the most formative of her life.

She'd come to Hollis University Law School at the tender age of twenty-two, untested and unsure of her own strengths. It was hard to remember herself back then. So keen, her mind stretching and expanding to meet the challenge of abstruse legal arguments. She had found her confidence here in Halifax, found some of her closest friends and found a profession.

Surely she could find herself here again.

She wondered if all her classmates had screwed up their lives as much as she had. No. Not all of them. Not Cathy. She was just as solid as ever. Just like the building she drove by. Why had Elise wanted to see her law school? Was she hoping that it would remind her of what she had accomplished?

She was a successful tax lawyer at a prestigious Bay Street firm in Toronto. Acquaintances often asked her—with a note of incredulity in their voice—how she liked being a tax lawyer. Elise knew it sounded dull and arcane, but she loved her work. She loved the elaborate structures, the legal fictions, the satisfaction of rendering
concrete an entity that was abstract. Of giving form to something intangible.

On paper, she looked pretty good. But paper was two-dimensional. Easily crumpled. Easily discarded.

Not like her mistakes.

She hooked the next left so abruptly that Lucy shot her a startled look. Within minutes, they were driving down Young Avenue. Elise took her time driving down the pretty street. It allowed her to admire the stately architecture—and to postpone the phone call she knew she'd have to make once they turned the corner and pulled into Cathy's driveway.

“This is nice,” Lucy breathed, staring out the window. “Is this where we're staying?”

“We're around the corner. Right opposite Point Pleasant Park.” The park was situated on the tip of the Halifax Peninsula. On the east side, to their left, lay the Halifax Harbour. Halifax's vibrant waterfront skirted the harbor, anchored with office towers and hotels on the far end and container piers at the other. On the park's west side, the long finger of saltwater known as the Northwest Arm edged some of the most sought-after real estate in the city. Her ex-husband lived in one of those neighborhoods, about a ten-minute walk to the west of Cathy's house.

Elise drove toward a large stone archway with a wrought-iron gate that declared the end of Young Avenue and its intersection with Point Pleasant Drive. Beyond the stone archway, Elise could see the park. One hundred and eighty-five acres of pine trees, old forts and walking trails. Tomorrow morning Elise would get up early and walk the trails. Long dormant anticipation
uncurled. She could just imagine the cool mystery of the early morning, the long expanse of quiet ocean disappearing into the horizon, the soft crush of pine-needle-strewn paths underfoot.

“It's not far from Dad's house, is it?” Lucy asked.

Elise searched for Nick's face in the rearview mirror. All she got was his profile. The closer they were to their destination, the more remote he became.

Hang on, Nicky. Just one phone call and you're home free.

“No, it's not.”

Elise slowed at the stop sign by the intersection. Lucy shrieked with delight. “Nick, look at the fountain!”

Elise laughed. A large fountain marked a footpath into Point Pleasant Park. It frothed in the sunshine, a two-foot-high mound of bubbles. Someone had put shampoo in the water.

“Mum, can we jump in?” Lucy asked. She reached for her seat belt.

“In a minute.” Elise turned left. “Cathy's house is just down the hill. After we dump our bags, you guys can check out the fountain.”
While I call your father
. It would give her some privacy. She didn't want the kids to hear this conversation.

Cathy's house was located in a recessed lot on Point Pleasant Drive, facing the park. It had been built on an incline that dropped off steeply in the back. Hedges outlined the side and rear boundaries of the property, much taller than when Elise had last seen them.

Cathy probably let them grow to block the sight of the container pier.

Elise pulled into the driveway. Dark green exterior.
Check
. White shutters.
Check
. Large wraparound porch.
Check
. All with the slightly shabby look of an academic who was too preoccupied with cerebral matters to pay attention to peeling paint. Probably hadn't made her too popular in this neighborhood.

Late afternoon sun beat down on the car. Elise turned off the engine, suddenly desperate to get some fresh air.

She flung open the door and stood. Too quickly. Black spots swarmed in front of her eyes. She leaned against the door and breathed in deeply. The air carried a tangy breeze. The spots slowly dissipated.

“Mum, are you okay?” Lucy asked.