The First Stone (27 page)

“Please—” Reef began.

“And if I
ever
see you near my daughter again, or if you ever try to
contact
her, I'll make sure you end up where you should have gone in the first place.
Do you hear me?”

“I just want to—”

“No one
wants
you here!” she screamed. “Is that clear?” She picked up the phone on Leeza's bedside table and began pressing numbers. “You've done all the damage to this family you're
ever
going to do.” She spoke into the phone. “I'd like the police. I want to report—”

“Fine!” he shouted. “I'm outta here!” He was at the doorway when he turned again. “Leeza—”

“GET OUT!”

And he was gone.

There was a terrible silence in the room, a silence so palpable that the air seemed thick with it. Brett was the first to puncture it. “He just wanted to say he was sorry.”

Diane tore her eyes from the empty doorway and stared at Brett. “How could he think saying he was sorry would make up for what he did?”

“I don't believe,” Brett said softly, “that he thought that.”

“I don't care what he thought or didn't think. I'll see him in jail before I see him anywhere near Leeza again.”

And that's how it ended. Leeza later learned from her mother that a judge had issued a court order preventing Reef from contacting her again. And she learned from Carly that Reef was reassigned to the Victoria General Hospital to complete his volunteer service.

And she learned from Brett, who had called North Hills and spoken to someone named Alex, that the Reef they knew really wasn't the person Leeza had seen standing on the overpass that afternoon a lifetime ago. That person had never known his father, a boy not much older than himself who had gotten adeaf girl pregnant and then run off. Nor had that person known his mother, whose world of silence had kept her prisoner within herself until the boy's attentions had drawn her out and then betrayed her. She'd wasted away, barely pushing the scrawny baby out of her body before leaving it herself. That baby became the focus of his grandfather's anger: the reason for their poverty, the justification for every drink, the root of every rage. That baby became the frightened, angry boy who lost his grandmother to a disease he couldn't see, the boy who was then shunted from one foster home to another, one school to another. That was the person on the overpass. Not the person who had sat with her, taken her for walks, taught her how to play poker, reminded her it shouldn't hurt to laugh again.

There had been times during the rest of her rehab when she'd considered calling him herself. There'd even been times after she'd returned home that she'd picked up the telephone book and turned to the Ns to find the North Hills number.

But something had stopped her, some part of her that couldn't forget the rock and the windshield and the cars that slammed into her, the sounds that she still heard sometimes at night, still made when the nightmares came too close, got too real.

She could not forget that. Would not excuse what had happened to her. What was still happening to her.

And then last Sunday her mother had convinced her to go to church with her and Jack, the first timeshe'd attended since Ellen's funeral. She'd sat there, bored as usual, seeking a distraction to get her mind off the hard pew that cut off the circulation in her legs and made the left one throb. Her eyes were drawn to the stained-glass windows, drawn to the thousands of fragments, the shards of color that combined to form scenes and symbols and words. And it was at that moment that she heard the words of the minister as he preached about forgiveness from the Book of John: “And when the scribes and the Pharisees dragged the adulterer to the temple to be punished, Jesus said, ‘Let the person who is without sin cast the first stone.'“

Leeza picked up the clipping again, looked at the black-and-white photo and those four pencilled words one more time.

“Sorry, Frank,” Reef said as he climbed into the pickup. He was almost thirty minutes late coming out of the school, and the April air had turned cool.

“You got the question again, right?” Colville asked.

Reef nodded.

Colville pulled the truck out into traffic, then glanced at Reef. “Doesn't get any easier, does it?”

Reef shook his head. “Some parts do,” he said. “But not that one.”

They rode in silence for a few blocks. A light up ahead turned red and Colville geared down, eased the truck to a stop beside a Mustang convertible. Despite the cool air, the top was down and two girls sat in the front bucket seats, laughing and talking above the tortured wall of the stereo. The driver looked over at Reef, said something to her passenger, and they both waved at him and smiled. Then the light turned green and they were gone.

Reef stared ahead as Colville eased into the left lane, waited for oncoming traffic to pass so he could turn. “Frank …” Reef began.

Colville didn't need to look at Reef to know the question on his mind. “You know you can't.”

“Why not?”

“Because of the injunction.” Colville sighed. “We've been through all this before, Reef. If you try to contact her, a judge could rule that you broke the terms of your probation. You know what happened before. Next time you won't be so lucky. And you've come too far to throw it all away now.”

The traffic passed and Colville swung left, then straightened out the wheel. It took a moment before Reef realized where they were. Birmingham Avenue, heading west toward the Park Street overpass. He looked up, saw the overpass approaching, saw the chain-link fencing that now made it impossible for anyone to throw objects into the traffic below.
Because of me
, he thought.
That's because of me
.

There were times when it seemed like the events of that day on the overpass had happened to someone else, some other Reef Kennedy, a Reef Kennedy who thought that life could be summed up in stupid lessons like
Shit happens
. Shit didn't just happen. He knew that now. Shit got made. And the worst shit is the shit we make for ourselves.

He looked up, watched the Park Street overpass slide over them, then grow smaller in the truck's side mirror as they left it behind. He had, he realized, left so many things behind during the past year. Some of them he'd worked hard at leaving. Like the anger andfear he'd spoken about to those students today. Some things, though, had just happened. Like friends. One of them was Alex, who had moved back in with his parents. The last time they'd spoken, Alex had cranked up his Hollywood diva act five notches and drawn numerous stares as they'd sat talking in the food court at the Halifax Shopping Center. He'd told Reef that things at home were “absolutely
fabulous
, honey,” but Reef had sensed the opposite was true. He'd thought of the Robert Frost poem they'd read in English class that week, thought of the part about home:

Home is the place where, when you have to go there,

They have to take you in.

Reef wondered if that was what home was for Alex. Hoped it wasn't true. But he couldn't get those words out of his head when he and Alex said goodbye for the last time.

Others had drifted out of his life too. Like Scar, who had always been smarter than any of them and had proven it in January when she'd completed her grade twelve at the end of the first semester. On the recommendation of her principal, a guidance counselor and Glen Whidden, she'd been accepted into Business at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, and was admitted to courses that were already in session. Although her outstanding performance in her advanced high school courses didn't guarantee her success, everyone was confident she could make the transition. The principal had even managed to get her some scholarship and bursary money, and he'd put her in touch with a friend in Kingston, who'd offered her a part-time job to help with living expenses.

Scar had been embarrassed when she'd told them the news. “It's not like I
have
to go. guys,” she'd said. “I don't even know if I
want
to—”

But Bigger hadn't let her finish. “You'd
better
want to!” he'd bellowed, grabbing her and tossing her into the air like a three year old. “You turn down a chance like this and I'll kick your ass!”

Jink had been less enthusiastic. “You probably won't even wanna
talk
to goons like us any more,” he'd sulked, but he'd agreed with Bigger that she'd be crazy not to go. And so had Reef. Anything that got her away from her old man was a good thing, and education was the only thing that could deliver any of them from the hardscrabble existence their families had known.

So she had gone. They'd seen her off at the train station, her two bags like orphans on the crowded platform. Her father, of course, hadn't come, and her mother left the station long before the train did. But Jink and Bigger made so much commotion that bystanders thought there were twenty people seeing her off. She hugged them all goodbye, including Reef. She didn't kiss him, and he was grateful for that. He was even happier to get her second letter, the onetelling about the guy she'd met in her Financial Accounting class. If anyone deserved a new life, a decent life, it was Scar. He'd traced his fingers slowly over her signature, lingering over the second syllable she'd finally chosen to use.

It was weird to think of her in Ontario, but he'd already gotten used to not seeing her much after starting at his new school in September. The same was true of Jink and Bigger. They'd called a few times, and he got together with them once in a while, but he was busy trying to keep his marks up and fulfilling the other conditions of his probation. Like extracurriculars. Judge Thomas was wrong about one thing—he was lousy at track and field. But he surprised himself by turning out to be a better-than-average soccer player and, more recently, an excellent volleyball player. He'd led the volleyball team in points all season, and he'd even scored the tie-breaking and match points that had earned the Bonavista Bravehearts the provincial title the previous weekend. The team's picture appeared in the newspaper, and the guys at North Hills made a big deal about it, buying a dozen copies of the paper and putting the picture up everywhere. Reef was pleased, but for another reason, too. He hoped that Leeza would see the photo and maybe call to congratulate him. But, of course, he was just kidding himself.

His ability to kick and volley a ball with almost unerring accuracy confounded both his coaches, who found it difficult to believe he hadn't played either oftheir sports before. Although he didn't share it with them, Reef attributed his success to the considerable target practise he'd got throwing rocks over the years. Yes. the mechanics of kicking and volleying were different than those involved in throwing, but an instinct for distance and direction was crucial in both sports. In rock-throwing, too.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out the object he'd carried with him to each of his presentations. He'd found it the day before school started, when Bigger had borrowed his brother's car and driven all four of them out to Crystal Crescent Beach to celebrate the last day of summer vacation. It hadn't turned out to be much of a celebration, though. Jink's injuries were still healing, and all that walking over rocks and sand had turned out to be an ordeal for him. To make matters worse, Bigger had decided it would be fun to harass nude sunbathers, and before Reef and Scar could stop him, he'd grabbed some clothes and strewn them all along the beach—only to discover that the clothing belonged to a young swimsuit-wearing family who were playing in the surf. It was a windy day, and it had taken the four friends nearly an hour to recover everything.

While retrieving a lost sandal, Reef had spied something near the water's edge and thought for a moment that he was seeing a single black eye. The stone was almost perfectly round, its edges polished smooth by waves and wind, and it fit perfectly in the palm of hishand. He hefted it, saw in his mind's eye the smooth arc it would make when he launched it out over the waves, and then slipped it into his pocket.

The Park Street overpass was still visible in the mirror as he curled his fingers around the stone. That afternoon at Crystal Crescent Beach on the last day of summer, he hadn't known why he'd chosen to keep it. He
still
didn't know. All that mattered now was that he had. It was the first stone he'd found since his grandmother had died that he hadn't flung as far as he could. Hadn't wanted to. Hadn't needed to. He held it tight in his hand as he watched the road unfurl toward home.

I wish to thank my agent and good friend, Leona Trainer, for her integrity and unfailing encouragement. Thanks as well to my very talented editor, Lynne Missen, whose expertise and humour always make the process of finding my way through a story enlightening and enjoyable. Finally, I want to thank Kelly Barro and the health care workers like her who helped me explore the physical and emotional journey of rehabilitation. They are the true heroes of this book.