“Unbelievable.”
“That’s about half of it,” Angie said. She pushed another armful of money through the hatchway.
They carried it inside the house and stacked it on the dining room table. They stared at the pile. None of them wanted to touch it. “It doesn’t even seem like money anymore,” Richard said. “Like when you say the same word so many times it loses its meaning.”
“Where do you think it came from?” Abba asked.
“He never seemed like a planner to me,” Lucy said.
“Maybe it came from those hoods?” Kent asked.
“Hoods?”
“You know, those shady-looking guys he only talked to in the coach house.”
“Shady?”
“It does seem like an awfully large amount,” Richard said, “to be acquired by legal means.”
“In cash.”
“In bundled hundreds.”
“What if all this was planned?” Kent asked. “Just another stupid puzzle?”
“Don’t even think about it,” Abba said. They struggled not to think about it. The struggle was exhausting.
The money had been found shortly before midnight. It was three when Richard split it into two piles. The first was enough to pay off the back taxes. The second pile he began to divide into five.
“Make it six,” Lucy said.
“Six?”
“One for Mom,” Lucy said. “We’ll need to take care of her too.”
Richard divided the pile into six. When he was finished, he yawned. Kent and Lucy were already half asleep. Angie said good night. At the top of the stairs she quickly turned and saw that brothers and sisters were following her up. She didn’t take a good look at them as they walked up the stairs behind her. For the next eight years she would regret not doing this.
The next morning both Abba and her stack were gone.
THERE WERE NO TREES in the Barkhouse Memorial Cemetery and the tombstones were close together. As they searched for row 23-B, plot #26, the light went grey. Then it began to snow. They walked deeper into the cemetery, the snow crunching under their feet. It was the only sound they heard.
The tombstones ended at row 75-A. Row 1-B started where the graves were marked with plaques, which sat flush against the ground. They walked to 23-B. Counting twenty-six plaques in, they semicircled their father’s grave. Richard bent down and wiped away the snow.
“That’s … a lot of text,” he said.
There was no name or date. There was no mention of his children or his loving wife. It simply read:
I, truly, am finally still. Once alive now running joy, a memory motel, grateful, in united shell, a cove of … truth.
Richard bowed his head and folded his hands in front of him. Angie and Lucy began to cry. Kent held them both.
“Goddamn it!” Angie shouted.
“What?” Richard asked.
“He did it again!” Angie said.
“He did what again?” Kent asked.
“Oh my God!” Abba said.
“He kinda did it again,” Lucy said.
“Why would he do this?” Richard asked.
“Come on! Someone please fucking tell me what’s happening …”
“Read every second word, Kent,” Angie said. Her face had gone white. She crouched down and put her head between her knees.
“Truly … finally … once … now … joy …”
“No, no,” Angie said. She remained crouched. Her voice was muffled. “It only works the one way.”
“It’s like his letter,” Abba said, quietly. “The money-trail letter.”
“That’s why I started with the second word.”
“Start with the first word. Start with the ‘I.’ ”
“Fuck!”
“There ya go.”
“What is a shell cove?”
“It’s Shell Cove.”
“How could he do this?”
“Why would he do this?”
“Fuck!”
“Will somebody please tell me what Shell Cove is?”
“It’s at the top,” Angie said. She stood. The colour had not returned to her face. “It’s right up at the top of Cape Breton. Near Meat Cove. We’ll have to wait until tomorrow. We’ll head out first thing tomorrow.”
ANGIE COULD NOT LOOK AT THE tropical beach scene mural, which covered the entire wall, for one more second. She turned on her side and stared at the digital numbers of the clock radio beside her bed. They read 1:23 when she heard a knock. Angie sat up. She accidentally looked at the beach scene. She heard the knock again. It came from the door connecting the two rooms they’d rented at the Sydney Motor Court Motel.
“Are you awake?” Lucy asked. She was sleeping, or rather failing to sleep, in the bed beside Angie’s. Abba failed to sleep beside her.
“No, I’m sleep staring,” Angie said.
“Then get the door!” Abba said. “Please?”
Angie climbed out of bed. She unlocked the door. Kent and Richard came into their room. They were both fully dressed.
“Our motel room is making us crazy,” Kent said. He sat on the end of her bed. “Nice fake sunset.”
“It’s not the room. It’s the waiting,” Richard said. He stared at the mural. “Although that is atrocious.”
“We haven’t slept either,” Angie said.
“Do you think we should just go?” asked Lucy.
“Why not?” Kent asked.
“I agree,” said Abba.
“Okay then,” Richard said, “let’s.”
Having no suitcases, as they’d left the Halifax airport before their luggage had been found, they had nothing to pack. They walked to their rented car. It was snowing, heavily. Richard started the engine. Angie worked the heater. Kent found the snow brush. He cleared off the hood and the headlights and the front and back windshields. Then he got into the back seat beside Abba and Lucy. There was snow on his boots and his shoulders and stuck in his hair.
“It’s really coming down out there,” he said.
“We’ll be fine,” Richard said and he reversed through the parking lot.
“But, really, it’s pretty bad.”
“We’ll drive through it,” Richard said, and for different reasons, they all agreed.
Six hours into a three-hour trip, all they could see was snow. The road wasn’t visible. Neither was the shoulder. There was only white, which broke into an infinite number of snowflakes moments before hitting the windshield.
“It’s like they’re suicidal,” Richard said.
“Who?” Angie asked.
“The snowflakes,” Richard said. “They keep hitting the windshield. How could there be so many of them?”
Richard loosened his grip on the steering wheel. He tightened it again. He leaned back in the driver’s seat and then he leaned forwards. They’d already turned onto the Cabot Trail, which should have taken them into Shell Cove. But then the weather had gotten even worse. Now their top speed was 20 km/h. It often went down to 10. They kept driving because it seemed slightly safer than pulling over. No one spoke. The windshield wipers were loud. Then Richard cleared his throat. This was a gesture Angie had never heard him make before.
“Angie,” Richard said, “I just want to say that I’m sorry.”
“Okay,” she said.
“No, really, I’m serious. I want you to hear this. I’m sorry.”
“I said okay.”
“I’m very serious …”
“Keep your eyes on the road.”
“Are you listening to me?”
“If I promise to listen will you keep your eyes on the road?”
“Yes.”
“What are you sorry about, Richard?”
“All of it. Everything. Angie …”
“Eyes. On. The. Road.”
“Angie, none of us knew about the curses, not for sure, but we kinda did. You know?”
“I know.”
“So we all knew about you and the forgiving thing. That you’d
forgive us for anything we did to you.”
“I know that you’re sorry.”
“All those horrible things I made you do because I knew you’d forgive me. All of it. Not just the chores. But making you lie for me and cover things up. All the other shit I don’t even want to say. I took advantage of you and I’m so sorry about all of it,” Richard said. He kept his eyes on the road but he took his right hand off the wheel. He reached across the space between them. He squeezed Angie’s arm.
“It’s okay.”
“Is it?” Richard asked. The snowflakes continued hitting the windshield. Richard kept his hand on her shoulder. Angie heard seat belts unfasten and then the rest of them crowded behind her seat. They each touched her shoulder and gently squeezed. “Do you forgive me?”
“And me?”
“Me too?”
“All of us?”
“Ah, you guys. You don’t know how much I want to. I really, really want to,” Angie said.
“But you won’t?”
“I am unable to,” Angie said and it didn’t seem so bad when she said it like that. It just seemed like four words and not like something that had made the last two and a half years the worst of her life.
“Turns out that my blursing,” Angie said, “may have been more blessing than curse.”
“Angie, that’s awful,” Abba said.
“You haven’t been able to forgive anyone at all?” Lucy asked.
“Not in all this time?” asked Richard.
“Fuck,” Kent said. No one said anything else. They didn’t have a chance to. It was at this point that the car, while going downhill, hit a patch of ice and spun out of control.
IT WAS NOT SLEEP BUT IT WAS something very much like sleep and Angie was deeply within it when the thought forced its way into her mind that the engine might still be running. She tried to open her eyes but they were locked. She listened. She heard the wind and the windshield wipers and then faintly, behind all those other sounds, the sound of a running engine. This impressed her. It was obviously a good engine if it could keep running after an accident. But then she thought that maybe this was a bad thing.
She was almost positive that after they’d flipped onto their side they’d slid backwards and suddenly stopped. Maybe a snowbank? She could remember a made-for-TV movie where this couple got into a car accident and their tailpipe was blocked by mud and they died from carbon monoxide poisoning and she was pretty sure that snow probably worked the same way. So she tried to open her eyes but they were cement. She waited. She tried again. Then they were open and she saw the keys dangling from the ignition but the distance between them and her made her eyes close.
When she finally got them open she got confused because gravity was coming from the passenger door. But, regardless, never mind that, the keys were still very much too far away. She looked at her brother, at how his body slumped against the seat belt. Then she didn’t want to look at him. She looked at the floor, which was presently the passenger window and there was Richard’s cellphone. HOORAY! She put it to her ear. She said, “Help us,” and then she remembered that she’d have to dial a phone number and this almost broke her. Putting numbers in sequence seemed mystical and baffling and it made her head droop and that’s when she saw her forearm and there they were, ten of them, already sequenced. HOORAY! Slowly and carefully and with very much effort she dialed the numbers written in Magic Marker on her forearm. The phone began to ring and on the third ring the ringing stopped.
—Hello?
—How are you?
—Who is this?
—It’s okay. You don’t have to know us. I can’t forgive. But I’m not calling about that. I’m only calling because my grandmother wrote this number on my arm before she died and now we’re about to die because we’ve had an accident on the road to Shell Cove. I don’t even know which one. Cape Breton! Carbon monoxide! How far away? Can’t say. Last place I remember is Capstick! Rhymes with lipstick! But we’re serious to die if not soon discovered. No joke, she said, which made her laugh and she wasn’t sure whether she laughed outwardly or just inside but her eyes closed again and this time she could not, for the life of her, get them open.
THE PILE OF SNOW ON THE carpet was four inches deep and just below the foot of the bed Angie woke up in. The room’s only window was open. Large, slow-moving snowflakes flew over her head. Each one cut a different path through the air but they all landed on the pile, making it grow. Watching this was calming. Angie could see her breath, but she didn’t feel cold. Every surface in the room was dusted with an undisturbed covering of snow. Angie took in all of these things and she began to suspect that she was dead.
Her suspicions were not lessened when she sat up. She was underneath seven woollen Hudson’s Bay blankets. On the opposite wall was a framed nail-art picture of a schooner. The room was filled with mass-produced furniture from the eighties. Should there have been an afterworld specifically created for the Weirds, it would look like this.
Her suspicions became a conviction when she looked out the window. At the edge of the parking lot was a sign. Through the snow the words l ove Motel shone in red neon. Angie couldn’t explain the space between the l and the o. But she reasoned that for all her earthly sins and sufferings, an eternal reward in something as unglamorous yet pleasurable, comfortable yet transitory as a love motel seemed perfectly appropriate.
The door connecting her room to the one beside it was open. Struggling from under the blankets Angie stepped around the pile of snow. She walked through the door. There was a pile of snow in the middle of this room too. There were two beds. In the one closest to the door was Kent. In the other was Richard. Both were awake. Neither seemed surprised to see her.
“Are we dead?” Kent asked.
“I think we are,” Angie answered.
“We aren’t dead,” Richard said.
“How do you know?”
“I feel normal.”
“But normal is what dead would feel like to dead people,” Angie said.
“Good point,” Richard conceded.
“Do you think this is heaven or hell?” Kent asked.
“Maybe both?”
“It’s neither,” Richard said but his voice was defensive. “It’s just some tacky motel.”
“The Love Motel?”
“You mean the l ove Motel.”
“So?”
“You believe in God but you don’t think he can spell?”
“Good point,” Angie conceded. “But what about the snow? There’s a pile back in my room too.”
“I don’t know about that. I agree it seems odd.”
“It’s very peaceful.”
“That it is.”
“What do you think’s in there?” Kent asked. He nodded towards the door into the next room. It too was open.
“We are,” Abba called.
Angie led the way. She noticed that each of her feet wore three pairs of heavy wool socks. Richard and Kent wore three pairs of wool socks too. Together, they entered the next room. There was another pile of snow on the floor and two more beds. Lucy was in one and Abba was in the other.
“I agree that we’re dead,” Abba said.
“Don’t be so stupid,” Lucy said.
“Vote,” Kent said. “Who thinks we’re dead?”
Angie raised her hand. So did Kent and Abba. The door to the motel room opened. They all turned and looked. Snow and wind entered the room and then, so did their father. Angie, Kent and Abba lowered their hands; Richard and Lucy thrust theirs into the air.
THEY STARED AT THEIR FATHER. Angie, as they all were, was stunned by how little shock seeing him caused. The thinning hair and stooped shoulders and the large black circles under his eyes weren’t just disappointing. They were demystifying. The longer he stood there the more human he became.
“Did we … die?” Richard finally asked.
“Almost. Yes, definitely, almost,” their father said.
“Did you save us?”
&nb
sp; “How did you find us?”
“The RCMP called,” he said. He shut the door and kicked snow off his boots. “From Vancouver. They said some crazy old lady in the hospital called them, claiming that some crazy woman called her from a snowstorm near Shell Cove. Guess I was the closest. Closest with chains on my tires, anyway. Damn near didn’t go.”
“What’s with the name?” Angie asked.
“What?”
“The Love Motel. Why are we in the Love Motel?”
“Jesus. That’s what you want to know? It was the Shell Cove Motel when I bought it. Then the s burnt out and that sure didn’t help business. So I took out the h and the e and the first l and the c.”
“The Love Motel.”
“The l ove Motel.”
“It’s good. We have people coming all the way up from Halifax. The view off the cliff’s pretty, so no one really cares what it’s named.”
“And the snow?” Richard asked.
“It’s just a storm.”
“Why is it in the rooms?”
“Ventilation,” he said. The aggravation in his voice sent a rush of nostalgia through them all. “You almost died from carbon monoxide poisoning. You needed fresh air and lots of it. I bundled you up best as I could but it was touch and go from there. Didn’t know you’d woken up yet. For a second there I thought you were all ghosts!”
He pointed to the mirror above the wardrobe. They all turned and looked. Snow was caught in their hair and clothes. Their skin was grey from the poison. They did look like ghosts. They looked back at their father. He didn’t move towards his children. They didn’t move closer to him.
“Why aren’t you kids more angry?” he asked.
“Maybe we’re dead,” Lucy said.
“It’d be easier if you were just angry. Go ahead! Get angry! Let me have it.”
“We’ve been having a lot of epiphanies lately,” Abba said.
“I’m not even sure if seeing you is the most improbable thing that’s happened to us recently,” Kent said.
“We’re just amazed to see you alive,” Lucy said.
“Well you almost didn’t get the chance,” their father told them.