Picking Up The Pieces

Chapter 2

 When I heard the clock in the living room tone midnight, I rinsed my paintbrush in the water pot, turned off the light, and went down the stairs. A few minutes later, I stood in front of the bathroom mirror. I mopped eye make-up off and washed my face. After smoothing on cream that promised to give my forty-three year-old face the skin of a baby, I slipped a cotton nightgown over my head and flicked off the bathroom light.

In my bedroom, I folded back my puffy duvet. The pink-floral bedspread signalled final acknowledgement that Roger was never coming back. I crawled into bed and switched off the light.

“Lord,” I said into the darkness, “I’m going to need more information if I’m to help Neil. Please show me what to do.”

Earlier that afternoon, as soon as I had returned from my meeting with Scott Marchand, the front doorbell rang. A courier stood outside.

“Please sign,” he said, in an accent I did not recognize. He had nearly black hair that curled softly, and he wore dark glasses and a plain grey uniform.

“Where is your van?”

He hesitated. “Around the corner,” he said, handing me a small, padded envelope and walking away.

The end of the envelope gave way easily when I pulled on it. I squeezed the sides, shook it, and a small brass key with a white string tag attached fell into the palm of my hand. Written on the tag was simply, Box 12.

The key could only be for a mailbox. I poked the little brass key into my pocket and headed for the post office down the street. Slipping it into the lock of Box 12, I turned it and gave the little door a tug. Inside the box lay a single white envelope. On a slip of paper inside, a scribbled message read: “Call your mother from a pay phone now.” There was nothing else. Since the nearest pay phone was right next to the post office, I went straight out and dialled my parents’ home number.

“Oh, Jill, it’s you,” my mother shouted when she heard my voice. I held the receiver away from my ear. “Your Uncle Neil phoned and wanted me to give you a message but he said that under no circumstances was I to call you. I had to wait for you to call me. What is this about, Jill?”

“I don’t know,” I replied. “Apparently, Neil is having some kind of problem. What did he tell you?”

“Well, hardly anything,” she replied. “He gave me an email address and said that I’m supposed to tell you that you are to go to an internet café and check this address. Don’t use your computer at home, he said. Go where no one knows you. Do you have a pen? You’ll need to write this down.”

“Hold on a minute,” I said. I dug a pen and the business card from a hair salon out of my purse, hastily copied the address, hung up the phone and went back into the post office.

“Hey, Jill,” Phyllis Kidman said, grunting as she heaved a large cardboard box onto the counter. “There was someone here earlier asking about you.” A pair of green-framed reading glasses hung on the end of Phyllis’s nose. “He wouldn’t tell me his name, and I wouldn’t tell him what he wanted to know.”