Al never thought this would be the way he first met Agnes' parents: fourteen years too late, and with the purpose of asking them to leave their home.
Agnes, true to form, introduced him as a "friend from work," which was accurate but such a minuscule portion of the truth that it was almost a lie. Mr. and Mrs. Chu, understandably, had no idea why she was introducing him and why today, when they had two grieving grandchildren who needed them and a daughter who seemed to be everywhere but at home, where she was most needed.
"Al has offered us the use of his home," Agnes said.
"We have a home," Mrs. Chu said.
Mr. Chu gave Al a sour look and asked, "Why is this man offering his house to you? Are you going to live with him? Is he more than a friend?"
Agnes sputtered, "No! What do you think, I already went out looking for a new husband as soon as I got here?!" She was blushing, though, which didn't make her protest convincing.
Al tried to rescue her by saying, "Mr. and Mrs. Chu, Agnes and I are just friends. I myself am married with two children, and we currently live in another property. I've been apprised of Agnes' situation, and I'm offering her the use of our townhouse in Burnaby while the police investigate the circumstances of your son-in-law's death."
"But there's no reason for her to move into your place," Mrs. Chu, said, and Al could tell she was still unconvinced about the nature of their friendship. "She can stay here as long as she likes, and anyway, her ex-husband recently purchased a house in Queensborough. She and her children can move in there."
Agnes drew them into another room out of ear shot of her kids. "Look," she said, "we've learned that Patrick was most likely murdered, the explosion caused by a bomb planted somewhere on his truck. The people who did it are still out there, and there's a chance they also want to do me and the kids harm, because I know why they killed him. They might know where Patrick lived in Queensborough, and they might have even tracked us to this house. For our safety, I want us all to move to Al's townhouse, because it's not connected in any way with Patrick, at least until they're arrested."
Her parents stared at her in disbelief. "You want us to move?" Mr. Chu asked.
"Just for a little while."
Mrs. Chu crossed her arms and said, "No, absolutely not."
"Mom, please--"
"Take your children and go if you wish. You've always wanted to leave us anyway--"
"Mom!" Agnes yelped in hurt surprise, giving Al a sidelong glance. Al felt a little sorry for her. She'd probably never expected to be airing dirty laundry today.
"But we've lived here our entire married life, and we have no intention of leaving," Mrs. Chu went on.
Agnes turned to her father, as if hoping for a second opinion. "Aren't you worried about your safety?"
Mr. Chu smiled tenderly and placed a hand on Agnes' cheek. "We appreciate your concern, but a vague threat from people who were targeting your late husband is not enough incentive to make us leave everything we've ever known. It's easier when you're younger; you were right to leave Kelowna with your kids and come here, and they'll have an easier time adjusting. But us?" He shook his head sadly. "We're too old to uproot ourselves now. We'll take the risk that they won't see any value in threatening an elderly couple."
Agnes looked crestfallen. "What if they do? I couldn't live with myself if something happened to you."
Mrs. Chu sighed in resignation. "You forget, daughter, that we're adults, too. Maybe we failed to treat you like one while you were growing up, and maybe that's why you felt you had to go all the way to Kelowna to finally be one, but we learned our lesson missing you all these years. Learn from our mistake and treat us like adults now, and let us live with the consequences of our own choices."
Agnes stared at her mother with wet eyes, and Al saw all the accumulated, unspoken suspicion and resentment they shared between them finally begin to crumble. She drew her mother in for a hug, and the two of them had a good cry together, and Al knew it wasn't out of grief for Patrick, but for the lost years. Oh, those lost years, Al thought as his own chest swelled with emotion. If Agnes and her parents had had a better relationship, she might never have gone to Kelowna, and she and Al might still be together today. Then again, if Agnes hadn't been so afraid of her parents' disapproval, she might have been more confident around the opposite sex and might have started dating earlier, and Al might never have caught her eye when he did; they might never have dated at all. Was it better to have had the short time they had and remember it fondly? Maybe, but Al still felt the ache of those what ifs just as Agnes claimed she did.
To give them privacy while they embraced, Al stepped into the living room and had a good look at Patrick and Melissa as they sat watching the TV with glazed eyes. They had some of Agnes' features, he could tell, and maybe some of Patrick's, though Al had never met the man so couldn't say for sure. Those two beautiful children wouldn't be here if Agnes had never gone to Kelowna, so Al couldn't lament his missed opportunity and call himself a good man. Then again, these could have been his children, and they'd still have their father. That thought was so bright that it was like looking at the sun, and he had to avert his eyes from it or go blind. Worse, he was thinking about Lauren and the child she so briefly carried, a child who might have looked similar to these two if it had come to term.
It was odd that he was so emotional over Lauren's lost baby, a baby that would have destroyed at least two families, when he'd never envisioned having a baby with Rachel, the only safe option. Maybe it was because Rachel had mooted the idea right at the start, and they'd been so devoted to fostering to make it up to Danny Trybek for not doing enough for him when they were kids, that he'd never allowed himself to imagine what their baby would look like, but when fate had taken its turn and Lauren had told him she was pregnant, it was as if the universe had opened up and showed him an alternate life where a child of his own was possible, and he'd discovered he rather liked the idea. Not that anyone could replace Logan and Emma; adopting them was one of the happiest days of his life after marrying Rachel.
It was better this way, he knew. Lauren and Joe had only just saved their marriage from collapse, and Rachel and he were okay even if she'd now exceeded his record in bedding friends. He looked to Agnes, who was now talking in hushed tones with her parents, and wondered if Rachel's willingness to go along with last night had something to do with insecurity over Agnes' reappearance in his life, a preemptive strike in case Al had any lingering feelings for his ex. It wasn't something he should think about now, though, not when Agnes had just lost her husband.
"Are you really Mom's friend?"
Al shook himself out of his reverie and looked back in the living room. It was Patrick who'd asked that question. He was waiting for his answer. "Yes, that's right," he said. "I'm Al Mackenzie. You're Patrick, right?"
Patrick nodded.
"She's told me about you. And Melissa?"
Melissa nodded wordlessly.
"She's really proud of you for being brave through all this," Al said. He didn't remember Agnes saying that, but he thought they needed to hear it. "She needs you to be brave a little longer. Did you two stay with your dad when he had the house in Queensborough?"
"Yeah, a couple of times," Patrick said. "We liked it there, didn't we, Melissa?" Melissa nodded again.
"Most likely that's where you'll live from now on," Al said, "but before you move there, your mom wants you to come with her to another house, just for a little while. Do you like Hide and Seek?"
Melissa nodded eagerly, but Patrick frowned. "I'm getting a little old for Hide and Seek," he said.
"Fair enough. How about pretending to be police like your dad? Do you know the police help witnesses stay safe from criminals who want to stop them from testifying against them? They do that by moving them to a house the criminals don't know about, so they don't find them. It's kind of like Hide and Seek in real life. That's where you'll be going."
"With Mom, right?" Melissa asked.
"Of course with your mom," Al said, suddenly feeling very protective of these two, as if two timelines had converged and they were in fact his children. "She won't want to let you out of her sight now."
"Will she still have to go to work?" Patrick asked.
Al chuckled. "Unfortunately, yes, but she'll be a lot closer to work in the new house, and she'll get home sooner. Plus, if you like, you can hang out with my kids and my friend Lauren's kids, we live close by, and they're close to your age."
"Do they like to play Hide and Seek?" Melissa asked hopefully.
"I think they could be persuaded to play."
"What about school?" Patrick asked. "We go to school in Richmond, now."
"You've just lost your dad. No one's expecting you to go back to school right away. We can figure something out later, don't worry."
Patrick nodded, and Al could tell he was fighting tears, trying to be brave in front of the strange man who, apparently, was his mom's friend. Al would have acted the same way at his age. "Are Grandma and Grandpa coming?" he asked.
"From what I heard, I think they'd rather stay here," Al said.
Both kids tried and failed to hide their smiles. Al couldn't help smiling. These kids were all right. Their father's death wouldn't destroy them.
Sunny had dropped them off at the Chus' house so that Agnes could take her own car back to the townhouse, and now Al kept an eye out for any suspicious activity on the quiet street, after checking thoroughly under the car and under her parents' car for any rigged explosives, while the kids got in the back seat with their luggage and Agnes hugged her parents fiercely, reminding them again to keep their doors locked, call 911 if they encounter anything suspicious or any strangers appear on their front porch, and check under their car for bombs before driving anywhere. Her father had to remind her that they weren't young anymore and couldn't get down on the ground like that because they wouldn't be able to get up again, but promised her he'd rig up a mirror on a pole to do the work for him. They had a good laugh about that, and Al realized that something had changed in the dynamic between parent and child today. It had taken a violent death to break down the walls they'd erected between them over the years she'd been away, but better late than never.
By the time they returned to the townhouse, someone had set up a TV and a wi-fi router in the living room; Rachel had arranged for electric and cable while Al was in his coma, she'd told him, and all that had to be done was to hook them up. They were thinking of Agnes' children's comfort, Al knew, and his heart swelled with pride for his friends for making this effort for them.
Apparently they'd gone back to the furniture store while Al and Agnes were out, because there was also a sofa to increase the seating capacity of the townhouse. Of course, the kids were already sitting on it. Tosh, Naomi and Emma were watching TV when they came into the room, and even Logan was there, helping Joe on the balcony off the living room; they'd even set up a small barbecue and were busy cooking. When Sunny and Tej arrived with Ajit and Harpreet, the house was full of kids, and Patrick and Melissa looked a little overwhelmed, but the kids, to their credit, understood their hesitation and were gentle with them, bringing them slowly into their games and their confidences.
"We set up a bed in the unused bedroom," Rachel said as she and Lauren descended the stairs. "It'll be Emma's when we finally move in here anyway. We didn't buy a third bed because Logan has his back at Joe and Lauren's, but the sofa is a sofa bed. That should provide accommodation for everyone."
"You bought all this?" Agnes asked in disbelief.
Rachel shrugged. "It'll be ours when we finally move in; we would have had to buy it anyway."
Agnes hugged her. Rachel, surprised, patted her back awkwardly.
"Thank you so much," Agnes said.
"Now you just have to figure out who sleeps upstairs and who takes the sofa bed," Rachel said.
"I'll take the sofa bed," Patrick volunteered. "I can watch TV all night."
"Oh, no you won't," Agnes told him over Rachel's shoulder. "Bedtime's the same regardless."
"I don't want to sleep all the way upstairs," Melissa said with a quavering voice. "Where are you sleeping, Mom?"
"Downstairs, there's an air mattress in the master bedroom. If you want you can sleep with me, but you won't be alone upstairs, because there's... um... another guest."
"Who?" both kids asked suspiciously.
Al looked at Lauren and Rachel, who both grimaced. Agnes cleared her throat and said, "Another friend of these nice people. She's also a member of the RCMP; she worked with your father."
Patrick's face fell. "Oh. You mean Dad's special friend."
Agnes blinked in surprise. "Did he ever introduce her to you?"
Patrick shook his head. "He said not until we were ready. I'd never be ready, Mom. Why couldn't he have stayed married to you?"
Agnes closed her eyes and sighed. "Buddy, let's not go into this now. Why don't you go have fun with the other kids? Dinner will probably be ready soon."
Patrick glared at his mother for a second before nodding and taking Melissa's hand. They sidled up to the other kids, who began asking them about themselves. Tosh and Ajit were only a little older than Patrick. They began showing him pictures on their phones of the sand sculpture competition in Harrison Hot Springs back in August. Emma, perhaps cognitively the same age as Melissa, liked her immediately and agreed to play hide and seek with her and the other girls. Naomi and Harpreet indulged them, even if they might have been too old for it, because they were kind and knew the new girl needed to forget her loss for a while.
Once the adults were left alone in the living room, Lauren changed the channel on the TV. "The news is coming on," she said. "I want to see If Joanie's giving her statement yet."
In fact, as soon as the first prompt for the CTV Evening News appeared, the first story was headed Breaking News: Bombing in Coquitlam.
There she was. Sergeant Joanie Mara, spokesperson for the RCMP detachment in Langley, standing at a podium in her full uniform, her flaming red hair only barely contained by her kepi. She was facing a room full of media, braced as if for battle. She looked like an ancient warrior queen, and her face was like thunder.
"At ten o'clock pm last night in Coquitlam," she began, "a vehicle burst into flame with the driver inside. The explosion was so intense that the shock wave shattered the windows of houses in the neighbourhood. Investigators have determined that the cause of the explosion was an improvised device attached to the front wheel well of the truck on the driver's side."
She paused, and the camera zoomed in on her face. Al felt his heart break as he watched her fight for composure. Her eyes filled with tears, but she cleared her throat and continued. "This was a deliberate and calculated act of murder, and the victim was discovered to be Constable Patrick Marinville, a new transfer to this detachment, who was off duty at the time."
She paused again, closing her eyes, and two tears rolled down her cheeks, but when she opened her eyes again, they were blazing. "Off duty or not, Constable Patrick Marinville was a policeman sworn to protect the public, an officer with an impeccable service record and our brother in arms, and this attack on him was an attack on this detachment and on the entire Royal Canadian Mounted Police."
She took a deep breath and let it out quietly. The room was deathly silent but for the sound of camera flashes; everybody in the press was waiting with bated breath for her next words.
"To the perpetrators who committed this heinous act: we will not rest until we track you down, arrest you, and prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law. You've made a terrible mistake in targeting a member of a nation-wide police force. There is nowhere in this country you'll be able to hide. We will find you."
With that, she stepped away from the podium and left. The reporters, who didn't know that was the end of the statement, hurriedly shouted questions, one of which, Al was dismayed to hear, was, "Sergeant Mara, is it true the victim was driving away from your house at the time?"
The camera stayed focused on an empty podium as other impertinent questions sounded out in the briefing room: "Sergeant Mara, is it true you were in a relationship with the victim?" "Sergeant Mara, what was the victim doing in Coquitlam when he worked in Langley?" "Sergeant Mara, was the victim tied to organized crime? Was this a mob hit?" "Was this another casualty of the drug war?"
"Why aren't they cutting back to the anchor?" Rachel asked.
"I think Joanie left before the briefing was supposed to end," Lauren said.
"Can you blame her, though?" Al asked. "I'm amazed she was able to hold it together that long."
"The fuckers already knew about their relationship, did you hear?" Rachel said.
"Maybe she anticipated that," Lauren said. "Maybe her superiors did, too, and that's why they didn't make her stay and answer questions. This was meant to be a shot across the bow to the people who did this, not a Q and A about Joanie's love life."
Sunny appeared in the living room from the balcony, where he and Tej were keeping Joe and Logan company as they barbecued. "Hey, guys, what are you watching?" he asked.
"Joanie's statement," Al said. "She called out the guys who killed Patrick."
Sunny's face fell. "Oh, shoot, I'm sorry I missed it."
"I'm sure they'll replay it over and over again," Lauren said, grinning, her dimples popping. "Joanie was on fire. I wouldn't want to be those guys if she ever catches them."
Thanks for reading this far! If you liked what you read so far, hit "Vote" to send this title up the ranks. If anything doesn't ring true about police procedures around media relations, leave a comment and let me know; I strive for authenticity.
To see how Tej is doing after last night, click on "Continue reading."