The Way Back Read online

  “We’re not going to tell them we did it,” Colby explained again. “We’ll say it was our friend, who felt bad—which we do—and wanted to give back the bracelet.”

  “We could say it was Gigi,” Jordan offered.

  “No!” Milo and Colby both barked.

  There was the house.

  And this time, there were people home.

  Splashing and happy kid screams came from the backyard. Colby remembered seeing the pool, but it had been covered when they were there before. There were two kids in the family, according to Gigi’s information. Colby wondered which one the bracelet belonged to.

  “I’ll do it by myself,” she said, striding up the front steps.

  So Jordan and Milo hung back at the bottom of the steps, practically cowering.

  Colby rang the doorbell.

  Long, torturous minutes passed.

  A woman wearing a uniform opened the door.

  “May I help you?”

  Colby glanced at Jordan and Milo, who nodded. But Colby didn’t want to give it to the housekeeper.

  “Can I speak to the lady of the house?” she asked. The words sounded strange. Archaic.

  “And you are?”

  “I, uh…” All of a sudden Colby wasn’t sure about this at all. When she and Shauna were talking about amends, Colby had thought giving the bracelet back was a great idea, but now it seemed stupid and dangerous. Still… she wanted to do it. “I have something of hers that I’d like to return.”

  The woman frowned at her. “Wait here.”

  She closed the door.

  Colby spun around, one hand on Luna in the sling, the other held out, imploring her friends for help.

  Jordan and Milo shook their heads and stood a little closer together.

  “Thanks.” Colby turned her back to them. “Thanks a lot.”

  Luna reached up and patted Colby’s chest. “Thanks, Luna. Good to know someone cares.”

  The door opened again, and a slender woman stood in front of her, wearing a cotton dress over a swimsuit, damp hair pulled back into a sleek ponytail.

  “What can I do for you?”

  “This is yours.” Colby held out the bracelet. “Right?”

  The woman went pale. She took the bracelet, staring at it in the palm of her hand for a moment and then suddenly sliding to the floor and sitting in a folded heap of dress and legs.

  “Where did you get this?” she whispered.

  Colby hadn’t expected this reaction. Surprise or anger, even relief. But not this. And Colby wasn’t even sure what it was.

  “Where did you get this?” the woman asked, looking up. There were tears in her eyes. In that moment, she seemed to collect herself. Almost as if an unseen hand was lifting her up and putting her back together. It was like watching a puzzle picture take shape. She asked again, much more sharply. “Where did you get this? Answer me.”

  “A friend gave it to me to give to you,” Colby said.

  “A friend?” The woman shook her head. “This same ‘friend’ who robbed us? Is that right?”

  “I don’t know.” Colby backed down the stairs. “But she said to give it back to you.”

  “This bracelet belongs—belonged—to my daughter.” The tears started again. “She was three when she got cancer. We buried her eleven days after her fourth birthday. She never took it off. I took it off. Of her dead body. Do you understand? I took this bracelet off my child’s dead body.”

  The housekeeper appeared beside the woman. “Come, Mrs. Ellis. Come now.”

  “Off her dead body,” the woman repeated. Her shoulders slacked, and a tiny smile formed on her lips. “But I—”

  “I’m sorry,” Colby said. She held Luna tightly. Her own tears threatened to spill. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Let’s go,” Milo called.

  “Come on!” Jordan said.

  They were clearly anxious about what was going on. About what Colby might say next. What she might admit to.

  Colby wasn’t thinking about the robbery though.

  She was thinking about the woman’s child.

  She was thinking about her own baby.

  She was thinking about her own mother.

  She was thinking about everything that had ever gone wrong.

  She was thinking about Gigi.

  About how the thing that had held the least value for Gigi was so valuable to this woman. How taking something had caused so much pain. How awful it was that Colby had made it worse. How they’d all made it worse.

  Colby wanted to tell Gigi how good it was that she’d given the bracelet back. How holding on to the bracelet had made such a big difference. How she’d done a small, shining good thing amid all the gloom.

  “Let’s close the door now.” The housekeeper started to pushed the door shut, but the woman stopped her.

  “Thank you,” she said. “For bringing it back.”

  And then she slammed the door in Colby’s face, the noise of it ringing in her ears.

  grandpa

  Before she had Luna, Colby would’ve never simply forgotten the little piece of paper that Gigi had given her. But looking after Luna was pretty much all-consuming, and so sometimes things fell away. Details. Specifics. Un-baby stuff. Like the tiny folded square of paper.

  And then Gigi died.

  Dead from a heroin overdose, slumped in a piss-stink doorway in the alley behind the Carnegie Community Centre. A month after her eighteenth birthday.

  The staff at the Carnegie said she had come for the two-dollar supper, already high. She had used the bathroom. Made a call on the free phone at the front desk. Got some condoms and tampons from the health nurse. The security guard at the back door said she left with her boyfriend. He described an older guy. Arman.

  But the camera at the back corner showed her shuffling down the alley behind Hastings Street alone. She turned at the last minute, lifting her hand to push her hair off her shoulders. She lifted her chin just a tiny bit.

  The security guard emailed Colby the clip. A gray, blurry treasure.

  Colby played the short clip over and over and over and over.

  In that moment, Colby could see a glimpse of the real Gigi. The one who would’ve blown the camera a kiss. The Gigi who would never have left without saying goodbye. The Gigi who was supposed to be Luna’s auntie.

  The Gigi who had kept sliding into the dark, until nothing was left but heavy, permanent night, with not a star to be seen.

  That’s when Colby remembered the tiny piece of paper. With a surge of hope, she emptied out her diaper bag. Maybe it was a note from Gigi. Maybe whatever was on the paper would explain something. Anything. Even just a tiny piece of it.

  But she couldn’t find it.

  She slid her hand down each pocket, felt every seam in every crevice.

  Luna sat on the floor beside her, gnawing on a forgotten rubber fox from the dumped-out pile.

  Colby was done with crying. She was mad now. Mad at herself for not doing more to help Gigi, and mad at Gigi for dying.

  The paper. There it was, stuck in the bottom mesh-sided pocket, brown and sticky from spilled coffee.

  Colby pulled it out, heart pounding. It was tiny, about the size of a ketchup packet folded in half. The edges were worn, and as she unfolded it, it fell into four pieces.

  A puzzle. Colby laughed, carefully placing the pieces in order. Like Gigi.

  But it wasn’t from Gigi.

  It was her dad’s spindly writing, tiny and hard to read.

  Colby—I’m at the Balmoral. Room 28. Would love to see you. Sorry for everything. Gigi says you have a baby. I’d like to meet her. And see you. Love, your no-good, screw-up, junkie Dad. p.s. 42 days clean!!!

  Colby sighed. She smiled at Luna. “Your auntie Gigi could’ve told me that she’d seen him.” There was no date on the note. No idea when he wrote it. Or if he was still at the Balmoral. Or still clean.

  Colby pulled the baby into her lap and kissed the top of her head. “Your grandp
a wants to meet you. That sounds weird.”

  Colby got on a bus right away and headed downtown. Her old neighborhood. Past Gram’s pawnshop. Colby peered in as the bus passed. Gram was sitting in the easy chair beside the front door. She looked older now. As if Gigi’s death had chopped years off her own life.

  The Balmoral.

  Room 28.

  The door was sticky with cockroach poo. Someone at the end of the hall yelled behind a closed door. The forced happiness of a laugh track on someone’s TV blared from the next door.

  Colby knocked.

  She heard shuffling. Then the lock. For a brief moment, Colby considered leaving. Right now. Before he saw her. So much time had passed. So much had happened. And if he wasn’t clean, she didn’t want him near Luna.

  The door opened.

  “Dad?”

  “Colby.” He pulled her into a hug. In that moment, Colby knew she’d never let him go again. No matter what.

  The day of the funeral, Colby’s dad held his granddaughter as if she were either going to barf on him or break into a million pieces.

  “You have to hold her like you mean it, Dad.” Colby lifted Luna from his arms and demonstrated. “She likes to know that whoever is holding her isn’t going to drop her.”

  Colby passed Luna back to him. He held her more like a sack of sugar now.

  “That’s better.”

  The funeral home was four blocks from Gram’s shop. Everybody else was already there. The service was going to start in twenty minutes. Colby’s dad walked slowly. He’d had a bad fall around the time that Luna was born, and he limped now. He looked ten years older than he was, except when he smiled. He still had a dimple when he smiled. Colby had the same one. Luna too.

  Jordan and Milo met them outside.

  “Not many people in there,” Milo said. “There should be more. Mom is wailing, as if she has the right to.”

  Gigi and Milo’s mother had been granted a day pass from prison.

  “She’s Gigi’s mom.”

  “Hardly.” Milo laughed. He’d grown harder since Gigi’s death. Angrier. “Gram was more of a mom to Gigi than she ever was. It’s our mom’s fault that Gigi ended up a junkie in the first place.”

  “Still,” Colby said softly.

  The chapel was empty except for two rows at the front. Gram sat beside her daughter. There was a handful of regular customers from the pawnshop. A small, jittery clutch of Gigi’s street friends at one end of the second row. Shauna, alongside Milo’s sponsor, Ben. Mr. Fox. No Arman.

  Colby sat with her dad on one side of her and Shauna on the other. Mr. Fox reached across Shauna and handed Colby a tiny porcelain fox, no bigger than a Monopoly game piece. A tiny heart was painted on its white chest. It was a hopeful thing that she could hold tight in the palm of her hand, but still, it made Colby incredibly, deeply sad.

  That night Colby placed the new fox alongside the others. It was the smallest one. The most fragile. The only one with its heart on the outside.

  Colby sat rocking Luna to sleep beside the open window. A warm summer breeze drifted in. Traffic noises from the street below. Shouts of joy from the café on the corner, where they were watching European soccer. Two little kids arguing over a toy truck. Dogs barking in the park.

  Colby looked up. The moon was full, passing in and out of sight as clouds shifted across the city skyline. The world was quieter now with Gigi gone.

  Carrie Mac is the author of many books, including The Beckoners, Crush and Charmed. Carrie lives with her family in Vancouver, British Columbia.

  Orca soundings

  For more information on all the books

  in the Orca Soundings series, please visit

  www.orcabook.com.