Hidden in the Blood: A Novel of the Terribly Acronymed Detective Club (Book 5)

Chapter Eleven: Agnes, Wednesday

Agnes missed the call from Rachel because she'd been working at the time. It was her first evening shift at VPL, this time behind the reference desk of the Children's Library at Central Branch. She'd be there until 9:00 pm, when the library closed.

It took her until she checked her phone on her break, when she was about to call her kids and check in, to notice the voicemail. Curious, she dialled her voicemail and listened.

"Hi, Agnes? This is Rachel Mackenzie." Agnes didn't fail to notice the woman included her last name to reiterate that she was Al's wife. "I was just calling to let you know that Al's mother and another friend of ours were at the hospital this evening, and they reported that his eyes opened again. It wasn't for very long, and they didn't think he even had the time to focus on them before he went back under again, but that's a hopeful sign. Maybe tomorrow it will happen again, and then it will happen more often, until he's awake for good. Anyway, that's all I called to say."

The recording ended, and Agnes erased the message, grateful that Rachel had called with the update, but irrationally resentful that Rachel had the privilege of being in the position of conveying the information.

She knew there had always been the possibility of running into the beautiful blonde with the green eyes in the photo when she visited the hospital Monday evening. In a way, going there to see him had been akin to approaching the edge of a cliff, thrilling at the possibility of falling over. Feeling her heart sink at the sight of the woman and their daughter, who'd been so curious about her, surely felt like falling. Yet how could she begrudge the woman for falling in love with Al? Al was lovable. Hadn't Agnes fallen hard for him, against the wishes of her family? Wouldn't she have been with him to this day if their careers hadn't pulled them in different directions, if Al's father hadn't fallen ill just when Agnes asked him to go with her? She knew that was a presumptuous way of thinking; who knew if they would have stayed together, really? But Agnes knew what she'd wanted, and she'd fled to the Okanagan heartbroken, knowing their relationship had ended before it even had a chance to evolve.

She sighed and dialled home. Her mother picked up, and not for the first time Agnes wished she'd given her kids their own phones just so she could bypass her parents.

"Agnes," Mom said.

"Hi, Mom. Just checking in. How are the kids doing?"

"They're spending too much time on their iPad, and not enough on their homework. These are not good habits to encourage."

"Mom," she said, sighing. "They've been through a lot; new school, new classmates. I'm not going to force a new structure on them right now, not when I just pulled them away from their old one."

"You haven't been very forthcoming on why, either," Mom reminded her.

"And I'm not going to do that over the phone," Agnes asserted. "Look, I can't thank you enough for letting us stay with you and Dad, and we'll leave as soon as I can afford a place--"

"We're happy to have you, Agnes. This is the first time we've seen the grandkids in years."

That was another complaint thinly veiled as encouragement. She was good at those. "I know, but we really have to find our own place and get on with our lives."

"You know, we wouldn't mind you staying. We're not exactly spring chickens anymore, and in traditional families, the eldest daughter would be looking after her elderly parents..."

This was what she was fleeing when she went to the Okanagan, tradition. "Mom," she groaned. "I can't talk about this right now. Can you put the kids on?"

Wordlessly, she put the receiver down. Her parents still had a landline, and a telephone on the wall with a receiver attached by a cord. She remembered hiding in her room with the cord pulled to its fullest extension from the body of the phone, talking in low tones to Al so they didn't hear her. She was never allowed to have a phone in her room, out of fear that she might have talked to boys with it, never mind that she'd been a grown woman when she was dating him, and that all through elementary and high school she'd been terrified of even being in the same vicinity as boys, much less talking to them, having been inundated with fundamentalist dogma all her young life, the sinfulness of associating with the opposite sex.

Remembering that made her wonder: did she cling to Al so tightly because he'd been her first relationship, her first courageous expedition into the realm of romance? If she'd been allowed to date as casually as other girls her age had been, would she have viewed Al as just another unfortunate breakup and not the tragedy of her life, wept over for years while she bravely developed her profession, working, going back to school to get her MLS, working some more?

"Hi, Mom," Patrick and Melissa chimed in together.

"Hi, sweeties," she said. "I'm calling from work, but I just wanted to check in and tell you I'll be home at around nine-thirty, okay? I'll be home in time to put you to bed."

"Okay," Patrick said. Melissa was silent, probably tearing up in petulance, because when they lived in the Okanagan she was always home by dinner time.

"In the meantime," she said, "could you put your iPads down and maybe do some reading?" She was aware she was already going against her resolve not to impose a new routine on them, but her mother imposed a will she just couldn't resist for long, and she felt she owed it to her for the room and board.

"Patrick and me are building a fort in our room," Melissa said. It was the room all three of them shared because it was her old room, and the house only had two bedrooms.

"Oh! Perfect. Thank you."

"When's Dad coming?" Patrick asked.

Damn it. This was the question she'd been avoiding since she left with them to come here. She'd billed it as an extended visit to their grandparents, whom, she was ashamed to admit, they hadn't seen in years, the last time they'd come to the Okanagan to visit them. Ashamed, because she was the one who didn't want to see them.

"Dad has work," she said, and it was partly true. "He'll come when he can. I'll see you soon, okay?"

"Bye mom," they said together.

"Bye, sweeties," she said, tearing up herself, now. They hung up, probably fascinated by the old fashioned method of actually hanging a receiver back on the phone's cradle to end the call. 

She sighed and put her phone back in her purse, and her purse back in the temporary locker she was provided tonight. She returned to work but found herself staring off into space behind the reference desk when she wasn't helping patrons.

It was Patrick's mention of his father that had her preoccupied. She knew he wouldn't be far behind. With time on her hands, she wondered if it wouldn't be against library policy to send a quick email to that lawyer she met on Monday, the friend of Rachel's. What was his name? He'd given her his card, but she had it in her purse in her locker... Sunny, his wife had introduced him as Sunny. She remembered that because it sounded so bright and cheery, and he did have a beautiful smile. Without a last name to go on, though, it would be impossible to find him.

She decided to just log in to her personal email while she had the time.

The first in her inbox was from her estranged husband. With a feeling like she was at the top of a roller coaster about to make the first steep drop, she opened it.

It was only two sentences long.

Did you think changing your phone number would throw me off your trail? I know exactly where you are.

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To learn a little more about what happened to Al after he moved away from Queensborough, and his first forays into romance, click on "Continue reading."