A Colder Kind of Death Read Free Page B

goodnight.
    Taylor went straight to the dining room and dumped all her candy on the table, checking for razor blades the way her Grade 1 teacher had instructed her to. She pulled up a chair and began to arrange the candy in categories: things she liked and things she didn’t like. Then she tried newcategories: chocolate bars, gum, candy kisses, gross stuff. Finally, she lay her head down on her arms.
    “Okay,” I said. “That’s it. Time for this butterfly to fold her wings.”
    I took her upstairs, scrubbed off her butterfly makeup, and tucked her in. When I came back, Hilda was sitting in a rocker beside the fireplace. A fire was blazing in the grate, and on the low table in front of Hilda, there was a tray with two glasses, a bottle of Jameson’s, and a round loaf of fruit bread.
    “I thought you’d welcome a little sustenance,” Hilda said, as she poured the Irish whisky.
    “Where did the bread come from?” I asked.
    “Taylor and I made it this afternoon. It’s called barm brack; it’s traditional in Ireland at Hallowe’en.”
    I cut myself a slice and bit into it. It tasted of spice and candied peel and fruit. “Good,” I said.
    “The children didn’t think so,” Hilda said drily. “They were polite, but they didn’t exactly wolf it down.”
    “All the more for us,” I said and took another bite. My teeth hit something papery and hard. I raised my hand to my mouth and took the paper out.
    Hilda laughed, “I should have warned you. The barm brack is full of little charms. Of course, you’ve already discovered that.”
    I looked at the waxed paper triangle in my hand.
    “Open it,” Hilda said. “The charm you get is supposed to foretell your future. Angus got the gold coin.”
    “Good,” I said, “my old age is taken care of.” I opened the paper in my hand. Inside was a baby doll, no larger than my thumbnail.
    “I must have someone else’s fortune,” I said. “I’m forty-nine years old, Hilda. I think my child-bearing days are over.”
    “The barm brack is never wrong,” Hilda said placidly. “The baby in your future could belong to someone else, you know.”
    I thought of my older daughter and her husband. A grandchild. It was a nice thought. I lifted my glass of Jameson’s to Hilda. “To Irish traditions,” I said. “And to Irish stories. You know I’d forgotten that story about poor Jack O’Lantern with his turnip. My mother-in-law told it to me years ago.”
    Hilda looked thoughtful. “Your husband was Irish, wasn’t he?”
    “His family was. Ian was born here.” I sipped my whisky. “And, as you saw on the news tonight, he died here.”
    “I remember the case, of course,” she said. “It was before you and I met. It struck me as being a particularly brutal and senseless death.”
    “That about sums it up,” I said. “At first, I thought the brutality was the hardest part to deal with. Isn’t there a prayer where you ask God to grant you a good death?”
    Hilda nodded.
    “Well, Ian’s death was not good. It was vicious and terrifying. He was beaten to death by a stranger. It was during the week between Christmas and New Year’s. He was on the Trans-Canada, coming back from a funeral in Swift Current. There was a blizzard. A car had broken down by the side of the highway. When Ian stopped to help, Kevin Tarpley, that man who was killed today, asked Ian to take him and his girlfriend to a party. At the trial, Kevin Tarpley said that when Ian refused, he smashed Ian’s head in with a crowbar.”
    The shadow shapes on the ceiling shifted. In the stillness I could hear the ticking of the hall clock, regular as a heartbeat.
    “I had nightmares for months about what he must have gone through in those last minutes. But in the long run, it wasn’t the brutality that drove me crazy; it was the lack of logic. It turned out that Kevin Tarpley’s car hadn’t broken down at all. When the police found it, it was fine. Kevin told them he got scared when the needle on