45. Love Child

“Thanks Madeline,” said Kathy. “We understand about the money now, but I’m not sure I understand why you would want to keep the house after what happened there.”

Madeline cast her eyes down, gathering her thoughts, or thinking up a lie, Kathy thought cynically.

“Let me tell you about that house,” she said after a long silence. “You’re recording this but I’d ask you to please not share what I’m going to tell you, unless it’s absolutely necessary.”

She had their attention.

“My biological father bought the house before he was married. He lived his whole life there, and he lived there with his wife,” she paused and looked at the mirror, “his wife who was not my mother.” They nodded. “His wife was not a gardener, but my father loved his garden.” Kathy felt a pang of sympathy for this woman who had never met her dad but clung to the little she knew about him. “Shaye and her dad, that is my dad, I mean her dad,” Madeline’s voice broke, “he and Shaye worked together in the garden. She told me all about it and said it was some of the happiest times she could recall.” She glanced at the mirror, met her own eyes and turned away.

“When Shaye was seven, she and her mom went to visit an aunt in Vancouver for most of the summer, leaving her dad alone. That was the summer he met my mother.

“I told Kathy how they met at a conference. He was on his own for weeks that summer and they saw each other for walks and drinks and who knows what else. Inevitably he invited her to the house. I don’t think I told Kathy that before.”

Kathy had wondered then just how much Madeline knew about her mother’s affair. She was about to find out.

Madeline continued recklessly, “They made love in the garden, in the pool, in the porch swing. My mother said she refused to do it in his bed or anywhere inside the house.” Just as suddenly as she had started, she stopped.

“Go on,” said Brampton softly.

“She got pregnant,” said Madeline forcefully. “She knew he’d offer to support her, and she knew it would be horrible for his wife if she found out. She felt guilty and knew she wouldn’t carry on the affair when his family came home. She told me she loved him, but she let him go.”

    It was very quiet in Interrogation Room D. Kathy held her breath. Brampton wondered where this story was going.

    “She’d been looking to leave Toronto and her high pressure hospital, even before she met him,” Madeline continued. “They were crying out for surgical nurses in Kingston, five hours away. There was no future in Toronto, she didn’t want to break up his family, so she left. She pretty much ran away at the end of August and never told him where she was going. He never knew she was pregnant. He never knew he had another daughter.”

Madeline’s eyes glistened but she held her head up, daring them to say something. Nobody spoke, and her shoulders slumped a little.

“Our dad was only the second owner of the house, Shaye was the third, and I will be the fourth, so it’s staying in our dad’s bloodline. I never knew him, but I knew Shaye, and she shared her memories with me of living there and working in the garden.” She laughed suddenly. “Chances are I was conceived in the garden, so I’m like a flower he planted. His flower child.”