Echo Lane

Copyright © 2023 by Sandra Kelly All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be used without prior written consent of the publisher. Stonehouse Publishing Inc. is an independent publishing house, incorporated in 2014. Cover design and layout by Elizabeth Friesen. Printed in Canada Stonehouse Publishing would like to thank and acknowledge the support of the Alberta Government funding for the arts, through the Alberta Media Fund. National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data Sandra Kelly Echo Lane Novel First edition. ISBN 978-1-988754-45-1 Echo Lane a novel by Sandra Kelly In Memory of Maureen Heaps 1956 - 2021 Prologue Mark Twain once said that if you tell the truth you don’t have to remember anything. Wise words from a wise and witty man. I know the legendary humourist was dispensing a lesson for all of us, but it amuses me to think he could see into the future—and that he was speaking directly to me. Around here, stranger things are true. The foolish lie I told involved a little girl so sweet, so clever and so funny she rendered other children dull. Except for purposes of identification, I place no value on looks, but circumstances compel me to mention that in addition to her other natural gifts my sister had her mother’s pale, ephemeral beauty. Kathleen was that luckiest of creatures: a person destined to get everything. Alas, it didn’t happen. On Labour Day Monday, 1981, a day that just happened to be her fifth birthday, she went missing. It was my fault. It always will be my fault. I’m long gone from that part of the country, but I’m told the citizens of Lazy River, Ontario who remember that awful day still talk about it. They’ll be old now, their hair thin, their bodies slack, their waking hours bereft of fulfilling work and livelier fun, and so they’ll do what their parents and grandparents did before them—loiter outside the grocery store, saying the same old things they said ten, twenty, thirty years ago: So sad. That little girl vanished and no one ever saw her again. They never caught the kidnapper, you know. Poor Patsy Keane: some folks thought she killed the child. If you want my opinion… Chapter One “Hello, Patsy.” I’ve just opened my front door and already I dislike the stranger standing there. She has a girlish face, corn broom hair, and brown eyes so dark they mask her soul. She’s dressed as if for brunch at the country club: white linen mini, thin sandals, tasteful jewelry. No nametag, though. No clipboard either. That rules her out as one of the urbane fortyish women who go door to door in this inner-city neighbourhood collecting for the heart fund. More likely she’s another sell-out with dollar signs flashing in her eyes. I live in a vintage house on a street straight from a Norman Rockwell painting, on a bluff overlooking the city centre. Developers with visions of million-dollar apartments are circling, and some of my neighbours are tempted. I’m not selling. “Hello,” I say—curtly. I don’t need to hear the pitch again. Those big brown eyes slide over my grubby coveralls and the shower cap covering my own entirely grey hair. “I’m sorry,” the attractive stranger says. “I can see that I’ve caught you at a bad time. You probably won’t remember me, Patsy, and there’s really no…” “Look,” I say as civilly as I said it last week to Mandira Singh, chairperson of the committee struck to bring me and the other hold-outs to our senses. “I don’t care what kind of money those people are offering.” I step back and gesture toward the mess behind me. “As you can see, I’m renovating this house. I’ll be leaving here in an urn. Understood?” Slow as molasses, the woman arches her tapered brows and makes a show