The Waiting Hours Read online

  ALSO BY SHANDI MITCHELL

  Under This Unbroken Sky

  VIKING

  an imprint of Penguin Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited

  Canada • USA • UK • Ireland • Australia • New Zealand • India • South Africa • China

  First published 2019

  Copyright © 2019 by Shandi Mitchell

  Excerpt from Surfacing by Margaret Atwood copyright © 1972 by O.W. Toad Ltd.

  Reprinted by permission of Emblem/McClelland & Stewart, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited.

  I’ll Fly Away, Albert E. Brumley

  © Copyright 1932 in “Wonderful Message” by Hartford Music Co.

  Renewed 1960 by Albert E. Brumley & Sons/SESAC (admin by ClearBox Rights).

  All rights reserved. Used by permission.

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  www.penguinrandomhouse.ca

  Publisher’s note: This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

  Mitchell, Shandi, author

  The waiting hours / Shandi Mitchell.

  ISBN 9780143199007 (softcover).—ISBN 9780143199014 (electronic)

  I. Title.

  PR9619.3.H564B66 2019  C813’.6  C2018-904287-7

  Cover design: Jennifer Griffiths

  Cover images: Jean Ladzinski / Trevillion Images;

  Texture © Fox / Unsplash

  v5.3.2

  a

  For Shawn

  Contents

  Cover

  Also by Shandi Mitchell

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Works Cited

  Acknowledgements

  Fear has a smell, as love does.

  Margaret Atwood, Surfacing

  It was hot the day Ruth is said to have died. The kind of hot that makes babies cry, dogs lie belly up, and underwear cling to scrotums and breasts.

  Ruth had just finished setting up her flea market table in its regular spot when she realized she had forgotten her patio umbrella. Her stall neighbour, Mr. Poranek, a widower and shameless flirt, hung a blanket to shield her from the searing rays. Several commented on how good she looked under its pink cast, and this pleased Ruth. At sixty-two years of age, she enjoyed being mistaken for a young fifty, and attributed her youthful looks to a regimen of Oil of Olay and Clairol auburn No. 5. She always said a world without hair dye would be a damn ugly world.

  The prime selling hours were still ahead and she had already sold two sets of full-length curtains, three teacups, and a rusted bucket with a hole in the bottom for the grand total of fourteen dollars and fifty cents. It was shaping up to be a very good day.

  Fellow vendors dropped by to complain about the heat, the cheap bastards haggling for something for nothing, the wholesale merchants undercutting prices, the crooks fencing hot goods giving everyone a bad name, and the unbelievable deals to be had at the virgin tables. As they griped and gossiped, they scanned her table for bargains to double their own profits. These were her friends. She couldn’t imagine a Sunday without them.

  Between the lull of church getting out and the influx of blessed Sunday shoppers, Ruth asked Mr. Poranek to watch her table. She gave him the rundown on her prices and made him repeat the numbers several times until she was confident he could differentiate between the five-dollar and ten-dollar items.

  After buying an iced diet pop from the chip wagon, she took the long route back, hunting for deals to triple her profits. That’s when she saw, perched on a hamper, the angel. It was the most beautiful angel she had ever seen. Its porcelain face was serene and loving, eyes lowered forgivingly, and arms raised, inviting embrace. Its purple dress shimmered with iridescent sequins. And its wings—its wings were real feathers. It must have been two feet tall, and by the looks of the cord draped over the hamper, it could light up. Or maybe, Ruth dared to hope, lift its radiant wings.

  Not wanting to appear eager, she forced herself to browse the youthful clothing, DVDs, and candle holders. She sized up the girl with the money pouch and please-talk-to-me smile and correctly assessed she was a rookie.

  “How much?” she asked.

  “Five bucks?”

  Ruth heard the question mark and knew she could get it for half the price, but she didn’t haggle. She wouldn’t tarnish its worth.

  “I’ll take it.”

  Setting her pop can on the edge of the table, she fished in her faux crocodile skin purse for a tightly folded bill. Her heart was beating fast. The girl asked if she wanted a bag, but Ruth had already picked up the angel by its slender, perfect waist and was walking away staring into its blue, expressive, hand-painted eyes.

  The heat of the parking lot seeped through her thin-soled shoes and the sun burned her scalp and the tip of her nose. Her cheeks and neck flushed. She swayed. The wings were articulated, and miniature lights were stitched into the hem of the dress!

  “You forgot your drink…” the girl called after her.

  Ruth turned and the world tilted. The sequins on the angel’s dress flashed and haloes bloomed from its magnificent wings and Ruth’s fingers dissolved into light.

  She thought, Oh my…, as the aneurysm on the right side of her temple burst.

  * * *

  —

  Somewhere a man kicked off the bedsheets but did not wake; an infant suckled, a mother hummed; a girl looked up; a bird took flight; a dog caught a ball; a boy held a gun; a mosquito drew blood; a plane lifted off; a car stalled; a toilet flushed; someone laughed, someone wept, someone said hello; someone said goodbye; someone said I love you, je t’aime, jeg elsker dig, miluji tě, ich liebe dich, ti amo, I love you, I love you, I love you. />
  The rest did not.

  At the Sunday morning flea market, a man administered CPR; a woman dialed 911; an angel’s moulting wing snapped underfoot; and Mr. Poranek sold a pair of curtains for far less than Ruth would have wanted.

  1

  Kate swung open the jeep’s rear gate and was greeted by Zeus’s tail thumping against the wire crate. Eager to be released, he stretched and pawed the latch. She made a visual check of her search-and-rescue gear, first aid kits, rations, dog supplies, all-weather kit, boots, and backpack. All that was needed to sustain them for a couple of days. Nothing had shifted. She unhitched the crate door and Zeus waited for her to indicate work or play. She fastened a line to his collar, and his tail hoisted higher. It wasn’t work yet.

  “Ally-oop,” she said.

  He jumped from the hatch, his nose to the ground before his hindquarters landed.

  “Do your business.”

  Trailing the line behind him, he headed around the SUV to check out the tires.

  Kate scanned the debris field of twisted rebar, concrete slabs, mangled cars, and a collapsing barn. Flames and black smoke churned from a rusted oil drum. The team had done a good job mocking up the scene. It wouldn’t be an easy test.

  Zeus bumped her fist with his nose.

  “Done already?”

  He sat and looked up at her.

  “You think you need a treat?”

  She opened her hand. It was empty. He nudged the other hand. Nothing. He looked to her eyes and breathed her in. He liked this game. Snuffling over her jeans, he focused on her right pocket. His velvety snout brushed her wrists and palm. He was correct. A biscuit had been in that hand and that pocket.

  He circled her legs. His nostrils flared, inhaling sharp breaths and snorting out short puffs. He was filtering all that was extraneous to extract the singular scent, separating the air he breathed and the cookie he wanted. He licked his nose, heightening the sensitivity of the million receptors that catalogued his world.

  The conditions weren’t ideal. In this heat, his nose would dry out quickly. She lightly tapped its wetness. He expelled her scent with a breath and zeroed in on her left ankle. His tail wagged faster. His tail was incapable of lying. His nose bumped her boot top and he sat expectantly, snorting one small woof. She hoisted her pant leg. Ever so gently, his lips tickling her shin, he extracted the biscuit protruding from her hiking boot’s cuff. In one crunch, the biscuit was gone.

  She looked to the assessment officer overseeing the exercise. It was Riley. Beside him, Heather was serving as designated note taker. His wife was still in basic training with a six-month-old Belgian Malinois that was far too much dog for her to handle. She wasn’t a strong trainer. She flustered easily and talked too much. It definitely wasn’t her calling. Unlike her husband, who was legendary in the search-and-rescue community.

  Riley had a reputation for impossible finds, unwavering calm, and a relentless will. He had been a medic in Iraq until he took IED shrapnel in his chest. He had told Kate about the girl who rode on the back of her father’s bicycle and her brother who sat on the handlebars. How he gave the boy a chocolate bar and the girl a pack of gum and how shyly the little girl took it. She wore a poppy-red dress and matching velvet shawl embossed with full-blown roses stitched with golden thread. He showed the little girl how to blow a bubble. It was large and pink, and her eyes widened when it popped.

  In the camouflage of night, when she couldn’t see his face, he had told her about the sound an IED makes five hundred feet away, detonating in the trunk of a car. How the pressure drops as the concussion kicks your chest, and the air is sucked from your lungs. And the silence. The depth of silence, right after, and the fall-on-your-knees beauty of white smoke against a robin’s-egg sky. He told her how hot the parts of a bicycle get when it has been incinerated…and the weight of what remains of a poppy-red child. He told her this as her fingers traced rose-petal scars on his bare chest. Zeus looked up the leash. He felt her tension in the line. She smiled and loosened her hold. All’s good.

  She watched Riley and practised not caring. He was a good-looking man and tough. During SAR’s brutal three-day winter survival certification, he broke his ankle less than half a mile from course completion. He wanted to keep going, and she didn’t doubt he would have crawled to the finish line if they had let him. As it was, he had to run the course again the following winter. He set a new record.

  Every team member was loyal to him, and every handler aspired to reach the mastery of Riley and his beloved Belgian, Annabelle. Despite the pressure to get another pup before she died, he refused. They say he was with her at the end. They don’t know he injected the needle. Kate understood why he couldn’t get another dog. He had been with Annabelle for ten years. Four years longer than his wife. She had never seen him interact with his wife’s unruly pup. Kate looked to Zeus. She couldn’t imagine bringing home another dog.

  Riley’s arm shot up in the air. It was time.

  She grabbed Zeus’s working vest from the truck and he fell in tight against her leg, assuming the heel position. She slipped the stiff Kevlar vest over his back and secured the straps across his belly and broad chest. She completed the task in under thirty seconds. No talking. No dallying. This was work. She strode to the edge of the field. She had trained Zeus for both tracking and air scent. He could alert for cadaver or survivor. It gave him versatility as a search-and-rescue dog. They had never failed a certification test.

  Near the burn barrel, Chris and Jake were sitting at the pump truck monitoring the fire. It was twenty-eight Celsius and they were wearing black T-shirts, turnout pants, and boots. The fire boys could have been posing for a calendar. She wondered who the volunteer victim was this week. There were three other dogs running. A German shepherd had already failed with an off-course. She was the only civilian without military training attempting qualifications today. Riley nodded and his arm dropped.

  She leaned over and patted Zeus’s lean, muscular side.

  “Find live,” she said and unleashed his lead.

  Zeus bolted forward. He huffed the air, making quick tight loops over the drought-stricken grass. He swept the open field in a grid pattern. In this stagnant heat, he would be working the updrafts. She kept pace behind him. He ignored the pumper truck crew, but she noticed the bob of his nose indicating their presence and his dismissal, as though he knew it was too easy. He kept course, not slowing or veering around the billowing smoke. She tasted gasoline and wood at the back of her throat.

  His head swung back and forth, his body leaned in, and his ears perked forward. His nose popped up. He was on a scent and she jogged to keep up. Her muscles responded with the easy lope of her daily two-mile runs. It was more than a scent he was following. A scent was the past, a memory. He was gathering a story assembled through pheromones, skin cells, follicles, bruised grass, snapped twigs, and the molecular compositions of man-made scents—the traces left behind.

  If he were trailing an animal, he would know the species, gender, and social order, alpha or follower. He’d be able to discern what paths it travelled, the food it ate, and whether it was friend, foe, or prey. Presumably, with a human he could smell the cheapness of their shoes, the sourness of their pants, the soap used, the scrape of a knee, nicotine on fingers, alcohol in pores, and the cancer in their bones. He could smell fear. And death. And weakness. He could smell narrative. She often wondered if he knew the outcome before he reached the ending.

  His ears twitched and she noticed the slight rotation of his head, widening his peripheral scope. He was working the scent cone, intent on his directive to find “live.” With a sharp bark, a thrust of his nose, and a sit, he indicated the objects on the ground as possible clues. She marked a sock, a glove, a ball—his eyes watched hers: this might be something. “Good boy,” she said.

  His path oscillated and the cone of his track narrowed. He zeroed in on the debris pile. Pacing the base of the massive, upturned cement blocks, he looked for a pathway up
and leapt. His hind legs clawed, his hocks knocked concrete, and he scrambled up and over. Kate’s knee clunked the ragged edge.

  Zeus nimbly treaded the twisted rebar, tangled wires, and large rocks that had been heaved up onto the loose boards and plywood sheets. Kate noted the clothing strewn about to condition her emotional fortitude—a pink floral dress, a plaid shirt, and a baby’s shoe. Zeus hopped over slabs driving upward to the ragged peak. The structure was more solid than it appeared.

  Kate was huffing. Her trail pants were damp and her long-sleeved shirt stuck to her chest. Her feet were broiling in her boots. Slung at her waist, two water bottles slapped bruises on her thigh. She smelled suntan lotion and body odour. Her lips were already dry. Zeus poked his nose into a crevice and inhaled. She watched his ears and tail. There was nothing here.

  The rescue organization she got him from had named him Zeus. He was from a litter of eleven found duct-taped in a box and left in a dumpster. Three had died. He had a border-collie brain and physique but his coat had the curl and wave of a spaniel’s. He was all black. His sleek racing body and spindly legs culminated in powerful haunches and a plumed, ever-alert tail. A black dog in the afternoon sun. He was panting.

  It had been her weekly routine to walk through the pens of quivering and yapping adoption candidates looking for something extraordinary in their eyes. Zeus was the most inquisitive, fearless, and confident of the litter. As the staff recounted the pups’ brief, sad history, she had surreptitiously run her own tests. Tests that gauged fear, drive, aggression, intelligence, curiosity, frustration—all gently concealed in the guise of belly rubs, head pats, and her fingers dancing across the floor. Commands designed as play. When the other pups had tired of her, Zeus remained, wanting more. It had taken only three hand gestures to teach him to sit, before he offered the behaviour unasked.