The Wandering Soul Murders Read Online Free

of the sprinklers watering the new geraniums and the sounds of kids playing Frisbee.
    Bernice Morin’s death and the tapes of the Little Flower victims were fresh wounds, but the problem that dogged me as we walked around the old high school was five months old.
    That morning when Mieka had called and asked me to come down to the shop was the first time she had turned to me since January. The rupture had begun when she dropped out of school in Saskatoon and used the fund her father and I had set up for university to buy a catering business called Judgements. Despite my predictions, Judgements had caught on like wildfire, and when the chance came to open a sister business in Regina, Mieka hadn’t missed a beat. She drew up estimates on how much it would cost to lease and renovate space in Old City Hall, then she went to her fiancé’s mother, Lorraine Harris, and borrowed the money. It wasn’t until the papers were signed that she told me what she’d done. I’d been furious: furious at Mieka for getting in over her head and furious at Lorraine Harris for letting her get in over her head. And something else: I was jealous, jealous that Mieka had gone to Greg’s mother rather than coming to me.
    We loved each other too much to risk a no-holds-barred confrontation, but there had been some troubled weeks. Then, when we came back to Regina, I’d asked Mieka to move home. It seemed like a good idea all around. With two new businesses and a September wedding, Mieka’s life was pressing in on her. I thought being with me and the kids and having the details of day-to-day living taken care of would help her deal with the demands of the summer. For me, of course, it meant a chance to get our relationship back to the old closeness. The perfect solution to everybody’s problems. But, like a lot of perfect solutions, this one hadn’t worked.
    Mieka had changed. She was a woman and, in many respects, a stranger. In my more honest moments, I knew it was wrong to want her to be the sweet, pliable girl she had been at eighteen. Twenty times a day, I repeated C.P. Snow’s line that the love between a parent and a child is the only love that must grow toward separation. Every morning I woke up determined to be open and reasonable, and every night I went to bed knowing I had been neither. My only justification was that I believed I was right. In my heart, I felt my daughter had chosen the wrong path.
    That night, as I looked at Mieka’s profile, so familiar and so dear, somehow being right didn’t seem important any more.
    As if she had read my mind, Mieka turned. “Was John Lennon the one who said, ‘There’s nothing like death to put life in perspective’?”
    I smiled at her. “I don’t know, but whoever said it, it’s a good thought.”
    Her eyes filled with tears. “I’m sorry things have been bad between us, Mummy.”
    That was when I started to cry. “Oh, Miek, I’m sorry, too. All I ever wanted was what was best for you.”
    Mieka reached in her pocket, pulled out a Kleenex and handed it to me. “Peace offering,” she said. Then she smiled. “Do you remember that time Peter decided to take up wrestling?”
    “Some of my darkest hours as a mother.”
    “But you let him. I remember you went to all his matches.”
    “Including the one where your brother got knocked unconscious. I’m still proud of the fact that I didn’t jump in the ring that night and cradle him in my arms.”
    Mieka took my hand. “That must have been hard for you. You’re not exactly deficient in the motherly instincts department, you know.”
    I turned to look at her. “I take it you’d like me to work on suppressing those instincts for a while.”
    “Yeah, Mum, I would.” Her voice was strong and determined. “I want my chance. I know I may get flattened, but I have to try.”
    I gave her hand a squeeze. “One good thing about me,” I said, “I always know when I’m licked.”
    Mieka smiled. “Don’t think of it as being