The Middle Ground Read online

“Is this what you want then?” he said, like a petulant child.

  “Better me than her,” I said. I raised my hands.

  “Oh, Missy, such a hero.”

  “What about all the stuff you said, about me making you change, giving us a chance at something new? What about your brother?”

  “I don’t even have a brother. I’m just making this up as we go. I just wanted us to leave and start a new life. And now you’re fucking it all up. I had a plan, Missy. See what I mean? Someone always fucks it up. I had it settled until you interrupted.”

  We heard the sirens first. Then flashing red and blue lights filled the parking lot.

  “What about Andrea? What if she’s watching you right now?”

  “She’s dead, Missy. It doesn’t matter anymore. Plus, she was no saint. She would be in the car right now, keeping the engine running.”

  So that’s what they were. They worked together. He missed his accomplice.

  “Give me the gun.”

  “No.”

  “Let people go. Let the women go, at least, the kids. C’mon.”

  He stayed silent.

  “Keep the gun on me, and let everyone go.”

  He nodded. “Okay, everyone walk out slowly!” he yelled, as if it was his idea.

  Slowly, people started getting up, unsure if they were making the right decision. A few brave ones lifted their arms and started running toward the door. They filed out. The whole time, Red’s eyes were locked on mine.

  “Baby, you said you believed in me, trusted me…”

  Then two cops barged in the door.

  He still had the gun on me.

  “Put down your weapon, we can work this out,” said the first cop.

  “Don’t hurt me, please,” came out of my mouth, weakly. Red shook his head back and forth.

  “Put down the weapon or we will have to shoot,” the other cop said. “It’s over.”

  I watched Roger look at me for a long second, his eyes black marbles of nothingness. Then he slowly lowered the gun to his side. Both cops ran toward him. Just as they reached him, he raised the gun and pulled the trigger.

  * * *

  I woke up on a stretcher. Someone was yelling at me…a paramedic.

  “What’s your name?” he kept yelling.

  I tried to answer his question.

  “What happened? What happened?” I asked.

  “You were shot,” the young man said. “In the arm. You’re going to be okay. But you hit your head when you fell. Just hang in there.”

  “What happened to the man who shot me?”

  “They’ve arrested him.”

  Then everything went white. I could still hear a roaring sound and the clicking of instruments. I grabbed someone’s hand and held on.

  I woke up in the hospital. Beside my bed stood a very curious lady cop who had a lot of questions for me.

  EPILOGUE

  It’s the day before Mike comes home. Dale is finishing some touch-ups on the back deck. The reporters have stopped hounding me, and my arm has healed. I’m lying on a deck chair on the grass out back. Simon is snuggled at my feet, washing his face with a curled paw. Dale works silently, every once in a while glancing up to smile.

  I’m leafing through Mike’s last letter home. He’s fallen in love with a girl named Lisa, who likes to ride BMX bikes and lives a hundred miles away.

  Next door, Lydia’s soon-to-be-ex husband and his new girlfriend wave, and then continue to covertly whisper about me behind the barbeque.

  The rumors of my crazy breakdown— running off with a criminal and getting arrested—do not seem to have lost their appeal to anyone yet. My sister’s been great as a supporter. My parents, though, are still struggling to understand what happened. In all honesty, so am I. Dale’s been staying with his parents for most of the summer, but he slept over last night. We’re trying to work things out. And figure out what to tell Michael in the meantime. We want to make sure he’s prepared to go to school, with what must be going around. It’s actually kind of a relief to not have to talk about us for a change. Just focus on our kid’s happiness, something much less complicated than adult happiness.

  In a few months there will be a court date for Red, and I have to testify against him. Of course, I confessed to everything. My lawyer argued that I’d been unwilling to see myself as a victim when Red held up the café. That I’d suffered some version of the Stockholm syndrome. They let me off with probation, community service and mandatory counseling.

  The weirdest thing is, sometimes I think about Red in prison and I feel bad. After everything he did, I still feel some compassion. Like he’s some one-eyed kitten who can’t stop hurting himself. I know this is crazy. I’m still absorbing it all. I think I’ve still got a ways to go. The truth is, I never knew him at all. My therapist suggests he’s not knowable. I think she’s probably right. It was my therapist who suggested I write everything down. Every moment I didn’t understand. Try to lay it all out in front of me. Try to make sense of it all. Some day maybe.

  It’s fitting, I suppose, that Mike is on his way home. And I’m slowly starting to trust Dale again. The days are getting shorter. I feel like I’m almost back in the middle of a normal life. And I’ve reached the end of this notebook.

  ZOE WHITTALL is the author of five books, most recently the critically acclaimed Holding Still For As Long As Possible and Bottle Rocket Hearts, a Globe and Mail Best Book of 2007. She has a master’s degree from the University of Guelph. Originally from Quebec, she has lived in Toronto since 1997.