After another hesitation, Tristan clicked on the link even though he thought he recalled the events. He just wanted to make sure he wasn’t misremembering. As he read the article, his heart ached for Shayna and Timothy. A murder was bad enough, but for her husband to have been killed by the very people he’d been trying to help, must have been doubly awful.
He thought again about the wide-eyed excitement on Timothy’s face, but it wasn’t just his expression that lingered in Tristan’s memory. There were the emotions that had flitted across Shayna’s face. Indulgence. Sadness. Affection. Sorrow.
A knock on his door had him looking up from the laptop to find Holly standing in the doorway.
“Sorry to interrupt,” she said, “but there’s someone here who would like to ask you some questions.”
“Sure. I’ll be right there.” Tristan closed the browser window and pushed back from his desk. He’d save his thoughts on the mother-son duo for later.
Over the next several weeks, Tristan saw Timothy in his class each Sunday, and his mother when she came to drop him off and pick him up. Timothy had made a habit of sitting beside him at the beginning and the end of the service, eagerly sharing how his week had gone.
Try as he might, Tristan couldn’t keep the boy from gaining importance to him. Knowing that he had no father-figure in his life, Tristan couldn’t find it in him to keep Timothy at arm’s length. In fact, it was that knowledge—along with a kinship for being smaller and smarter than kids his age—that drove him to approach Shayna one Sunday in October when she came to pick up Timothy.
“Can I speak with you for a moment, Shayna?”
“Uh, sure.” She glanced down at where Timothy stood at her side, his hand in hers. “Is there something wrong?”
Suddenly, Tristan realized that perhaps what he wanted to ask her was best not presented in front of Timothy. “Actually, hang on.”
He pulled out his wallet and fished out one of the business cards he kept there. After pulling a pen from his shirt pocket, he scribbled his cell phone number on the back. He held it out to Shayna. “That’s my personal number. Would you mind giving me a call when you have a minute?”
“Okay,” she said, though she still looked perplexed by his request. Her brows drew together. “You’re sure there’s nothing wrong?”
Tristan smiled, hoping it would reassure her. “Very sure. I just want to ask you something.”
She gave a quick nod. “I’ll call you later.”
“Thank you,” Tristan said then watched as the two of them walked away.
Timothy cast him a look over his shoulder and gave a wave as they moved toward the doors that led from the gym. Tristan waved back with a smile.
Though he tried to keep from treating Timothy differently, it was difficult. It seemed that Timothy gravitated to Tristan as much as Tristan gravitated to him, which made keeping a distance between them a real challenge. Tristan wasn’t up for that challenge, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to be.
For some reason, God had brought Timothy into his life. Tristan just had to figure out what that reason was. To that end, he hoped that Shayna would call him and agree to what he wanted to ask of her.
Shayna waited until they were in the car before asking, “Is everything okay? Class was good?”
“It was good. We learned about Daniel in the lions’ den.” She heard the rustle of paper. “And I colored a picture of it.”
“We’ll have to hang it on the fridge when we get home.”
She wanted to ask him if he knew why his teacher wanted her to call him, but she didn’t. Most likely Timothy didn’t have a clue.
Once home, she heated up the spaghetti left over from the night before. Thankfully, Timothy wouldn’t complain about that particular repeat meal. Spaghetti was a favorite, one of a handful of meals he was guaranteed to eat.
It was just the two of them since Lisa had left the previous night for her monthly visit with her mom in Portage la Prairie, a town about an hour west of Winnipeg. She planned to be back later that night.
After they’d finished lunch and cleaned up, Shayna gave Timothy his tablet, and then the two of them settled into her bed together. Timothy wasn’t given to napping, but Shayna sure was, so she allowed him time on his tablet while she dozed. He knew better than to leave the room during that time.
“Maman?” Her name was accompanied by a gentle shake of her shoulder. “Are you awake?”
Shayna groaned as she shifted from her side onto her back. “I am, Bug.”
Timothy leaned over her, his face filling her vision. “You slept longer than usual.”
“Really?” Shayna grabbed her phone from the nightstand and blinked at its display. Sure enough. It had been a couple of hours instead of the one she usually slept on Sunday afternoons.
Now that Timothy was back in school, she’d been picking up extra shifts and squirreling away the money. For once, she was trying to get ahead financially. With her car on its last legs, she had to assume that sooner or later, it was either going to die completely or, at the very least, require some repairs which never seemed to be cheap.
“I’m hungry,” Timothy said. “Can I have a pack of goldfish?”
“Sure, sweetie,” Shayna said as she sat up.
Timothy handed her the tablet and scrambled off the end of the bed. Shayna moved more slowly, sometimes feeling decades older than she was. Losing her love and her dream for her future had done that to her. Timothy was the only thing that had kept her going. Where Lorne had once been her defender and protector, she’d had to become Timothy’s. She had never imagined that would be her role, and sometimes she didn’t feel at all equipped to fill it.
By the time she made it to the kitchen, Timothy was seated at the counter, a parade of goldfish in front of him, as well as a clean, empty cup. He picked one goldfish up and popped it into his mouth, chewing slowly and swallowing before doing it with the next in line. Shayna grabbed the jug of milk from the fridge and filled his cup.
“Want to go for a bike ride once you’re done?” Shayna asked as she put the milk away.
When Timothy nodded, she picked up her phone and went out onto the small balcony at the front of their townhouse. It looked out over the road that ran between the rows of townhouses, and though it wasn’t the best part of city, as the trees turned color with the arrival of fall, it held a beauty that brought her joy.
She pulled the card Tristan had given her from her pocket and stared at it for a moment before tapping in the number to place the call.
“Hello?”
“Tristan? This is Shayna Caron. Timothy’s mom.”
“Hi! Thanks so much for calling,” he said. “I’m sorry if I made you think something was wrong earlier. I just wanted to ask you something and thought maybe it was better not to do it in front of Timothy.”
That certainly got Shayna’s attention. “What was it you wanted to ask?”
“I know Timothy doesn’t play hockey, but I thought he might be interested in attending a game at the arena.”
“You want to take Timothy to a Jets’ game?”
“If you think he might like it. A friend of ours has a box for the game next Friday. A bunch of us will be attending, and I thought Timothy might like to join us.” He hesitated. “I didn’t want to ask in front of Timothy in case you would rather he didn’t go.”
Shayna looked down at the card in her hand, wondering about this man who wanted to spend time with her son. He was a virtual stranger, but Timothy liked him, so she wanted to trust him. But could she?
“I realize it’s a bit out of the ordinary since we just met, but you might not be aware that we have some mutual friends.”
“We do?” Shayna supposed that since they attended the same church, that wasn’t as much a surprise as it might have been otherwise.
“Noella, Erin, and Tennyson are friends of our family. They mentioned knowing you and your husband.”
Shayna looked up, her gaze focusing on a couple of people walking up to one of the other townhouses before they disappeared inside. It had been a while since she’d heard those names. They had been friends of Lorne more than hers. He had stayed in the same foster home as they had right before he’d aged out of the system. They hadn’t kicked him out like a lot of others might have, but when she’d run away for the second time, he’d left that home to be with her. To protect her.
Lorne’s three friends had felt that was a bad decision on his part since he’d ended up back on the street with her. They had thought that if things were really that bad at her house, she would have gone into care. Because she hadn’t been part of the foster system, they’d decided that her situation hadn’t warranted her running away like she did.
They hadn’t seemed to understand that not all abuse left bruises or broken bones. Not all abuse included neglect of a child’s basic needs. Sometimes, there were other things that made a home feel uninhabitable to a child.
“Yes. They were friends of Lorne’s. I haven’t talked with them in a while.” Since Lorne’s funeral to be exact. They had tried to contact her afterward, but knowing what they thought of her, she hadn’t been in any frame of mind to talk to them. Instead, she’d turned to Lisa who had stepped in to help her with Timothy in those early days and all the ones since.
“I understand if you’re not comfortable with the idea, but I figured it would be worth a try.”
“Can I think about it?” Shayna asked, not wanting to say yes just yet, but not wanting to turn down the offer right away either.
“Of course,” Tristan said without hesitation.
Grateful for the reprieve of having to answer right away, Shayna thanked him. “I’ll give you a call one way or the other.”
“Thank you. I’ll talk to you soon.”
After saying goodbye, Shayna lowered the phone and held it against her thigh as she considered Tristan’s request. Since Lorne’s death, the only person she’d ever let spend time with Timothy without her—aside from school and church—was Lisa.
Timothy spoke a lot about Tristan and how he’d stood up for him that first Sunday in their class when some kid had teased him about being smart. It wasn’t the first time bullying had happened, but it had been the first time someone had been there to stand up for him.
In the weeks since, Tristan seemed to have turned the situation in the class around, to the point where Timothy considered a couple of the other boys as friends. That in and of itself was a blessing. Even at school, he had a hard time making friends. Teasing happened out of the sight and hearing of the teachers, but it happened enough to make a place of learning—where Timothy should have flourished—into a place he didn’t want to go to.
The sliding door opened behind her. “Maman? Can I go ride now?”
Shayna turned to him with a smile, putting her conversation with Tristan aside for the time being. “Yep. Let’s go.”
They walked down the stairs to where his bike and helmet were stored in the garage. Lorne had been planning to teach him how to ride, but he’d never gotten the chance. Not overly given to sports herself, Shayna had put off teaching him because he hadn’t been interested until a few months ago. It had taken all summer for him to learn.
She walked behind him as they moved down the road between the townhouses then onto the sidewalk that ran along the street. It was a walk they made each weekend, sometimes twice a weekend, but it wouldn’t be long before they’d have to put the bike away. Snow and colder temperatures could come as early as the end of October which was just three weeks away.
And with the snow came a holiday season that she found difficult. Thanksgiving had already passed—a quiet holiday that they’d spent with Lisa and her mom. Christmas was always difficult without Lorne. With him, she and Timothy had been a family. It might have been a small family, but the three of them had been enough. And their family had been growing with another baby on the way. But in a single moment, Timothy had lost his father, and in the days following that, she’d lost their baby girl. Their growing family of four had been halved, leaving just her and Timothy.
Feeling herself edge closer to the cliff of grief that always seemed to run parallel to her life most days, Shayna focused instead on Timothy. As usual, he was enough to pull her back on course, leaving the cliff’s edge in her periphery for the time being.