Page 7
“Ah, that explains your accent.”
“Yeah, it’s a strange mix.” Pouring a teaspoon of sugar in his coffee, Oliver promptly plunged the cutlery into the light brown liquid and stirred vigorously. “Bit Swedish, bit English, a whole lotta complicated.”
“I think it sounds nice,” she said.
Oliver grinned into his swirling beverage. “Thanks.”
She picked up her coffee pot. “Well, if you need anything else, let me know, okay?”
Looking up, he rested the spoon on his cup’s saucer. “I will. Thank you.”
The waitress headed off toward a grey-haired couple eating French toast and crepes, and Oliver took a careful sip. Well, that’s one embarrassment averted. He set down his cup and started writing Rafferty’s postcard again.
Remember the bar I told you about? It’s down the street.
HONK! HONK! HONK!…
The piercing car alarm made Oliver jump. He narrowed his eyes as the young hockey players loitering on the other side of Carlton Street covered their ears, barely avoiding a glass door flung wide open. Built like a linebacker, the besuited culprit bolted from the arena’s lobby with a car fob in his grip, his momentum nearly knocking over a young boy in a Leafs jersey walking hand in hand with his father. The man hugged the child close and berated the car’s owner, his displeasure eliciting a pained expression from the businessman and what looked like several apologies as the shrill alarm died mid-wail.
Oliver’s stare lingered as the father smoothed the little boy’s hair and they continued on, chatting away. Lucky kid, being loved and protected like that. Swallowing hard, he pressed pen to postcard again.
My father could walk by at any moment. I know I said I want to meet him, but I’m not sure I’m ready.
Whoops. So much for not writing anything too personal.
Exhaling heavily, Oliver turned over the postcard and abandoned his pen on the table. When he was three-thousand-plus miles away in London, the idea of confronting Will McNally, the former hockey star who had abandoned his mother pregnant and alone in Sweden, was something he needed to do. For closure. For peace of mind. For her. But now, living and working in Toronto with only a city block stood between his apartment rental and his estranged father’s bar, Oliver’s goal loomed ominously, daunting and insurmountable.
Too close for comfort.
I don’t know if I’m cut out for this.
Oliver nudged his half-eaten plate of pancakes away and caught the eye of the waitress/teacher carrying multiple orders of steak and eggs. He held his hand up, mouthing Bill, please, and she nodded before heading off in the opposite direction.
Removing his wallet from his jacket, Oliver lit up with the one positive he could dig up. If I did bump into my biological father, we probably wouldn’t recognize one another. His mother had stopped sending photos when Will’s child support payments petered out, sometime around his ninth birthday. The change in financial assistance and communication also coincided with a change in name. Feeling no loyalty to his stranger of a father, he discarded the given name William, which he shared with his deadbeat dad, in favour of Oliver, his maternal grandfather’s name.
He’d never felt like a William anyway, and while the switcheroo did wonders for his self-esteem, it didn’t alleviate a nagging question, one that still bothered him as an adult: What did Will Sr. do with those childhood pictures? Did he keep them, toss them? Hide them from his new family?
If he had one. Maybe he had another son.
Oliver scrubbed both hands over his face. Maybe some things were better left buried.
“When you’re ready, ’kay?”
Blinking, he roused a tight-lipped smile for the waitress as she placed a small, plastic tray with his bill on the table. “Thanks.” He glanced at the $5.74 on the curled receipt, flipped open his wallet, and laid his credit card on top. “Sorry. I didn’t have a chance to run to the bank.”
“Credit’s fine.” Her expression was non-judgmental as she reclaimed the tray. “I’ll be right back.” Without hesitation, she dashed off toward the cash register.
In her absence, Oliver pulled the last Canadian bills from his wallet, a pair of terra-cotta-hued two-dollar notes featuring a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II on the front and robins on the back. He anchored the tip for her service beneath the sugar dispenser and sat back, his unfocused gaze taking no notice of the red and cream-coloured streetcar passing outside or the chain-smoking ticket scalper stalking the exterior of the Gardens, his craggy “Who needs tickets?” sales pitch reeling in a trio of long-haired customers in painted-on faded jeans and leather jackets.
Oliver fiddled with his shirt’s scratchy tag again. I rushed into this. All of it—the job, my plan to meet Will. Hasty or not, he had signed a contract dedicating a year to Toronto and the museum.
A baby’s cry snapped Oliver back into the room. The empty table next to him was now filled with a young mother and her daughter while a large party of loud twenty-something males in denim, several with their faces painted silver and white, gathered by the hostess’s desk waiting for a booth. Had Halloween come early? Oliver glanced away, trying not to be intrusive, but his focus bounced back, curiosity getting the best of him.
“Sorry for the wait.” The waitress left the tray with Oliver’s credit card, the receipt, and a scattering of cellophane-wrapped mints beside his plate.
“This place is popular today.”
“Yep.” She swiped the heel of her hand across her glistening forehead. “Always is when something’s on at the Gardens.”
