Through a crackling phoneline, he’s been able to piece together that Raven is missing. The sisters went to the bar last night and stayed longer than either had planned. Wren explained that when she came out of the bathroom, Raven was gone along with her purse.
“I was on hold for more than ten minutes when I called. What kind of emergency service is that?” Wren asks rhetorically. “And when I told the cops that my sister had vanished, they asked where we were. Like she was asking for trouble being in a bar, like it was typical for her to leave the bar without telling anyone. They even asked how much we had to drink and suggested that maybe there was some type of harmless romantic liaison.”
“And how much did you drink?” Lord asks, regretting it even as the words pass his lips.
“Probably too much to drive home,” Wren admits, dismissing any accusatory tone. “But I waited at the bar for hours, just in case she came back. I stayed until it closed, so by the time I left, I was sober.”
Wren had already made a mental note about the blue pickup with the offensive bull balls attached to its hitch. She remembered the plate number and reported it to police, just in case there was any sort of file on the owner. Wren can’t say if the person taking the call even wrote the information down. She just found it important to note though, because the truck was no longer parked beside her car when she went to check the parking lot for her sister. It was a fleeting thought, but she wondered if someone who’d make such a grotesque statement like that on his vehicle might be the type of person to hurt someone like Raven. It was a gut feeling only, but it was enough that it caused Wren to mention this detail to the police.
Wren tells Lord that she drove on the shoulder of the short highway back to the farmhouse in the valley.
“I wasn’t going more than forty kilometres. Makes it easier to see something when the speed is lower. I thought maybe she decided to walk because the night was so warm. We didn’t even have a breeze last night.”
Wren didn’t see anyone walking on the shoulder nor in the ditch. She doubled back and checked the streets in town, and then took a walk along the shoreline. By this time, the first light of day was appearing across the horizon and except for songbirds, everything was quiet. There was no traffic, no voices. The leaves on the trees didn’t move and even the lake was still.
“I didn’t sleep a wink,” Wren continues. “And then first thing this morning, I got on my bike and rode along the grid roads nearby.”
Wren neglects to tell Lord that she hit a pothole while out searching and riding. She lost balance and it caused her to swerve severely and crash into a tree. She wasn’t wearing a helmet, and when she awoke from unconsciousness later in the ditch, alone with the sound of crickets and wind, she felt dried blood on her scalp and hair. She was also dizzy and disoriented, and figured she must have been knocked out for some time. Wren has no memory of riding her bike out near the lagoon.
“I stopped in at the gas station as soon as it opened,” she tells Lord, “because as you know, if anything went down overnight that would be the first place where locals would be talking. But no one had heard a thing.”
Wren tells him she didn’t know what else to do but to call 911. Her heart broke when the police offered no help. That’s when Wren began sobbing over the phone.
“They told me it isn’t an emergency because Raven is not a child. The dispatcher even scolded me saying police don’t usually get involved in missing persons cases until at least twenty-four hours have passed. But I know something is wrong. I have real worries and there is no timeline. Why would they dismiss me like this?”
“So what are they doing now?” Lord asks. He can’t figure out how to comfort his wife over the telephone, and it makes him feel guilty, like he should have stayed home instead of going on this business trip. He knew how much it meant to Wren that her twin would be visiting, but he also wanted to give them some time alone to reconnect.
“The dispatcher says they’ll send someone out later today to take a statement. In the meantime, I don’t know what to do. I’ve called Raven’s cell about a hundred times but it keeps going to voicemail. I’m worried, Lord. It isn’t like her to just leave me.”
“I will fly home as soon as I can find a way back to the Calgary airport,” he volunteers, even though the inclement weather in the mountains has meant his business trip will be extended by at least a couple more days. He knows his suggestion to come home early leaves him at risk for losing this contract, especially if he leaves now.
“No.” It’s like Wren has read his thoughts. “You stay and finish. I’ll be okay. Maybe the police are right,” she says. “Maybe Raven just decided to go to a bonfire off the beaten path. Maybe at the Shithole, like we used to go to when we were teens. Maybe she started out there and will come back to the farmhouse smiling later today. I have to believe everything is going to be alright.”
The Shithole is what the local kids call a wooded area above the outdoor skating rink in the centre of town. There are no houses there, only a quiet gully where youth built a firepit and drink beer or smoke away from judgemental eyes. They sit on old abandoned car seats that were dragged in from the dump. It happens most weekends, and mostly it’s innocent and safe.
As Wren hangs up, she decides to make a few other calls to neighbours and friends in the vicinity. The more eyes, the better. They might be able to help her and if there’s any clue as to what happened to Raven, they’ll know where to look.
The first to arrive are the boys from down the road. They bring with them another cord of firewood which they unload and begin stacking beside Wren’s studio before she’s even able to offer them some coffee.
“Miss Raven has gone missing you say? How horrible.” The brothers offer to walk the creek bed that runs toward the lake. “We’ll walk the bike path, too, all the way back to town and we’ll double our way back through the ditch to your home, Miss,” says one.
It’s what they say next that makes Wren want to shout out in objection, and makes her heart sink. They tell her that dozens of volunteers gathered earlier this morning to start collecting trash along the highway for the annual community cleanup. Every piece of litter, or anything that isn’t part of the land, would wind up bagged and taken to the dump, including any clues that could shed light on Raven’s disappearance. Cleaned up and sanitized, like nothing is amiss.
Facing Truths
Wren has never truly been alone. That’s the reality of being a twin. They share the same birth story. Even through her pain today, Wren smiles when she thinks about how Raven would boast about being the “older” of the two. They were born eleven minutes apart.
In Raven, Wren had a loving playmate as a child and a precious confidante as a youth. They shared the same heart of spiritual connectedness but Wren is losing hope. It’s been days since the annual highway cleanup, since Raven disappeared, and nothing has come to light. The rcmp have nothing to add to the missing person’s report.
Raven has vanished, and even though dozens of volunteers from the town and surrounding farms have gathered as part of a search party, not one piece of evidence has surfaced. Friends and neighbours have scoured the pathway along the valley for miles, from the old Valeport meeting area all the way to Kinookimaw. A group of young girls walked the entire distance from the start of Highway 54 to the Highway 11 junction, finding nothing but old Tim Hortons coffee cups or discarded cigarette packs. Others got on bicycles to comb grid roads within a twenty-mile radius of the area, and boaters kept an eye on the shoreline, but nothing has progressed—nothing except the deepening of Wren’s sadness.
She’s lost a baby and now Raven is missing, too.
The rcmp made so little effort toward an active search. Wren still can’t believe the explanation she was given, that “maybe she ran off with a new love interest.”
“Happens all the time,” they’d said. “They usually show up later filled with excuses and a bad reputation
.” Assholes, thought Wren.
Wren knows that is not her sister. Raven is meticulous, not the type to ignore phone calls and certainly not one to cause others worry by not letting them know where she is. The only thing Wren has left is faith and prayer. She speaks to her kohkum often, seeking clarity and guidance. She asks for help from the Little People, those invisible spirit helpers, those guardian angels. She prays and wants to believe that everything will turn out well, but her hope is faltering.
Wren has stopped eating. It’s gotten to the point where Lord prepares food and sits with her, sometimes even feeding her just to make sure her body is nourished. Neighbours from the surrounding area do the same, bringing Wren homemade tourtière pies and smoked lake fish, just so they can have peace of mind that she’s ingesting something other than despair. It has been on everyone’s mind, and is the talk on coffee row each morning.
“That poor girl. I remember seeing her on the pathway with her bike almost every summer day when she was just a youngster,” Wren hears from neighbours over and over again. “I sure hope they find her.”
Raven’s disappearance was even mentioned and prayed for in the church during Sunday services. “Dear God,” they’d prayed. “Please keep this woman safe and help lead us to her whereabouts. We leave it in your loving hands. Amen.”
A story and photo were posted in the local newspaper, providing a reward for information leading to any details about what might have happened. Lord put the reward money in a trust fund the moment he returned home. Ten thousand dollars, a nice sum for just providing information, but still no answers.
Quickly, the days turn to weeks, then months. What police originally suggested—that Raven left voluntarily on a pleasure excursion—can’t be true. Neither her credit card nor her bank card have been used since that night at the bar.
Wren can’t sleep properly. Her baby left, her sister, has disappeared—she doesn’t even want to close her eyes. Every time she does, an image appears of her sister dressed in a flowing black chiffon dress that billows in the wind. Fingers of the warm summer breeze catch the tips of her hair as well, in slow motion, like the wings of a bird soaring in an updraft. Wren sometimes thinks about the baby, too, continuing to hope, but wondering if Raven is holding that little one now. Have you gone to the same place? Wren sobs at the very thought.
There won’t be another baby anytime soon. Wren has stopped allowing her husband to touch her in an intimate way. It’s just too painful to allow herself any type of joy. Instead, she stares out the kitchen window each morning, watching the brake lights on Lord’s vehicle as he leaves for his office in the city. She sends him with coffee in a to-go mug that she crafted in her pottery studio, but neither the coffee nor the mug is made with love. That was the essential ingredient for everything she did, but no more. She can’t find the strength to shake the grief. What used to make her happy has been replaced with nothing but grey.
Autumn arrives. The leaves slowly change and fall to the ground. Many weeks have passed with no word from or about Raven. Wren can’t help but think that once the trees become bare, her surroundings will finally match the state of her soul. She begins to wail. For the first time in her life, Wren is forced to walk alone. Her twin, the one who has been with her since conception, is gone and no one knows what happened. The light of hope that exists in her heart is dimming.
White Winter
Winter has arrived early. A soft snowfall covers the valley but does nothing to cleanse Wren’s spirit. She cannot shake her pain. How could something so bad happen to someone so good? Where is Raven? Wren walks and walks each day. It’s good exercise, though the activity is a reminder of those thousands of times that she walked with her sister up this bluff to gaze at the view from the top of the hill. By the time she returns to the farmhouse she is dripping, not with sweat but with tears she cannot seem to stop.
Wren finds herself unmotivated to do much of anything. She has lost her baby, lost her sister, and is now in jeopardy of losing her husband if she doesn’t get things together soon.
Three cords of wood are stacked, without a purpose, near the new outdoor kiln that Lord built months ago. Wren hasn’t been creating anything with her hands. She no longer cooks or bakes. She doesn’t clean the house. She hasn’t touched clay or paint. Today, there’s nothing on her mind but worry and despair, and it’s affecting her marriage. Lord has been supportive through it all, but still Wren worries.
Guilt is her constant companion. Every day, all she’s able to do is set the coffee for the morning then sit in the living room and wait. A hard but beautifully carved piece of furniture props her up as she stares out the window. Every morning, she is greeted by a dawn filled with questions and misery. Why did we go to bar that night? Why didn’t I stay with Raven? What could I have done? These are the queries she tortures herself with dozens of times every day. Always, there are no answers.
She no longer brushes her hair, just pulls it back into a ponytail each morning before managing to pull on the same ragged sweatshirt. It’s worn and old, a gift from Raven during their last year of high school—gold coloured, with an embroidered butterfly spreading its colourful wings. The sweatshirt brings her comfort, keeping her sister near in some way. She wears it as comfortably as an old memory.
Unanswered questions swirl around her head: Where did Raven go? Why have the police done nothing? Wren thinks of the constable’s words: “The security camera in the bar the night Raven disappeared did not pick up any clues.” A bouquet of hillbilly helium balloons obscured any footage that could have helped.
She hardly bathes anymore, even though soaking in a hot bath in her clawfoot tub used to calm her. Now, she can’t imagine enjoying even the simplest of luxuries.
Wren gets up, walking mindlessly around the house. Her thoughts go to a happy scene, even if it exists only as a wish. She imagines her sister holding her baby, kissing her and cradling the infant in her arms, as gently as someone would observe a Fabergé egg. By the time her reverie comes to an end, Wren finds she is no longer in the farmhouse but in her studio. She stares at the pottery piece she created from the remains of the fetus, and in this moment, something in Wren snaps like an elastic band stretched too far and nothing can ever be the same again. Throughout the winter, Wren’s heart breaks every time she sees or hears a raven squawking.
Wren’s thoughts turn to her husband, how much she absolutely loves him. She feels she is somehow committing acts of betrayal since she hasn’t let him touch her intimately in such a long time. Intimacy unearths bad memories, one in particular that she’d tried to forget. As she lies in bed each night, her husband tossing beside her, Wren can’t help but recall the man she first loved. Not “love” at all in retrospect, only someone who always called her baby, a generic term to mask that he couldn’t remember whom he was sleeping with.
Wren remembers the afternoon it happened, during her college years while her first-year university dorm-mate was away. Her boyfriend came over earlier than usual. Wren was feeling ill that day, but that didn’t stop him from locking the bedroom door behind him and hissing, “You’re going to get some of this,” while pulling out his erect penis. The man who called her baby violently entered Wren from behind. He grabbed her long hair the way a person holds a horse’s mane. She begged him to stop, begged him to stop hurting her. That’s when he slapped her on the side of the head so hard she thought blood would start dripping from her nose. He called her a bitch and a slut and told her she deserved nothing but a good boning.
When he finished, he pulled on his pants and left, leaving her in pain, bleeding, bruised and traumatized. Wren never saw him again. She never wanted to and vowed that if she ever ran into the bastard, he’d experience the same violation he’d inflicted on her. She vowed. That’s where she thought she’d left the memory, but it had now come back. Some things long buried can resurface and haunt.
Advice From a Friend
It is
another Saturday morning and Wren’s husband is doing the best he can to try and help his wife walk through her pain and move forward. He misses the smile and vibrant spirit of the woman he married, the woman who dances in the kitchen. Lord has cooked breakfast this morning: scrambled eggs and toast that he delivers on a platter to their bed, along with some advice.
“You need to start creating again,” he tells her. “You haven’t even used the new kiln I built for you and that worries me. You were so excited about it when we started building.”
Wren abruptly replies, “I need to tell you something, Lord.” She finally tells her husband that not only has she carried the heartbreak of Raven’s disappearance, she has also been coping with the loss of a baby. Their baby.
“I didn’t tell you because I thought you might reject me if you knew I wasn’t capable of carrying a child,” she sobs. Lord holds her tightly while she tries to explain further. “And I didn’t want to tell you about the pregnancy because everyone knows the first three months are the crucial months, but baby left me after only two and a half months. It happened late one night while you were sleeping.”
Wren wipes the tears from her face but she can’t look into her husband’s eyes, afraid they are too sad. He squeezes her tighter.
“Not your fault, my love. You had your reasons for wanting to keep the news to yourself. And then, Raven’s disappearance. I love you and you’ve been through too much.” Lord holds his wife and absorbs what she’s just told him. They lost a baby. He begins to weep and pulls his wife even closer. Wren buries her head in his chest.
“We can try again,” he promises. “We will try again.”
Lord feels guilt about the Magras family curse, or at least what he was told was a curse. No one can pass this threshold. They might carry disease. An irrational thought passes through his mind: Could the curse have caused the miscarriage? He spent his whole childhood without friendship and new experiences. He never had a sleepover or a movie night with friends. No hot dog roasts around a campfire in the backyard.
Bone Black Page 6