by Jan O'Hara
Knowing these things was a gift, so even if she had to pursue them without Oliver, how could she regret?
She thought it through until she was at peace, until her body slipped into a dreamless slumber that lasted a few hours. Then, with the winter dawn about to break, and the outside world a crystalline palace, she wrapped her scarf around her neck, picked up her backpack, and set out from the Thurston’s front door. She had one last date with her Nan.
Chapter 28
Oliver woke, shivering and alone in the benches, but with a heart lighter than a helium-filled balloon. Was this what it was like to greet the morning with a clear conscience, with a hopeful expectation for the future? It had been so long since he felt this way, he’d forgotten.
He poked his head out from under the space blanket. The light in the east said it was just touching dawn, and the wind no longer whipped past the gazebo like a demented honey badger. One way or another, Oliver would see Page today, in person.
He found Mr. Lee and Bart seated on the hearth, the fire crackling between them. They had lit the small camping lantern, which added a cheerful, steady glow to the space, and were each bent over their laps and a pile of twigs and twine.
“What, in blazing thunder, are you doing?” Oliver said. They looked like two kids at summer camp, setting up for a leisurely day of arts and crafts.
“Constructin’ snowshoes,” Bart said, and bent to his work. “Always wanted to learn how to do this. Vince, pass the knife, will ya?” Bart snapped his fingers and, unbelievably, Mr. Lee grunted and obeyed.
Snowshoes?
Vince?
“Looks like a lot of effort,” Oliver said, thinking, You two are freaking crazy. “I’ll try my phone and see if the Thurston can send help.”
“Already called,” Bart said. “They’ve got a guy comin’ with a snowblower. Eventually. But the town roads are so bad he ain’t gonna be fast. And since we have shelter, we’re low men on the totem pole.”
Oliver strode around the gazebo to see what they were up against. If there was any way out sooner, he’d be taking it.
Snow had plastered itself to the north and west windows of the gazebo, making it impossible to discern anything beyond the glass. To the east, the valley fell away in a landscape of pristine white, where nothing moved and normal landmarks were erased. Trees were amorphous blobs. You couldn’t even make out where the railway ran. To the south, towards the Thurston, the view consisted of snow-laden branches.
He wrenched open the door and stepped outside, pulling in a lungful of bracing air as he surveyed the scene.
It didn’t appear to have snowed that much, but the distribution was a real problem. Where Bart and Mr. Lee had been earlier to cut their twigs and branches, the snow was hip-deep, at least. Beyond the arbor, the wind had carved and caressed the snow into a drift as tall as his ears.
The need to see Page rose up overwhelmingly.
Oliver went back inside and paced. “You don’t think we can muscle our way through the drifts?” he asked Mr. Lee after a time.
“You’re learning to ask. That’s an improvement over yesterday,” Mr. Lee said. “But no. Neither of you has moisture-repellent clothing or layers. And since you’re without a hat, and since we’re going to be at it awhile, Bart and I think this best.”
Bart looked up to give Oliver a smug grin.
Oliver paced some more.
“I was under the impression you are in a hurry,” Mr. Lee said to Oliver, before peering closely at Bart’s work. He shook his head and demonstrated something with the twine, which Bart tried to emulate.
Oliver ran his hands through his hair. “I am.”
“To go fast, Oliver, sometimes you must go slow,” Mr. Lee said.
Oliver didn’t know whether to laugh or groan or lie down on the floor and beat his already damaged head on the boards. What had he been saying to Page—no, insisting upon? My speed. My timing.
How arrogant, how optimistic, how misguided.
How utterly pre-Harmony.
Oliver detached the space blanket from their temporary shelter. He pushed and tugged and grunted until one bench faced the light and the fire. He draped the blanket over his legs. As Mr. Lee raised an inquiring brow, Oliver said, “I’m ready. Show me what to do.”
* * *
✽
Oliver knew he was a sight, what with the snow tumbling off his boots to the ballroom carpet, and his pants being wet to his knees. All the same, he hadn’t expected the reception he was currently being given by the seniors.
Upon seeing him panting in the doorway, they had risen to face him, and by dint of feet, canes, and walkers, slowly moved to encircle him.
Was it his imagination, or did their silence have a censorious quality? The circle felt almost… claustrophobic.
“I know I’m a mess but I didn’t have time for a shower,” Oliver said when he caught his breath. He rose up on his toes, peering over and around them as best he could. Where was Page?
His glasses were fogging up, so he tossed them onto the end of the buffet table and tried again.
“You upset that gal,” Mrs. Horton said in an accusing tone. She brandished her cane like a sword, the end of it coming to rest on his chest where she used it to punctuate her words. “You are a very. Inconsiderate. Young. Man.”
Oliver knew he was under-fueled, but his brain couldn’t seem to catch up. He gently pried Mrs. Horton’s cane from his chest and set it on the carpet. Dang, that had hurt. And ruined his coat. “Upset Page? But I wrote her a note.”
“Yes, you did.” This outburst came from Mrs. Patel, who was quite possibly the most benign and generous person Oliver had met in his life. He definitely wasn’t imagining things. Mrs. Patel was so angry she wouldn’t look at him.
“You made her leave,” came from Mrs. Summers.
“How could you, Oliver?” from Mr. Conker.
“We liked Page,” said Mrs. Shevchenko. “If somebody had to go, it shouldn’t be her.”
“Go? Who’s going?” Oliver said in real alarm.
Paul Dubois, looking skeptical, finally took pity on Oliver and thrust a wrinkled, yellow note into his hands.
Oliver scanned it quickly. “But, this isn’t what I said. I mean, it is what I said, but it’s missing entire phrases. All the good bits.”
They weren’t convinced. He could see it in the set jaws, the down-turned mouths, the narrowed eyes.
Oliver didn’t know what he would have done next, but thankfully, Bart pushed his way into the circle. He plucked the letter from Oliver’s unresisting hands.
“He’s right,” Bart said after a time. Bart thwacked the paper. “I was listenin’ and this ain’t what he dictated. It was twice as long. And poetic. Poetic for Oliver, anyway.”
The seniors looked unmoved.
“This part here?” Bart said. “‘I can’t keep doin’ this’? That was supposed to be ‘I can’t keep doin’ this to you. To us. Please forgive me.’ And ‘think it’s best if we part’? That was something like ‘think it’s best if we spend time alone together when we part ways with the seniors.’”
Oliver and Bart looked at each other. “Phone glitches,” they said in unison.
Mrs. Patel was beginning to relent. “The lights were behaving very oddly last night. Very oddly, indeed. Oliver, do you swear this to me? You meant to keep Page with us?”
Oliver put his hands over his heart. “Mrs. Patel, everyone, I swear this note was meant to reassure her. I love the woman. I came here—on homemade snowshoes—to ask her to marry me.”
From the doorway, Gill said, “Then you better act quickly. She left a couple of hours ago.”
Chapter 29
From the vantage point of the Thurston parking lot, Oliver stared out at Harmony, Mr. Lee and Bart at his side.
The town was at a complete standstill, having been unprepared for the speed and viciousness with which the storm had struck. Abandoned cars littered Main Street, buried in drifts of snow. Across the road, t
he west side of the real estate office looked like it had been sprayed with fire retardant.
Citizens and business owners were tackling the mess with shovels, snowblowers, and brooms. They looked as effective as an ant army attempting to shift a desert.
“On the plus side,” Bart said, “she ain’t goin’ nowhere. She’s probably hunkered down, eating breakfast. We could do the same. Set up a checkstop to the highway when it opens, instead of chasing all over town.”
“Sure. The RCMP will love your approach,” Oliver said dryly. “Besides, you don’t know my Page. If there’s a quicker way out, she’ll find it.” She would be hell-bent on reaching English Bay by tomorrow. “Think unconventional.”
“How do you want to organize this?” Mr. Lee asked. “Search grid?”
Oliver shot him a grateful look. Without Mr. Lee and Bart to help, this would be an impossible task. Even with them, the odds of finding Page weren’t great.
Oliver understood Mr. Lee’s ongoing presence. Unless he was moving, the guy radiated unspent energy and boredom.
But as for Bart… Oliver was still trying to figure out his motivation. The guy was indisputably here and invested, fighting alongside Oliver for Oliver’s future. Perhaps Bart was staving off boredom, too. Or perhaps he was constitutionally incapable of uttering an apology, and had decided to let actions substitute for words.
Whatever the case, if it would help Oliver locate Page, he was beyond grateful.
“Let’s split up,” Oliver said. “Start by following the most likely footprints—the ones heading away from the Thurston.”
That left a dismaying number of trails already intersected by rabbit and bird tracks, and early attempts at shoveling.
“Don’t s’pose you know anything about her boot treads, and such?” said Bart. “To narrow down the possibilities.”
Oliver closed his eyes and racked his brain for anything useful. “Her feet are medium-sized. And her boots don’t have a separate heel. That’s about all I got.”
“Okay, then,” Bart said, and set off with a cheerful whistle.
While Bart and Mr. Lee headed east and north respectively, Oliver headed west, stopping to ask everybody who was outside if they’d caught sight of Page. No one recalled seeing a woman matching her description. Unfortunately, Page’s most distinctive feature, her hair, would almost certainly have been covered by her hat.
Oliver was within a half-block of Tech and Tock when his eyes latched onto a trail of smallish bootprints. He couldn’t say why, but they seemed familiar, felt right.
On a hunch, when they veered north at Sleek Chic, he followed them. Another hundred feet and the footsteps were joined and intertwined with those made by a small creature. A cat.
He thought back to the trip’s first day, when Oliver had been chasing a small feline as Page sneaked into the luggage hold. And the second day, when he’d found the collarless cat loitering outside Mrs. Horton’s door.
These were Page’s bootprints. They had to be. She was a cat-attractor and a storm-attractor and most definitely an Oliver-attractor. The magnet to his metal.
The relief gave him a surge of adrenaline and he put on some speed, following the footprints as they turned the corner. Another hundred feet, and he found her trail meshing with that of another entity. Only this one made his blood run cold and his stomach drop. Snowmobile tracks. Page had hopped aboard a snowmobile.
Oliver had a bad feeling he knew who was driving.
* * *
✽
Unless Oliver was willing to end up stranded in the outdoors, miles from nowhere, it seemed pointless and potentially dangerous to follow a snowmobile on foot, and without a strategy. He needed help. He needed access to someone with insight into Curtis’s probable location. For practical purposes, at this time of day, that could only mean Teague.
Miraculously, Oliver’s phone was working and allowed him to connect with Bart and Mr. Lee, who agreed to meet him at Mountain Jewel Sports. It was a long shot, but Teague seemed like a hands-on kind of owner—one who wouldn’t sit idly by while his employees handled storm cleanup.
Sure enough, Teague was out on his front sidewalk with one of his assistants, whose name, Oliver vaguely remembered, had something to do with cheese.
Grater? Slicer? No, Shredder.
As he worked a snow shovel, Teague had stripped to a down-filled vest, long-sleeved polo, and gloves. His parka hung from the handle of another shovel, which stood wedged in the snow. He jerked his head toward Oliver’s snowshoes as Oliver clomped up. Teague flashed a grin. “Unorthodox, but I approve.”
“Yeah, well you do what you gotta do,” Oliver said, then as briefly as possible explained what was going on, and what he needed. He didn’t miss the quick glance of concern Teague and Shredder exchanged when Oliver mentioned Curtis’s name.
“Snowmobile in town?” Teague said. “Yeah, that sounds like Curtis, all right.”
“Definitely,” Shredder said. “Last week he drove across lawns in my neighborhood. Ruined a bunch of hedges.”
“If Page is with him, where would he take her?” Oliver said, as Mr. Lee and Bart arrived.
Teague greeted them with a nod. “Back to his apartment, maybe. It’s not far from here. I’ll get you a map.” Teague had his keys out and was halfway turned to his store when he paused and cocked his head. “Wait. You said she’ll be doing anything she can to get out of town?”
“Definitely,” Oliver said.
“And she’ll be headed west?”
Oliver nodded. “One hundred percent.”
“Then I think I know where she is.” Teague turned to his assistant. “Call the train station. See if Curtis is working today.”
Shredder nodded and pulled out his cell phone.
“I thought the trains couldn’t run until the track is cleared,” Oliver said.
“True,” Teague said, “which is why you’ll want to see this.” He led the slog across Main Street to where Teague, Page and Oliver had stood a few nights before, debating tour options.
Though he was looking at it from a different angle, the valley remained unchanged from when Oliver surveyed it that morning—with one noticeable exception. Approaching slowly from the east, spewing mountains of snow in its wake, was what could only be described as an engineering marvel.
“A train plow,” Oliver said, as Shredder arrived and nodded at Teague.
“Curtis is on shift, heading for Banff. He’s not supposed to have anybody with him, but we all know that wouldn’t stop him.”
Or Page, Oliver thought.
“Also,” Shredder continued, “I called Jim’s place on a hunch.” When he saw Oliver’s puzzlement, Shredder said, “The landscaping place up the road. The owner saw Curtis go past this morning, on his snowmobile. He definitely had a female passenger.”
So that’s it, then, Oliver thought. Page was on that plow, riding it straight out of town. Even before Oliver could reach the highway, she would arrive in Banff and be settling on her next form of transportation—hot air balloon, maybe, this time. Or dog sled. Whatever method she chose, it wouldn’t be long until she would slip away, lost to Oliver forever.
“Is there any way to intercept them?” Oliver asked.
Teague’s laugh held no humor. “Not unless you’re crazy.”
Given the terrain, Oliver couldn’t argue with his assessment.
“I don’t suppose you have a snowmobile yourself,” Mr. Lee said.
“Uh, no,” Teague said.
Snowshoes would be ridiculously slow. “Toboggan? Tube ride?” Oliver asked.
Teague shook his head. “No control. See those boulders and trees? You have to be able to steer around them, not to mention clear the creek.”
“What about skiing?” Oliver asked.
“Are you a black diamond skier?” Shredder asked.
“Not a chance,” Bart said. “He’s a desert man.”
“Well, I am,” Teague said, “and I wouldn’t risk it. Besides, even if you na
vigate all the obstacles, if you run out of momentum and miss the plow, you’d be stranded in a sea of snow. Then what?” Teague shook his head. “No. Be smart. Wait for the highway to open up. Or chase her on the next train out.”
Oliver wanted to sink to his knees and howl. Teague was being rational and thoughtful and helpful, but he hadn’t considered Oliver’s responsibilities. Oliver couldn’t simply gallivant off, via locomotive. He had to think of the oldsters.
Oliver gave a bitter-sweet smile. Oldsters. Now Page even had him thinking it. He jumped when Bart smacked him on the belly.
“Look, O-man. It’s slowin’.”
The plow was more than slowing. It was coming to a halt.
Oliver looked to Teague. “Why would they stop like that?”
“Barring mechanical problems, no good reason I can think of,” Teague said grimly.
Meaning, if Oliver followed his drift, that while Curtis was driving, his hands were too busy for anything else, and it was the anything else Curtis was known and reviled for.
“Vince, do you have binoculars in your backpack?” Oliver asked. He kept his eyes trained on the plow, which remained stationary, and felt something hit his palm. As he leveled the lenses and adjusted them, the train swam into view.
The visible windows of the plow were tiny, and partly fogged, but Oliver could see enough to get a sense of movement within. And there—right there for a moment of time, for long enough to get the gist of the interaction—he saw Page in profile. She was backing up. Following on her heels, with no respect for her personal space, was Curtis.
Stationary, in the middle of the meadow, in the company of the wrong person, the plow would be nothing more than a well-engineered prison.
Chapter 30
For a while after the train plow left the station, Page was filled with the exhilaration of being aboard such a beast. It didn’t move particularly swiftly, but that it could move at all was a miracle. It advanced steadily across the frozen expanse, effortlessly swatting aside tons of snow like a land-based icebreaker. And here she sat, with a ringside seat to all that power.