When the sun had gone down and the only light was at the horizon, she left a note for Nicholas and Hannah on the door, and she and Peter walked to his pickup, which he’d left in front of the office. He helped Estella up to the passenger seat and they drove to the marina and parked in the empty lot. They could see The Travellers Hotel beyond the beach, and Estella wondered if the boat’s new owner was keeping an eye on his purchase, but she thought it was too far to see in the darkness. Peter took her arm as she climbed the few wooden steps up onto the pier, and she saw that two people were already there, looking at the paddlewheeler. A man and a child. They were talking, and at first they didn’t see Estella and Peter, but then the man turned toward them when he heard their footsteps, and they saw that it was Nicholas and Hannah. Nicholas had a shopping bag in his hand, as though they had been to the store on their walk. Estella remembered that they needed milk for breakfast.
Peter had a flashlight with him, and when he switched it on they could see how shabby the boat looked, with paint peeling and the letters of her name faded out.
Nicholas said, “So I guess she’s seen her last cruise, then, has she?”
“Not quite,” Peter said. He hefted himself from the pier onto the deck and shifted the gangplank into place.
Estella led the way. Hannah and Nicholas exchanged looks, and then Hannah said, “Cool,” and stepped onto the deck, and Nicholas followed her. Most of the old benches had been removed, except for the ones built in under the gunwales along both sides. Peter had set blankets out, as though he had been planning this. They settled themselves beneath the awning and Peter pulled the gangplank back on board and then untied the moorings. When they were free of the pier, he went into the wheelhouse with his flashlight and started the diesel engine. It was noisy and blew black smoke into the air while it warmed itself up, and Estella half expected someone to come running and tell them to disembark, but no one did.
Peter steered them slowly away from the pier without running lights. They could see cabins lit up all along the shore, and someone had a bonfire going. No one spoke as the paddlewheel slapped rhythmically at the stern and they headed farther out into the bay. Estella unfolded one of Peter’s blankets and draped it over her knees just as the first of the fireworks exploded at the golf course. Hannah seemed to know a bit about fireworks and she provided a commentary: peonies and flying fish, willows that left long tails as they fell. The finale was a chrysanthemum. She said they weren’t much, as fireworks went.
“Come on,” Nicholas said. “Not bad for a village,” and Hannah agreed, for a village.
When they were at the line between points of land, where the bay opened into the lake beyond, Peter turned off the engine and dropped anchor, and then he went behind the bar on deck and prepared a tray of drinks. He handed Estella and Nicholas plastic glasses of rum and coke, and he and Hannah had cans of orange soda. The lake was so dark it could have been a vast ocean for all they could see of it. A string of car lights on the road meant the party at the golf course was over, at least the all-ages part of it.
“Can we turn the lanterns on?” Hannah asked, and Peter said he didn’t see why not. Estella thought there might be a reason why not, but she decided she didn’t care about being seen if Peter didn’t. When he switched on the patio lights they were suddenly illuminated in patches of red and yellow. Then music began to play softly from the two speakers that hung over their heads. Roy Orbison.
Peter sat down on the bench and lifted his glass and said, “Cheers to the Claire de la Lune, eh,” and they all said cheers. When Nicholas asked Peter how he selected his music, he said he’d been playing Roy Orbison since 1965. He’d tried to change the music a few times in the early years but there was always a rebellion because Roy Orbison had become part of everyone’s Lake Claire tradition. He’d given up and set out instead to find every one of Roy’s recordings. Then he’d had to search all over again for CDs when he’d upgraded his sound system.
Hannah was sitting very close to her father, leaning against him. She had her little red purse draped across her body and the sequins caught the light and sparkled. She began to sing with the music, and seemed to know all the lyrics to “Only the Lonely.”
“How do you know such an old song?” Estella asked.
Hannah said she didn’t know, and Nicholas said, “Yes you do.” He explained that she had had a child’s karaoke microphone, and she sang oldies karaoke before she was even in school.
“You remember that, don’t you?” Nicholas asked.
The song changed, and in answer to her father’s question, Hannah used her soft drink can as a microphone and sang along to “Pretty Woman.” The sound of her young voice blended with Roy’s and carried out over the water.
When the song ended, Estella said, “Oh, but you have a lovely voice.”
“Hear that?” Nicholas said. Then he asked, “So, what would you be doing if you were out here with your friends instead of us oldies?”
She said, “I don’t have any friends anymore. They’re in Calgary, remember, and I’m in Winnipeg.”
“Hannah,” he said. “Come on. It won’t be that bad.”
Then Hannah said, “If I did have friends, we’d play Truth or Dare.” She barely took a beat before she said, “Truth. I hate her.”
Estella guessed right away she was referring to her mother, Marie, but Nicholas seemed not to.
“Who?” he asked.
“You know who. Mom.”
“Don’t say that,” Nicholas said. “You don’t mean it.”
“I do mean it,” she said. “And you should hate her too. Stop pretending you’re all Mr. Reasonable.”
Nicholas’s silence seemed to be an admission that she was right. Hannah reached into the grocery bag that was now at her father’s feet and pulled out a big bag of ripple potato chips and ripped them open. As she pulled out a handful, she said to him, “Your turn. Truth or dare.”
“I’m not playing,” he said.
She turned to Estella and said, “Truth or dare.”
Estella didn’t know how the game worked.
“Hannah, stop it,” Nicholas said.
“It’s easy,” Hannah said. “Just pick one or the other.”
She was being impertinent, and Estella knew it, but she rose to the challenge and said, “Truth.”
“Did you ever have a boyfriend?” Hannah asked.
“Hannah!” Nicholas said.
“Never mind,” Estella said. “There’s a good lesson in my answer. I did have a boyfriend once, and he asked me to marry him, but he was good for nothing in the end and I turned him down. My sisters-in-law were so disappointed. They thought any man was better than none. There. How was that?”
“Good,” Hannah said. “You were smarter than they were.”
“Exactly,” Estella said.
Then Hannah asked her father, “Truth. Did you have a girlfriend before Mom? A serious one, I mean.”
“I didn’t pick truth,” he said.
“Well, you don’t want dare,” Hannah said. “I’ll give you a hint. It involves water.”
“Whatever you’re doing, stop it,” he said.
“Why? You asked me what I would do out here with my friends. This is what we’d do.”
She was still eating chips from the bag and she passed it around. Estella was feeling light-headed from the rum and she took some, thinking they might help, before handing the bag to Peter.
Nicholas decided to play along with Hannah after all, and he told them a story about a girlfriend he’d had when he was going to university. He’d been working a summer job in the northern Alberta oil patch and his girlfriend was waiting tables in Calgary. It ended one weekend when he decided to surprise her, urged on by his roommates who told him girls love surprises, and he headed out after his shift on a Friday night.
“In a 1980 rust-riddled Honda Civic with a broken headlight,” he said. “I bought it for almost nothing so I’d have wheels to get in and out of Fort McMurray
. Eight hours, Fort Mac to Calgary. I left at nine o’clock and stopped only once at a truck stop. The sun was coming up when I saw Calgary ahead.”
Hannah interrupted and said, “I bet I know what happened. She had another boy there.”
“No,” Nicholas said. “That wasn’t it. She just wasn’t that thrilled to see me. She went to work and I slept all day. Then when I woke up she was home again, and she told me it was creepy, the way I’d driven all night and come without telling her. I didn’t think it was creepy, I thought it was romantic. She made me feel like a stalker. I left and drove all night again to get back in time for a Sunday shift. I passed a billboard ad for a jewellery company on the way and it said ‘Surprise her with a diamond.’ I thought, no damned way, I’m never surprising a woman with anything ever again.
“I spent the rest of the summer trying to avoid my idiot roommates, which wasn’t easy because we shared bedrooms in a flimsy trailer. I took extra shifts so I wouldn’t have to spend any time there. I hardly slept. By the end of the summer I had enough money to pay for my whole year of school without a loan. Anyway, my heart mended. It didn’t take me long to realize that I’d hardly known her.”
“And then you met Mom,” Hannah said. “Poor you.”
Nicholas said, “Yes, and then I met your mom. And it was not poor me. It was lucky me, because I have you and your sister.”
It was quiet again, and the boat rocked on the water, and Estella thought the game was over, ended by a moment of real truth, but then Hannah said, “Your turn, Mr. Boone. Truth or dare, and I advise you to take truth.”
“Hannah,” Nicholas said, “now you’re just being rude.”
But Peter played along too, and he said, “Well, the truth is, there’s only ever been one woman for me. Miss Estella Diamond here.”
They laughed, and Estella wanted to enjoy the moment, but all she could hear was Shirley Boone telling her what kind of woman she was.
Then a sudden breeze hit them and the lanterns began to sway. The boat caught a little wave and the drinks tray slipped onto the deck from the bench, where Peter had set it down. He picked it up and then collected their empty glasses and took them to the bar. It began to spit rain. They listened to the tap, tap, tap on the awning above them, and the Roy Orbison disc started over at the beginning again.
Peter said from behind the bar, “I hate to see the old girl go.”
Estella recovered from thoughts of Shirley Boone and said, “If you’re referring to me, I’m not planning to shuffle off anytime soon.”
Not long after, they began to see the lights of vehicles at the marina, and then the blue-and-red flashing light of a police car.
“Are they for us?” Estella asked. “Do they think we’ve stolen the boat?”
Peter said sometimes kids went out on the pier to drink and the police chased them off, but he didn’t sound especially convincing.
“I suppose we should head back,” he said.
He winched the anchor back up and started the engine, and then he steered them across the lake toward the marina, with the navigation lights on this time. He turned the patio lights and the music off and there was only the sound of the boat’s chugging engine, the slap slap slap of the paddlewheel as it churned in the water.
By the time they docked at the marina, there were two more police vehicles waiting. Peter tied the moorings, and then he attached the gangplank and stepped down first, as though offering himself up to the police officers. But they weren’t interested in him.
“Are you Nicholas Diamond?” one of the officers asked as Nicholas stepped down onto the pier.
Before he could answer, Hannah said, “No, he’s not. He’s Nicholas Darling. Dad, tell them. That’s not you.”
“Are you Hannah?” the officer asked, his voice softening.
Estella caught a glimpse of Hannah’s face, and she looked desperate.
“No,” Hannah said. “I don’t know any Hannah. I don’t know who you’re talking about.”
“Hannah,” Nicholas said. “It’s okay.” Then he turned back to the officer and said, “I’m Nicholas Diamond. This is my daughter Hannah. What seems to be the problem?”
“The problem, Mr. Diamond, is that we were that close to issuing an Amber Alert. Your wife says you took your daughter without her consent or knowledge.”
“An Amber Alert?” Nicholas said. “What the hell for? Hannah’s not in danger. And I don’t need anyone’s consent to take my own daughter to the lake for the weekend. It’s Marie. Fine, I’ll give her a call.”
Estella was by now off the boat, and she tried to intervene.
“You must be Estella Diamond,” the officer said. “If you wouldn’t mind staying back where you are.”
“I am Estella Diamond,” she said. “And I’m telling you to leave my nephew and his daughter alone.”
The officer held up his hand. “Ma’am,” he said. “Stay right there.”
Peter Boone took her arm and held on.
“Okay, Mr. Diamond, I’m going to ask you to come with us. Hannah, you’ll go with this officer.” He indicated a woman who stepped forward and put her hand on Hannah’s shoulder. It was the same officer who had spoken to them at the ice cream stand.
Then Hannah began to kick and fight to get away from the woman, who now had hold of both her shoulders.
“Don’t fucking touch me!” Hannah was yelling, and, “Leave my father alone, don’t listen to that bitch.”
Estella was shocked by the language. Nicholas tried to get to Hannah, but the other police officers held on to him and he couldn’t move. Then he started to shout at the officers—“I would never hurt my daughter, for Christ’s sake, get your hands off me”—and soon it was complete chaos, and they were dragging Nicholas away toward one of the cars. And all the while Hannah was screaming at them to leave her father alone, he hadn’t done anything wrong.
“It was me,” she shouted, “I got in the car, he didn’t even know I was there.” Then she was yelling at her father, that this was all his fault for putting up with it, why hadn’t he stopped her? That he just rolled over and let her do whatever she wanted, like fuck around with that idiot on the bicycle.
The female officer was doing everything she could to hang on to Hannah.
Estella had never seen such anger or heard language like that coming from a child. It was as though Hannah were possessed, the way she was screaming and dragging her heels while the officer tried to get her to a police car. She couldn’t help but admire the girl, the way she held nothing back, the way she spoke even to her father, who surely did have something to answer for if what the officers said was true.
They were dangerously close to the edge of the pier and the boards were wet from the drizzling rain. The woman who had Hannah was now shouting for help, and Estella felt a new surge of anger herself. She pulled away from Peter Boone and stepped toward them, intending to take charge of a situation that had got out of control. Shouldn’t a trained police officer be able to handle an eleven-year-old girl?
“Stop that,” she said. “Leave that girl alone.”
She saw Hannah’s little red purse go flying off her shoulder and land with a splash in the water.
“Hannah,” she said, following behind them as the officer tried to get Hannah off the pier. “Calm down. This woman is trying to help.” Then she said to the officer, “Let go of her, for heaven’s sake, she’s a child, not a wild animal. Give her a chance to walk on her own.”
Hannah stopped struggling.
“Yes,” she said. “I can walk on my own.”
The officer relaxed her hold on Hannah’s shoulders and they walked toward the end of the pier. When they were close to the steps that led down to the beach, Hannah pulled away and leapt from the pier. Before the officer could grab her, she ran, away from the beach and the village and into the darkness. The officer was so surprised Hannah had got away that it took her a moment to recover, and then she slipped on the bottom step and pitched forward into the sa
nd, and by the time she got herself up and was yelling for help, Hannah was out of sight.
“Oh, Christ,” one of the other officers said, the one who seemed to be in charge. “How the hell did that happen?” He motioned to the car in which they had put Nicholas, and it pulled away with its lights flashing.
Estella knew there was nothing in the direction Hannah had gone but rocky outcrops and bush. She was afraid for her: that she might get lost, that she might fall on the rocks and hurt herself, fall into the water. She heard her own voice shouting Hannah’s name over and over, until one of the officers told her to be quiet or she’d find herself in the back of a police car.
Peter had been silent, but now he told Estella to hush, to let the police handle it, they’d find her. She listened to his calm voice and she stopped shouting and tried to step down from the pier, but she felt herself sinking. She grabbed one of the handrails and managed to sit on the top step. Peter was telling the officers that he knew how to turn the marina lights on, and he did, and they lit up the beach and the parking lot.
There was no sign of Hannah. In the halogen beams, Estella could see the rain falling. Peter came back and sat down next to her on the step, and they watched as the police tried to decide what to do. Estella suddenly thought of the old train station that had been right where the parking lot was now, and she wondered if it was possible that Hannah had found the tracks and was now walking away from Lake Claire just as she had once walked toward it. She could almost hear her footsteps, thud thud, crunch, and she said to Peter, “Do you think she could be on the old train tracks?” and he said, “No, the tracks are gone. It’s all grown over now.”
“I think we should look anyway,” she said. “She’ll be frightened when she realizes she’s alone in the dark.” She thought of herself on the tracks and wondered if she would have been frightened without the porter. She’d been so convinced she had something to prove that she would never have admitted to being afraid.
The Diamond House Page 31