Missing

by Becky Citra

  While we’re standing there, the sun disappears behind the hill. The lake loses its magic. The water is black and the opposite shore is a dark smudge. I shiver slightly.

  “Coffee time,” says Tully. “Come on inside.”

  We walk up four steps onto a wide porch that wraps around the whole building. Wooden lawn chairs with faded striped cushions are scattered along it, facing the lake. It looks like an inviting place to curl up with a book.

  I come to a dead stop when we go through the door. We’re in a huge open room with wood floors and bright rugs, an enormous stone fireplace and lots of overstuffed leather armchairs and couches. The kitchen is at one end, with a big island and a mass of gleaming copper pans hanging from a round rack suspended from the high ceiling. There’s one gigantic table that would seat twenty people. A balcony runs all around the room and I figure there must be lots of rooms upstairs.

  The room is amazing, but that’s not what stops me in my tracks. It’s the framed photographs on every wall. I’m not lying when I say there must be hundreds.

  “Impressive,” says Dad behind me. “Who’s the photographer?”

  “I am,” says Tully, and I can hear the pride in his voice. “Take a look, if you like.”

  Tully sets out a pot of coffee, mugs, hot chocolate for me and a plate of cookies on one end of the long table. Dad and I wander about the room. The photographs are beautiful. Buildings, people, animals and scenery. The colors are rich and vibrant. Some of the places I recognize, like the Great Pyramids in Egypt and the Eiffel Tower. But I have no idea where most of the photographs were taken.

  “You’ve traveled a lot,” says Dad.

  “All around the world,” says Tully.

  “Even to Africa,” I say. I’m standing in front of a wall of photographs of African animals: cheetahs, elephants, leopards and giraffes, and some that I can’t identify. The animals are so clear that they look like they could step right out of their frames. I can see the individual hairs in a lion’s mane.

  “I went on a safari last fall,” says Tully. “To the Masai Mara in Kenya. A truly spectacular place.”

  “Wow,” I say. “I’d love to do that.”

  I figure you could spend hours in this room, looking at photographs and not getting bored. I also figure Tully must have lots of awesome stories about his travels.

  Tully pours the coffee, and he and Dad sit down at the table. I take my mug of hot chocolate and a cookie and go back to the African pictures. I’m close enough to hear everything Dad and Tully say.

  Tully gets right to the point. “I need someone to work on the cabins until the snow comes,” he says.

  I hold my breath.

  “That could work out,” says Dad slowly.

  “You and Thea can stay out here rent-free, if you want,” says Tully casually. “Cabin three is in pretty good shape. Just needs a bit of sweeping out. That way you don’t have to drive out from town every day. And Thea could take the school bus for the last couple of weeks of school.”

  “I don’t know about that,” says Dad. “I’d want to pay some rent.”

  Tully shrugs. “I’m sure we could agree on something.”

  I turn the idea over in my head while I go eye to eye with a leopard. Staying here would be better, way better, than staying in the boiling hot trailer all summer. I think about swimming in the lake and reading in one of those lawn chairs with the striped cushions.

  “I think we should do it,” I pipe up.

  “I have ulterior motives,” says Tully with a laugh. “I could do with some company. And I need to test out some of my guest-ranch cooking.”

  “Meals on top of the salary?” says Dad.

  “I don’t like eating alone,” says Tully simply. “And it’s no more work to cook for three than for one.”

  “I don’t want to impose,” says Dad. He sounds a little tense, like this is all happening too fast.

  “Then how about you look after your own breakfast and lunch and I’ll cook dinner?”

  Tully’s talking like it’s all decided, that we’re going to take him up on his offer. For a few seconds I think that maybe it’s a little odd that he would do all this for two strangers. Then I push that thought away. Tully needs the help. Dad needs the work. It’s that simple.

  “That’s a great idea,” I say. “I hate cooking.”

  Tully laughs, and then Dad laughs too.

  “Okay,” says Dad. He shakes Tully’s hand. “Deal.”

  Tully’s drawn up some rough sketches of what he wants to do in the cabins he’s renovating, and he spreads them out on the table. There’s a scratch at the door and a sharp bark. Tully gets up and opens the door, and the dogs bound inside. Max and Bob flop down on the floor, panting. Tinker goes over to a big water dish in the kitchen and slurps noisily. Tully and Dad start talking about beams and studs and two-by-fours. I take another cookie and drift outside. I want to have a look inside the barn.

  The heavy door creaks when I push it open. I’m immediately hit with the smell of hay. An image of another barn slams into my head. Not a clear image, not like one of Tully’s photographs. It’s actually more of a bombardment of my senses. The pungent odor of horse sweat, the rustle of straw, the rhythmic chewing of hay, the smell of saddle soap and leather. There’s a hard choking feeling in my chest, and I take a few big breaths to steady myself.

  It’s four years since I’ve been in a horse barn. Four years since Mom died.

  In a few seconds, my eyes adjust to the dim light. A cement aisle runs up the middle, with a row of box stalls on either side. I count twelve stalls altogether. I peer into one. Old straw is scattered on the ground, and a black feed bucket rests on its side.

  If I close my eyes, I can feel the horses standing like ghosts in the silent stalls. I push open a door and look into a small room filled with horse tack, all jumbled up: saddles stacked on top of each other and leaning against the wall, a tangle of halters and bridles and ropes, some hanging on hooks, some fallen on the ground.

  A shroud of dust on everything. Not like that other barn, everything saddle-soaped and in its place, bridles hanging under the name of each horse engraved on a wooden sign. I still remember some of the names. Dancer, Tippy, Major, Skipper, Magic. And Monty. I will never forget Monty.

  Something deep inside me stirs. I could fix this up, clean up the tack. I deflate rapidly. What for? Dad shuts right down if I even talk about getting horses again.

  There’s one more door at the back of the barn, and it leads outside. Behind the barn is a long rectangular corral of hard-packed dirt, weeds growing in the corners. Inside the corral, at one end, there’s a small circular pen made of metal rods. At the other end of the corral is a slope-roofed wooden shelter with a bathtub full of water beside it. On the outside of the fence, hay bales are neatly stacked and covered with a blue tarp. A bale has been pulled from the pile and lies on the ground, split into flakes. It’s pale green and fresh-smelling. New.

  My heart thumping, I stare at the shelter. I see just a shadow at first, hidden in the back corner. Then the shadow shifts. A dark eye is watching me, and my heart starts to race even faster. I lean over the corral fence and softly say, “Hey.”

  Tully said they got rid of all the horses, but for some reason this one must have been left behind. I can see now that it’s a big horse—more than sixteen hands, I bet—black with a white stripe down his face and one white sock on a front foot. A piece of hay hangs from his mouth, but he isn’t chewing. He looks wary.

  I scan the corral fence and find the gate. I unhook the latch and let myself into the corral, closing the gate carefully behind me. The horse keeps watching me. I can see the whites of his eyes now.

  “Hey,” I say again. I approach slowly and extend my hand.

  Nothing prepares me for the explosion of sound and movement. The horse bolts from the shelter, kicking out at the thin wooden wall with a cracking sound. I jump back but his heavy body slams into me and knocks me to the ground. Dust swirls in
my eyes. I can’t tell where he is, but I can hear him snorting and blowing through his nostrils. In a panic, I pull myself up and stumble to the fence. I manage to climb over and drop to safety on the other side.

  I take a few huge breaths. I’m okay, not even a little bit hurt. Just scared. I wipe my dusty hands on my jeans. The horse has galloped across to the far side of the corral, behind the metal pen. He’s quiet now, but I can tell he’s upset. His sides are heaving and the whites of his eyes still show.

  I stay outside the fence, watching the horse for a few minutes. My eyes drift to the round metal pen at the far end of the corral. Something jogs my memory. We had one just like it beside our barn. It’s where Mom and Dad used to work with the young horses that came to our stable for training.

  I push those thoughts away. Soon it’s too dark to see properly, and the horse is swallowed up by the night. I hear his hooves clumping on the hard ground as he moves, shadowlike, back into the safety of his shelter.

  As I walk back to the lodge, my head is whirling with possibilities, but I have already decided not to tell Dad about the horse.

  Not tonight, when he can still change his mind about staying here.

  Three

  Tully said Dad can have a job at least until the snow flies. That means I won’t have to change schools and be the new kid again until probably November. And by then, maybe, with this streak of luck we’re having, something else will have turned up and we’ll be able to stay.

  Dad gives one week’s notice on the trailer, and we move out to the ranch the following weekend. Our truck is loaded with boxes of groceries and everything we own, which isn’t much. Four years ago, Dad sold everything that reminded him of our old life.

  Cabin three is one of the bigger ones, with two large bedrooms, a bathroom, a kitchen and a sitting area. Tully has opened all the windows and swept out several years’ accumulation of dust, dirt and pine cones left by squirrels. A fresh breeze blows the curtains, and the lake glitters in the sun.

  After we’ve put everything away in the cupboards and closets, Dad goes up to the lodge to talk to Tully. There’s half an hour until dinnertime, so I slip away to the barn, where I go straight to the back corral.

  The horse is standing in the shade of his shelter, his nose pressed to the wall. Flies buzz around his ears. I can see a whole lot better in the bright daylight, and I hate what I see. His coat is scruffy, his mane a tangled nest. Several thick corded lines, which look like scars, cross his hocks.

  I know better than to go inside the corral this time. I talk to him for a few minutes, hoping he’ll turn around. I wish I had something to offer him; next time I’ll bring an apple. I stay as long as I can and then whisper, “Goodbye.”

  He knows I am there, I’m sure of it, but he doesn’t even twitch an ear.

  I ask Tully about the horse at dinner. I figure it’s safe now. After all, we’ve taken over the cabin and Dad can hardly change his mind. We’re all sitting at one end of the long table, eating ham, scalloped potatoes and peas. It’s delicious.

  Dad doesn’t say anything, but his fork pauses over his plate and he stops chewing. I feel nervous and hopeful at the same time. After all, Dad always loved horses. Before.

  “So you found Renegade,” says Tully. He helps himself to more potatoes. Tully has a huge appetite. He’s already devoured more than Dad and me put together.

  “Is he yours?” I say. Renegade, I think. The name suits him.

  “In a manner of speaking,” says Tully. “I don’t think you can say that Renegade belongs to anyone. But he came with the ranch so I guess that makes him mine.”

  Dad is still not talking.

  I swallow. “There’s scars on his legs,” I say. “And his coat’s a mess.”

  “I know,” says Tully.

  “Someone should clean him up,” I say. I can’t help it; my voice sounds accusatory.

  Tully shrugs. “He won’t let anyone near him. I throw him some hay and a little grain every day and fill his bathtub with water. That’s the best I can do.”

  There’s so much I want to know about Renegade. “Where did he come from?”

  “The guy I bought the ranch from picked him up at a horse sale. Said he seemed tame enough. He figures he was drugged for the sale. He had no idea what kind of trouble he was buying until he got him home. Turns out the horse has never been broke to ride, even though he’s eight years old.”

  “What a waste,” I say.

  Tully sighs. “I’ll have to deal with him one of these days, but right now I feel he’s not really hurting anything by being here.”

  I chew my piece of ham slowly. Ideas turn round and round in my head.

  We’re not finished dinner yet, but Dad stands up. I hope that he is going to say something about Renegade, but he doesn’t. He thanks Tully for the meal and leaves.

  Tully and I load the dishwasher together, and then Tully whistles to the dogs, who leap up from under the long table and follow him outside.

  At dinner, Tully had told us that he’s been cleaning up the small office off the kitchen. He calls it a work in progress and says he only gets to it when the weather is too bad to go outside. There are piles of stuff from back before there were computers: receipts, lined notebooks filled with bookings, bills of sale from horse sales, even a book of old recipes.

  Tully says he’s chucking out most of the stuff, but he’s discovered some boxes of old guest books that he says are keepers. He’s been reading through them, trying to get a flavor of what the ranch was like in its prime. He says it’s amazing how far away guests came from: Australia, France, Germany.

  He’s cleared off a shelf in the main room under the windows and he plans to arrange the guest books there in order of their year. The books are spread all over the floor in front of the shelf now. There must be fifteen or twenty of them. I’ve got nothing else to do, so I take over the job, sorting through the books to see which one comes first.

  Some of them have the year on the spine but for most I have to look inside. The oldest books have black-and-white photographs of the guests. Then there are some with color photographs, but the newest books have no photographs at all, just written comments.

  There are huge gaps in the dates, and I remember Tully saying that the ranch wasn’t always run as a guest ranch. I can’t find any books between 1965 and 1985 or between 1998 and 2004. When I’m finished organizing the books on the shelf, I take out the oldest book—dated 1953—and plop down in a leather armchair to look at it. It has a worn brown leather cover. The paper is yellowed and the writing faded. The pages are divided in half; on one side are the comments from the guests and on the other side are slightly blurry black-and-white photographs. Most of the photographs were taken in front of the lodge. Families lined up in a row, parents’ hands around their children’s shoulders, everyone smiling stiffly into the camera.

  The date on the first page is June 7, 1953. I turn pages, studying the faces that stare out at me, deciphering the handwriting. Some of the writing is tight and cramped, some sprawling, some with big rounded letters. After a while the comments all start to sound the same: fantastic place…a bit of paradise… terrific food…we’ll be back.

  On one page someone—probably a child— has printed Don’t forget to give Benny a carrot every day from me. I look at the photograph of a man, a woman and a little girl who looks about nine. She has braids and a wide smile with a gap between her front teeth. I imagine her falling in love with some kind old horse who probably carried her around the ranch for a week.

  I wonder if our family ever looked like that, like we really belonged together. Mom wasn’t living with us when she died, so maybe we never were much of a family. When Mom left, I didn’t get it. I kept asking Dad where she was and when she was coming back.

  I finally found out the truth when Samantha Higgens, a girl in my grade-four class, told me. She’d heard her mother and father talking about it. She said Mom had moved in with a trainer that she and Dad had known for yea
rs. According to Samantha, she wasn’t planning on living with us ever again. End of story. That’s what she said. End of story.

  Only it wasn’t the end of the story. And how would Samantha know anyway? Before I had time to find out if Mom was ever coming back, her horse rolled over on top of her on a slippery hillside and she was killed. She was riding by herself on Sumas Mountain on a colt that had just been broken. A search party found her late at night. I remember the phone waking me up and Dad coming in and sitting on the end of my bed and telling me.

  Thinking about Mom and my old life makes me feel crappy. I push it out of my mind now and turn to the next page in the guest book: July 10, 1953. Tucked into the book’s spine is a piece of tightly folded yellowed newspaper. Curious, I spread it out, smoothing the creases. It’s a clipping that someone has cut out carefully with scissors. The date at the top says July 9, 1954, almost exactly one year later than the date in the book.

  I read the article slowly.

  DOUBLE TRAGEDY AT

  CARIBOO GUEST RANCH

  On the afternoon of July 7, four-year-old Livia Willard was reported missing from the Double R Guest Ranch in the heart of British Columbia’s Cariboo. Wayne and Joan Willard from North Vancouver and their three daughters, fourteen-year-old Esta, eight-year-old Iris and four-year-old Livia, had arrived on Saturday, July 2, at the guest ranch for their annual holiday. They were accompanied by twenty-six-year-old Melissa Ryerson, the Willards’ niece, who has been visiting the family from England since early May.

  Livia was reported missing at three o’clock. Her parents had returned to Vancouver the day before due to a family emergency, leaving their daughters in the care of their niece. They planned to return to the ranch later in the week. The Willards were notified immediately of their daughter’s disappearance and left Vancouver in the late afternoon to drive back to the ranch. Their vehicle was struck by a truck on the Trans-Canada Highway near the small town of Boston Bar. Both parents were pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital in Hope.