by Nicole Baart
The folder was about half an inch thick, and as I thumbed through the contents I suppressed a shudder. There were newspaper clippings with headlines that gave voice to the fears that gathered like a sinister fog inside my head: “Pilot Missing”; “Plane Vanishes Out of Seward. Search Continues”; “No Sign of Pilot Who Disappeared on Sunday. Weather Slows Searchers.” The titles became steadily bleaker. And among the newsprint were photocopies of flight plans, memos from the Alaskan Air Command Rescue Coordination Center in Anchorage, and a handwritten note that contained one cryptic line: Remind volunteers not to crowd the sky.
Blair reached for that scrap of paper and lifted it out of the file. “Sorry. Don’t know how that got in there.”
“Volunteers are crowding the sky? Looking for Etsell?”
He nodded. “They were.”
Were. But not anymore.
That night, bolstered by a half-dozen flat hotel pillows, I flew. The sky was filled with planes, peppered with multicolored aircraft like sprinkles on sun-blue icing. I squinted at the brightness of it, and felt a thrill of hope that all these people, all these planes had cluttered up the sky just to find my Ell. How could they fail? Every square inch of the wild earth below was charted by some intrepid pilot. I could taste their success; I could almost hear the moment when someone cackled into the radio, “I found him.”
But the heavens were too crowded, and when the first collision erupted in a ball of fire and smoke, my expectations were stripped away in an act of sudden violence. All at once it was happening everywhere, the sky full of faithful volunteers was awash in the angry orange of burning jet fuel, the sun was obscured by vapors of toxic fumes. I could hear the scream of frantic descent, an unearthly wail as metal dropped from the sky like hail.
It was then that I remembered I was flying. Flying.
I wasn’t in a plane. I had wings. And they were singed and smoking; I felt the burn as if each feather was made of skin.
When I fell it was from an unfathomable height. There was no end to my descent as I plummeted past all those planes, those rescuers who were in need of rescue. But instead of crying out to me, each pilot sighed as I passed.
They shook their heads in defeat. And though they didn’t say it, I could see it in their eyes. We’re sorry. We’re so sorry. We couldn’t find him.
When I was young, I dedicated months of my life to finding my unnamed father. Char’s definitions of “mother” and “father” were loosely held, and even when I was very small I rarely called her Mom because she found the title too matronly. So it stood to reason that the identity of my dad would be a thing of little consequence to her. But it was huge to me. Monumental.
I don’t remember the moment that I realized families were meant to include a dad, a man who smelled of aftershave and sawdust and sweat, and who would undoubtedly grip me under the arms and swing me up high to perch on his shoulders like I had seen my friend Courtney’s father do. My longing for the sound of a deep voice in our home was something that didn’t happen all at once—it materialized, slow and pervasive like steam filling a room, until everything was obscured by the haze of my want.
In kindergarten I drew pictures of our family and included a father figure that I had never known. He was taller than the stick drawing of my mother by half, and the blaze of his crayon-red beard—a characteristic I had borrowed from Courtney’s teddy bear of a dad—lit up my square of parchment paper like a flame.
“Does your mommy have a new boyfriend?” my kindergarten teacher asked. If she was being derisive, I was too innocent to notice.
“No,” I told her, “this is my daddy.”
Though I could never recall her name, for years to come I could see the look on her face as clearly as if I captured her expression in a photograph. Her eyebrows arched and drew together to form a dark cloud across her forehead, and her lips pulled into a tight line that reminded me of a pair of limp earthworms. “Your daddy?” she repeated. “Really.”
Even at five I could hear the disbelief in her voice.
After that I stopped drawing my imaginary dad into pictures. But I harbored a secret passion for him, a yearning so acute I sometimes lined pillows behind my back when I slept so I could pretend that he had read me bedtime stories and dozed off in the middle of Horton Hears a Who. It was a childish fantasy that I gave up in middle school when Kat started coming into my room at night.
We talked about him sometimes, Kat and I. Char insisted that all three of her daughters were “gifts” from different fathers, but Kat and I were convinced that we bore a resemblance too distinct to be accidental. It was something in the way that we walked, an athletic, almost masculine gait, and our mouths, which were wide and generous, filled with teeth so straight and perfect and big Char called us her pony girls. Natalie was different altogether, shorter and darker, the prisoner of painful-looking braces from ages thirteen to sixteen. She hated them at the time, but Char was working as a secretary at one of the insurance companies in town and they offered dental coverage in her medical package. She quit the week after Natalie’s braces were taken off.
Lying in bed at night, Kat and I would catalog the ways we were dissimilar to our older sister. We would put our hands together, tracing our fingers and wondering at the parallel loops of our fingerprints. Maybe, just maybe, they had been fashioned from the same template. And maybe, just maybe, we could find the man who inspired them if we tried.
We weren’t very good detectives, but we watched men at the grocery store and on the street. No one was excluded from our narrow-eyed analysis, not even men who wore wedding rings or held the hands of other little girls. Char wasn’t very discriminating. Why should we be?
Once at a Fourth of July parade in Blackhawk we were sure that we caught a glimpse of him. Kat and I were perched in front of the bakery, sitting with our backs against one of the old-fashioned streetlamps that still graced a single block of Main. The road was paved with bricks for this one short stretch, and though they were sunken and cracked, they possessed a certain provincial charm that I was aware of even at the age of eleven.
Char was waitressing, and Natalie was working as a summer intern at the library in town, so Kat and I were left to our own devices for celebrating the humid holiday. We had been fishing in the river for most of the morning, but when the mosquitoes got too bad we went back to Char’s trailer, sprawled in front of the window air conditioner, and sucked on grape freeze-pops until our lips turned purple.
The parade started at four, but we walked downtown at three so that we could get prime seats—streetlamp seats, where we could lean against the wide wrought-iron base and stick our feet into the road. It was no secret that the Blackhawk Fourth of July parade sucked. But it was also no secret that everyone threw ludicrous amounts of penny candy to make up for it. Kat and I had stuffed plastic grocery bags into our jean-shorts pockets to carry the booty home. I loved the mini Tootsie Rolls. Kat came for the butterscotch candies, even though they were usually cracked from their journey across the bricks before they skidded to a stop at the curb.
For the entire hour before the parade started, I stole glances at my sister out of the corner of my eye, trying to preserve the afternoon in amber so that I could revisit it for years to come. I counted Kat’s presence beside me as a stroke of pure luck, a gift that I would not take for granted, because my fourteen-year-old sister had lately become too mature to hang out with the baby of the family. She spent hours on the phone with boys from her class, and preferred painting and repainting her toenails to helping me work on the tree house that the Vis girls had cobbled out of scrap lumber the year Natalie turned twelve. I was well aware that the only reason Kat had deigned to spend the Fourth with me was that Char forced her to. I half suspected there was money involved.
But that didn’t bother me. It wouldn’t have been the first time Char bribed one of her girls. Besides, Kat was beside me whether she wanted to be or not.
The parade started the way it always did, with the local
Corn Queen sitting beside the mayor in the cab of a brand-new John Deere combine. I always thought it was silly the way the prom-dress-clad princess roosted on the jump seat like an exotic bird, waving her hand in a motion so practiced I could actually mouth “elbow, elbow, wrist, wrist” in time as she twisted her arm. She looked downright comical next to the mayor, a man with a shock of snow-white hair who was plump as a Weeble and just as cheerful. The farm machinery was his idea, and he made the most of his imagined small-town appeal by wearing overalls and a Dekalb baseball cap. It was ridiculous, and I knew it. But that didn’t stop my heart from skipping a beat as I heard the brass of the high school marching band blare the first few notes of the fight song.
When Kat spun on me with that look on her face, I was sure she was going to yell at me for dragging her to the parade. I opened my mouth to remind her of the candy, of the fact that she didn’t really have a choice, but the intent in her eyes stopped me short. She wasn’t angry, she was excited.
Leaning over, Kat pressed her lips against my ear and said, “He’s here.”
Even with her mouth tickling my skin, I couldn’t quite make out her words. Or maybe I just didn’t understand them.
“He’s here!” she said again, louder. “I think it might be . . . him.”
There was a weight in her voice that sent a tremor down my spine. Him. There was only one him in our life, even if he wasn’t really in it. “Where?”
She pointed across the street in the direction of the fabric store, where a wide, checked awning in the red-and-white of a faded picnic blanket trembled under a light breeze. It was a favorite spot for viewing the parade because it afforded an ample swatch of shade on even the hottest afternoon. As could be expected, a crowd was gathered beneath, and I scanned the riot of faces furiously.
“Next to the woman with the white sunglasses,” Kat coached me. “By the guy with the sleeping baby.”
And just like that I found him.
He was shorter than I had imagined, and balder. His hairline had retreated from his forehead in a lopsided formation, but though his coif left much to be desired, there was something in his eyes I loved. He had an open face, happy. And as I watched him, he grinned at the duo of clowns on a tandem bicycle in the street before him and raised his hands above his head to catch the candy that they threw.
I was surprised when he caught it, when his face sparked with the brief joy of triumph, and I found myself smiling back at him, warm with a wondering that seeped through my bones like a drug. Is it you?
“Let’s go!” I shouted to Kat. I was already standing up, jerking her by the arm with a latent enthusiasm that had been revived at the delight of our shared intrigue.
But there was a semi in between us and the man with the million-dollar smile. It had a brand-new cattle carrier hitched to the back, and there was a small army of children inside pelting the crowd with water guns. I laughed, turning my face toward the spray, and exalted in the perfect and fragile blend of my life in that moment: the scent of cold water on hot bricks, Kat at my side, and him across from me, his mouth pulled into a grin that I recognized from the mirror.
I didn’t realize that Kat was still planted on the curb until the semi had passed and a pickup truck with a sandwich board in the bed bearing an ad for a local bar had taken its place.
“Come on,” I urged, yanking on her arm with a giggle.
Kat sliced me with a look. “It’s not him,” she said, and though I could barely hear her words over the din, I could read her lips.
I sat down hard beside her. “But—”
“But nothing.” She shook her head. “I shouldn’t have . . . It’s ridiculous to think that we could find him.”
“He’s—”
“Just some guy,” she finished.
I wanted to argue with her, to yank her to her feet and run across the crowded street to meet him face-to-face.
And say what? I think you’re my dad?
Of course he wasn’t. Kat was right; he was just some guy. The magic of the moment popped like a soap bubble—all that was left was the thin film of a hope that I was too old to nurse. All at once I knew that it was pathetic, really, downright sad how I reacted like a child at the sight of a man who on second glance could not have been more different from Kat and me if his skin was the color of the lamppost I leaned against.
I tried to shrug it off, the intimacy of our shared and brief conviction, and watched the remainder of the parade with the same cool detachment as my soon-to-be gorgeous sister. She rested the fine line of her chin on the back of a long-fingered hand, and I envied her wisdom, her age. Her ability to so easily let go of something that proved to still hold me in a powerful grip.
Kat never mentioned him again.
But the night of the parade was the first night that she ever cracked the door to my room and crawled into bed beside me.
6
Tightly Held
The Holiday Inn Express of Seward was a squat, three-story building that overlooked the small-boat harbor in Resurrection Bay. Every room boasted a view, whether it was of the mountains that safeguarded the bay city or a picturesque vista of a mismatched collection of sailboats against a backdrop of snowy glacier fields. Beautiful as it was, to Dani the poignancy of it all was sensory overload. There was unfamiliar birdsong in the trees, notes that flew high and true and rang clean against the crisp-cool edge of spring air. And unfurled masts that stood taut in expectation, waiting for the inevitable chance to test the wind over the water. The trees were sharp-edged and perfect, the breeze scented with pine and salt and earth that was slowly being warmed by a brilliant sun. Everything was bright and angled and new. Dani felt as if she had to shield herself from the promise of it.
“I love it here,” Hazel said with a mouthful of scrambled eggs. The hotel had an extensive breakfast, and the room where they gathered plates heaped with Danish pastries and hot reindeer sausage was resplendent with light from the floor-to-ceiling vaulted window.
Dani didn’t know if she was talking about Alaska or the hotel.
“You could stay here all day and watch the boats sailing in the harbor.”
As if Danica had the time or inclination to waste her day watching the water bob with miniature vessels like corks in a bathtub. All the same, her gaze drifted out the window and followed a blue jeans–clad sailor as he ran a loving hand over the hull of a red-and-white sailboat. A name had been painted on the side in billowy, black script, and Dani squinted to make it out. Pride & Joy.
“What are you going to do today?” Hazel lifted a link of grainy sausage to her lips. “Have you tried this yet? It’s pretty amazing.”
“No.” Dani stifled a shudder at the red-orange meat. She forked a corner of her cheese Danish but left the bite uneaten on her plate. “I’ll be busy,” she said. “Blair gave me that file, you know.”
Hazel slanted a purse-lipped look Dani’s way. “I don’t know if you should be wallowing in that.”
“Wallowing? I am not wallowing.”
“Well, you’re not going to learn anything from those newspaper articles. It’s not like they’ll offer some sort of hint about Ell’s whereabouts.”
“I want to read them,” Dani said in a tone that slammed the door on further discussion. “And then I’m going to call Russ. He said that he’d fly up to Seward as soon as we were here and settled.”
“Good.” Hazel nodded once at Dani’s admission. She seemed pleased that the younger woman was finally going to initiate contact with Etsell’s friend and employer. Russ had been trying to get hold of her since Ell went missing, but Dani resolutely screened his calls. She just didn’t know if she blamed Russ Manfred or if she feared hearing what he had to say.
“Would you like me to be here when he comes?” Hazel asked.
Dani blinked in surprise as Hazel worried her bottom lip. “Thanks for the offer,” Dani said, “but I’ll be fine. I don’t want you and Blair to cut anything short.”
Hazel popped the last
of her sausage into her mouth and gave Dani a thin smile. “Keep your cell phone on you. We’ll call if anything comes up.” Then she pushed back from the table and gathered up the remnants of her breakfast. Without another word, she crammed everything into the garbage can at the entrance to the breakfast room and disappeared down the hallway.
Dani was thankful to be left alone. She held up her Styrofoam coffee cup in both hands and breathed in the bitter steam. It was terrible coffee, metallic-tasting and oily, but at least it was strong. She couldn’t see past the greasy film of the dark surface, and that suited her just fine.
Hazel was hardly the ideal companion, but Dani was grateful that she had accompanied her all the same. There was something calming in the candor of her no-nonsense presence, and though her abrupt departures and awkward silences were sometimes unnerving, Dani was accustomed to the older woman’s eccentricities. While Hazel’s every quirk and personality flaw was obnoxious in Blackhawk, here Dani found them strangely comforting. Ell loved Hazel. He thought her gruff demeanor was charming, and though it was hard for Dani to agree, Alaska seemed to require a strong measure of Hazel’s implacability.
“Use it,” Dani whispered, stirring the soft cloud of steam that hovered above her coffee cup. “Use that iron will and find Ell.” But even before the words faded, she questioned their worth. She felt like a die-hard fan cheering for a win even as the clock wound down to the final minute.
When her coffee had been drained and her plate was a graveyard for picked-apart pieces of uneaten pastry, Dani finally heaved a sigh and tore her gaze from the view before her. Her legs felt leaden, stiff and heavy with the hopelessness that seeped into her bones like a sickness. She placed her hand over the unopened file, pinning it against the table as if she could press it into submission and make it tell her the story she wanted to hear. But she knew what awaited her in the manila folder. Press clippings and quick summaries, journalistic entries that would catalog the facts and fail to record all the emotion that clung mistlike to the contours of Etsell Greene’s disappearance.