I cupped my hands to the passenger-side window, trying to see into the back of the van, certain that Madison was in there. But all I could see were piles of household goods—a foam mattress folded in half and stuffed behind the front seats, boxes of pots and pans, books, clothing—as if Sarah was hauling stuff to the thrift store or had just come from there.
“Madison!” I cried, rapping on the window.
“She’s not in there,” Olive said, crossing her arms. “I told you. This was all my idea.”
“But why? What’s this about?”
Olive exchanged a look with Sarah. “I had plans for this week, all right?” she said. “I was going to catch a bus back to Toronto.”
I stepped back and raised a hand, exasperated. “You took off on me so you could meet up with friends?”
She shrugged. “You’re not really going to call the cops, are you?” she asked.
“I should,” I said.
“No, don’t do that!” she pleaded, and she started spouting tears. But something was off about them, like she had worked up those tears for her drama class. “Seriously, this was all my fault,” she said. “I asked her for the ride.” She nodded at Sarah. “Please don’t phone the cops on her.”
Sarah held up both hands. “Look, it’s just like the girl said. I was only trying to do the right thing. She said she needed a lift to Espanola, to catch the bus from there. I was worried for her. A girl so young hitchhiking. So I picked her up. Better me than some creep, right?”
“Okay, okay. Both of you just take it easy.” I rubbed my temples as my adrenaline-fueled anger abated somewhat. Maybe this woman was just a good Samaritan. That would explain why she looked familiar: she was a local heading back home to Espanola after a day at the cottage. God, maybe Olive was right and I was just being paranoid.
“What the hell is wrong with you, then?” I asked Sarah. “You saw me following. You must have heard me honking.”
“You were swerving all over the road,” she said. “I thought you were some drunk kid in a truck full of Canada Day partiers. I was just trying to stay ahead of you, out of your way. But you’re right. I should have pulled over.”
“Let’s just go,” Olive said, stomping to the truck. As she opened the door, she looked back at Sarah. “I’m sorry about this,” she said, nodding my way. “You should go.” Implying, Before she does anything stupid.
“As long as you’re all right,” Sarah said. “You’ll be all right?”
Olive nodded. “I’m okay.”
Sarah unlocked the door and got in her van, backed up to maneuver around me and, after holding Olive’s gaze, rolled away. Yeah, maybe she was just a good Samaritan, but then maybe not. The timing, with Madison’s attempts to take Olive that day, was too coincidental. I pulled out my phone and took a photo of her license plate as she left, in case she tried something. In case Olive ran off again.
I got in the truck with the girls and held the wheel for a moment, feeling jittery. Evie dropped her soother and Olive plugged it back in.
“Don’t tell Dad,” she begged me. “Please don’t tell Dad.”
When I didn’t answer, she reached into the front seat and grabbed the sleeve of my shirt, knotting up the fabric in her grip. “Please, Kira. He’ll kill me.”
“You should have thought of that before you took off on me.”
Of course I was going to tell Aaron that Olive had run off. But I had to gather myself first. I knew he would be pissed, disappointed—not just at Olive, but at me for allowing it to happen. And I couldn’t bear his disappointment any more than Olive could.
Olive laid a cheek on the fine hair on Evie’s head, her eyes watering. Crying for real this time.
I buckled up and pulled back out onto the road, then looked at Olive through the rearview mirror. “Give me your phone,” I said, holding up my right hand.
“No way.”
“You are not going to pass on any more information to Madison.” Or, right now, to her father. “I won’t give you the opportunity to make travel plans with her, or that woman.”
“I told you, she didn’t—”
“Now.”
“No freaking way.”
I ground my teeth. “Give me the fucking phone.”
Olive, shocked that I was angry enough to drop the f-bomb in her presence, handed me her phone. I tossed it on the seat next to mine.
“There’s no cell service at the cottage anyway,” I said.
“Seriously?”
I supposed taking her phone made little difference now. Madison was here, in that van or some other vehicle, and was likely following us right now. And it seemed that she might have help.
She was no longer stalking us alone.
9
We drove the few minutes back to Little Current in silence. Evie shifted and whined in discomfort all the way, so after we crossed the swing bridge, I pulled into a gas station.
“I’m changing Evie before we head to the cottage,” I told Olive, parking in front of the bathroom.
“Fine.”
I unbuckled. “You’re coming with me.”
“I’m staying in the truck.”
“Like hell you are.”
I opened the door and lifted Evie from her car seat, slinging the diaper bag over my shoulder. “Out,” I said to Olive.
She grudgingly stepped down from the crew cab and slammed the door behind her. I locked up and then, still holding Evie, pushed Olive forward, toward the bathroom. When she jerked away, I grabbed her arm and hauled her to the door, glancing back at the elderly couple watching us from the lineup at the gas pump. The woman leaned into her husband, said something into his ear and scowled at me.
“Get the door, please,” I said. Olive opened the bathroom door and went in first. I locked it behind us.
I pulled down the grubby change table and laid Evie on it. “I want to know exactly what is going on.”
Olive hugged herself as she looked up at the small, dirty window high above the sink. “So you can tell Dad,” she said.
“So I can protect you.” I removed Evie’s frilly shorts. “Do you know that woman who picked you up? Sarah, was it? She looked familiar.”
Olive shook her head, her eyes still on the window. Behind her head, somebody had scrawled Love stinks.
I tugged off Evie’s disposable diaper and dumped it in the garbage can. “Is that woman working with Madison?”
“I said no already.”
“Seriously, did she pick you up for Madison? Is she a friend of hers?” Though I couldn’t imagine any friend, no matter how close, wanting to help Madison take a kid. “Or is she somebody Madison hired?” Some junkie looking for quick cash. The woman seemed down on her luck, driving that old minivan full of stuff. “Was that woman waiting for you at the bridge? Was she taking you to Madison, or was Madison hiding in that van?”
“No! I told you, I just wanted to get back home.” Olive breathed out a dramatic sigh as she leaned against the wall. “I was going to see my boyfriend, okay? We planned to meet while Dad was gone, and then you dragged me all the way up here. When we were stuck at the bridge, I saw that van parked on the side of the road, so I jumped out. That lady—Sarah—had just stopped to take a call. I told her I needed a ride to the bus. It was dumb, I know. I didn’t think it through. I just wanted to see Tyler. Dad hasn’t let me out of the house since school ended.”
I eyed her, trying to figure out if she was lying. Then I cleaned Evie’s bum with a disposable wipe. “So you thought, with just me in the house, you could skip out and I wouldn’t notice?”
“Before we left, I was going to tell you I was staying over at Camila’s place. Camila and I had it all planned.”
I let my shoulders fall as I tossed the dirty wipe in the garbage. It was the kind of dumb thing a teen would do. I had often camped out with a friend in our backyard so I could slip out of the tent in the night to meet up with Nathan at the beach.
“Don’t you understand how dangerous that wa
s, getting a ride from a complete stranger?”
Olive lifted a shoulder, staring not at the mirror behind me, but through it. “She was nice,” she said. “I knew she wouldn’t hurt me.”
I pulled a diaper from the bag. “But what if she was crazy?” I said. She had looked sort of mentally ill, worn to the bone. “Or what if it wasn’t that woman who stopped? What if it was like she said, some creep?” God. He could have used Olive and dumped her body. “You could have been killed.”
Olive snorted. “You’re being a drama queen.” Something Aaron often accused Olive of.
“Why didn’t you answer the phone?”
She gave me a look. Duh.
“If Sarah really had nothing to do with it, why didn’t Madison answer my call?”
“I don’t know. Maybe she was out of range. Or maybe she just didn’t want to talk to you.”
I fastened Evie’s diaper as I considered that. There were big gaps in phone reception in the region. In the small village where my family cottage was situated, I had seen desperate tourists holding their phones to the wind on the beach, hoping to catch a few bars. Occasionally they succeeded in snagging a signal, for fleeting moments. Locals and tourists had to drive into town or stop at the sweet spot at the crossroads to send a text or place a call. I often saw cars parked there, at the crossroads, locals and summer people who knew the drill. If Madison had been in the line ahead of us, she might have had to cross the bridge while I chased after Olive, but then, having seen me take off, she would have waited in Little Current until she could cross back over, and there was cell service there. And she had been trying so hard to reach me all day. Why would she suddenly not answer? Unless she had been in the minivan with Olive and Sarah. She must have been.
“Hold Evie for me, will you?” I said.
As I stepped to the sink, Olive took over for me, dressing Evie in her frilly pants.
“So that’s your story,” I said, washing my hands. “You weren’t running away from home? You weren’t meeting up with Madison?”
“No.”
“Huh.” I hesitated, turning my back to her as I dried my hands, talking to her through the mirror. “You don’t feel you have a reason, do you? To run away?” The scissors under the pillow. “Has Madison been telling you things again, nasty things about your dad? You understand that she lies, right?” As my mother had.
Olive shook her head, but she didn’t make eye contact. She tickled Evie’s belly, and Evie gurgled as she grabbed her own toes.
“The reason I ask . . .” I chucked the paper towel in the garbage and faced her. “I was cleaning up in your room this morning, picking up laundry. And there were scissors under your pillow.”
There was a knock on the bathroom door, and someone tried the knob.
I lowered my voice. “Do you keep the scissors there on purpose?” I smiled, trying to make light of it. “Or are you just a slob?”
As soon as I said it, I wished I could rewind. The comment about being a slob came out meaner than I intended, especially as I had harped on her about her messes many times.
“You snooped around in my room?”
“You haven’t answered my question.”
As I picked up Evie, Olive stepped back and looked at the door, as if searching for a way to escape.
“Olive,” I said, pressing her. “What is Madison telling you? Is she still trying to make you believe your dad is abusive, or talk you into leaving us? Is that what all this is about?”
Olive held my gaze for a long moment. “The scissors must have dropped out of my backpack,” she said evenly.
My kitchen scissors? It was only then that I became certain Olive had, in fact, put those scissors under her pillow for protection. But protection from what?
There was another knock on the door. “Just a minute!” I said. Then I looked back at Olive. “Listen, when I was a kid, my mother made me afraid of my father. She said he wanted to hurt me. She warned me to be on guard whenever I was alone with him. Even though my father never did anything threatening, I slept with a steak knife under my pillow when I stayed at his house, or one of my hunting knives when I was at the hunt camp. I never trusted him, because she taught me not to.”
“I told you, I must have dropped the scissors on my bed,” Olive said. “That’s all.”
But she rubbed her hands on the thighs of her jeans, leaving wet streaks there. She was sweating, nervous. It was a lie. The reason she’d given for running off at the bridge, that was a lie too. I was absolutely sure, in that moment, that Madison had been hiding in that van. But who the hell was that woman, Sarah?
I put the diaper bag over my shoulder as I spoke. “My mother didn’t want me to see my dad, or more to the point, she wanted to hurt my dad, so she did everything in her power to stop me from spending time with him. I felt I had to go along with what she wanted or I’d lose her. She would even say that: it was either him or her; I couldn’t love them both.” I paused. “Does Madison make you feel that way, Olive?”
Olive’s gaze slid up to the window. “I just want to go home,” she said, in tears.
I knew it wasn’t our big open-concept house she was talking about; it was the home she had shared with Aaron and Madison, the home I’d broken apart. She wanted to go back to the way things were. I knew the feeling. I looked back longingly to even a week ago, before Madison started stalking me, when all I had to worry about was picking up Evie’s dropped slimy banana slices and arguing with Olive when she insisted on giving Evie Froot Loops. I wanted to go back there. I wanted to go home.
10
I became acutely aware of the stink of Evie’s discarded diaper in this small gas station bathroom.
“Let’s get out of here,” I said, carrying Evie out the door.
Olive followed me, holding the door open for the woman waiting outside.
After I buckled Evie into her seat next to Olive, I grabbed both my phone and Olive’s from the front seat, pocketing Olive’s.
“You’re phoning Dad?” Olive asked, her voice rising in alarm. “Now?”
“I have some questions,” I said. “And he needs to know what just happened.”
I closed the passenger door, then stood a few feet away, keeping a close eye on Olive as I called Aaron. He answered right away.
“Is it Madison?” he asked without saying hello. “What has she done now?”
I heard the hum of a vehicle in the space behind him. He was in a taxi, then.
“No . . . yes, likely,” I said.
Olive bit her nails as she watched me from the back seat.
“Aaron, Olive jumped out of the truck and ran off on me at the swing bridge. She caught a ride in a minivan—”
His voice rose in alarm. “With Madison?”
“Probably. I chased after it—”
“Olive is gone?”
“No, no. She’s here, with me.” I held out a hand to her as I spoke, as if he could see me. “But there was a deer, and the van she was in swerved off—”
“She was in an accident? My god. Is she okay?”
“She’s fine. It wasn’t really an accident. The van just drove off the road. But the woman driving the van—”
His voice grew louder. “Why would Olive run off on you like that? Why would she run to Madison?”
“I’m sorry, Aaron. I didn’t—”
“Seriously? I can’t even trust you to keep my daughter safe?”
A semi blew by, shuddering the ground under my feet. “But I brought Olive all the way up here,” I said, my voice rising to a childish whine. “I did what you asked. How could I possibly know she’d jump out of the truck?” I repeatedly pressed the toe of my runner against the concrete parking block as I waited for Aaron to respond. In the truck, Olive rocked herself, as she often did when anxious.
Aaron released a long sigh. “Okay, okay, I know,” he said finally. “I shouldn’t have blasted you like that. I’m just . . .”
“Scared.” I nodded as I bit my nail. I would
be scared and angry too if something happened to Evie while she was in Aaron’s care. I could see her little hands now, clutching a stuffie, waving up and down within the truck.
“But I shouldn’t have entrusted you with keeping Olive safe,” he said, “not with Madison stalking you like that.”
Because I wasn’t capable of dealing with it, he was suggesting. And I wasn’t. I had nearly let that strange woman drive away with Olive.
I put my hand under my armpit to stop myself from biting my nails. “What I was trying to ask—at first I was sure it was Madison who had picked her up, but it was this other woman. And I think Madison must have hid in the back of the van when we all stopped. When I tried to open the door to see, it was locked. Could Madison have someone working with her to get to Olive? A friend, maybe?” Although, from the way Sarah presented herself, I doubted it; she didn’t look like she belonged in Madison’s circle of friends, if Madison even had a circle of friends.
Aaron paused. “Did Olive seem to know this person?”
“I’m not sure. It didn’t really seem like it. Olive claimed she was trying to catch a bus back home, to see friends, and the woman said she was only giving her a ride.”
“What did she look like?”
“Forty-something, maybe older. Wild hair. She seemed kind of worn-out. Scruffy. The van was older, a minivan, and she was dressed like she shopped at a thrift store or was homeless or something.”
I locked gazes with Olive as I realized where I had seen Sarah before. She had driven slowly down the street behind me as I’d run home that morning. Given that Madison had appeared along my running route, it had likely been Sarah’s minivan I’d seen parked there as well. She must have given Madison a ride.
“Aaron, I saw her this morning, back in Toronto,” I said. “Near our place. I thought she was a homeless person. But she must know Madison. Madison must have been in that van with her. Why else would she be up here?” I bit my thumbnail again as I waited for Aaron to respond. When he didn’t, I said, “She said her name was Sarah.”
“What else did you notice about her?”
“I don’t know. She was skinny, bad hair, blond. Dyed.” I could see her graying roots. “She looked pretty rough, actually, like a junkie.” There was a long pause on Aaron’s end. “Are you still there?”
The Almost Wife Page 6