The Almost Wife

by Gail Anderson-Dargatz

  As her phone suddenly regained reception, Madison’s voice boomed so loud I held the phone away from my ear. “Olive’s lost?”

  “We were in the process of tracking her down when you took Evie—”

  “Tracking her—is that what you were doing? I saw you with a man and a dog. When I didn’t find Olive in your truck, I thought—oh god—I thought you had hidden her somewhere. But she’s out in that forest alone? You know how anxious she is. She’ll be terrified!”

  “I know,” I said. “We need to get back to the forest and find her right now. Just meet us—”

  “Where did you last see her?”

  “Near my father’s hunt camp. Where we were stopped, where I hit that deer. There’s a leaping deer on the signpost to the camp road.”

  There was a long pause. “You still there?” I asked.

  “Just let me think.”

  Think? What was there to think about? “Bring Evie to the hunt camp,” I said. “We’ll find Olive together.” There was another long pause, and I thought the call had dropped. “Madison?” I asked.

  “No. Olive won’t come out of the forest for you, but she will for me.”

  Sadly, given Olive’s actions that day, my actions that day, Madison might well be right.

  “And I need to talk to Olive alone,” she continued. “I need to make her understand, without your interference. It’s clear you’re still buying into Aaron’s bullshit.”

  “Madison, listen to me—”

  “Go back to the village, to the beach—”

  “Madison, we don’t have time for this. Olive’s out there—”

  “I’ll leave Evie—” The call cut out, and when it picked up again, her voice was tinny. “—maybe at the playground. She can—” And the call dropped.

  “Damn it,” I said, tossing the phone on the console.

  “What’s going on?” Nathan asked.

  “Madison said something about leaving Evie at the beach.” I started the truck.

  “Alone? Would she really do that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Nathan shook his head. “This whole situation is so . . .”

  I mentally filled in the blank. Fucked.

  I put the truck in gear and sped toward the village. My baby was only ten minutes down the road, but, my god, a lot could happen in ten minutes.

  16

  As we reached the outskirts of the village, a gray minivan flew toward us, going as much over the speed limit as I was.

  “That van,” I said. “It’s her van, Sarah’s, the woman who picked up Olive at the bridge.”

  Nathan squinted at it. “Are you sure?” he said. “Those minivans are all over the roads.”

  But as we met the vehicle, I saw Sarah driving it. Beside her, Madison was leaning forward to stare back at me. She appeared distraught, her mascara tear-smudged, her expression grief-stricken and determined. I imagined I looked much the same. The two of us racing in opposite directions to reach our daughters.

  This can’t possibly be happening, I thought as I sped past the van, the gas pedal to the floor. Nothing felt real. I had the uncanny sensation that I was awake within a lucid dream. In the field ahead, sandhill cranes high-stepped through the fading twilight, looking for all the world like a herd of feathered dinosaurs.

  “Kira, slow down.”

  “I’ve got to get to Evie!”

  “We can’t help her if we hit another deer on the way there.”

  “She can’t get to Olive before we do,” I said. “She just can’t!” But I eased back on the gas as I picked up my cell, intending to call Madison again as I drove.

  Nathan took the phone from my hand.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “You’re distracted enough,” he said.

  I took a corner too sharply, and we were in town.

  “Look out!” Nathan cried.

  I braked to avoid hitting a kid wearing a T-shirt with a Canadian flag on it. He scurried across the road to join a few stragglers making their way down to the beach as fireworks exploded in the sky above the bay. It appeared they had started the show a little early, perhaps to get a jump on the storm that loomed overhead, threatening a downpour.

  I drove on, but as I reached the parking lot, people walking to the beach crisscrossed the road, blocking traffic. Some ambled down the street right in front of the cars, seemingly unaware of the traffic behind them.

  “Come on, come on!” I said and honked to get the vehicles moving. The car ahead of me passed it on, beeping at the group of chubby middle-aged tourists walking in the middle of the road. One of the men lifted a hand and trotted to the sidewalk, grinning. When the line of cars drove straight into the beach parking lot, I followed.

  Directly ahead, the playground set was silhouetted against the dark clouds, looking like a miniature castle with turrets. Please let her be safe, I prayed. Please.

  I parked the rental, slung my purse over my shoulder and jogged to the playground with Nathan and Buddy hot on my heels, the sand shifting under my runners. A barrage of red fireworks shot upward, sounding like gunfire, and bloom after bloom of red, blue and green mortars exploded overhead. There were people everywhere, seated in camp chairs or on blankets in the sand, leaning against the railings of the boardwalk. Kids wore crowns of eerily colored glow sticks and waved glow-stick swords at one another. Someone must have been selling them or handing them out. A kid spun the sticks, one in each hand, creating a light display. The crowded beach had the atmosphere of a carnival. So many people, and Evie could be anywhere.

  “You see her?” Nathan asked, clipping the leash to Buddy’s collar.

  “No.”

  Images came in flashes as I scanned the playground and beach for her: a kid climbing up the slide; two teen boys jumping off the top of the bigger playhouse; girls dancing on top of the jungle gym, their arms waving against the stormy sky. Fireworks burst behind, silhouetting them.

  “Have you seen a baby crawling around here?” I called to the girls. “She was just here.”

  The girls shrugged. There were young children everywhere. Evie could have been carried away by any adult, just another sleepy and complaining baby, and no one would have thought twice about it.

  I searched the area around the jungle gym as Nathan asked locals he knew if they had seen Evie. The fireworks were so brilliant that, during bursts, the crowded beach was nearly as light as day. But Evie was nowhere in sight.

  “Anyone!” I called out. “Have you seen a baby? Evie. Her name is Evie!”

  A few people passing close by shook their heads and carried on. Tourists.

  “Nathan! Nathan!” A woman’s voice rang out across the crowd in between the crackle of fireworks. I swung around to see Nathan jogging toward Ashley, with Buddy running behind him. The dog jumped at her excitedly as Nathan led her back toward me.

  “Ashley will help us look,” he said.

  I nodded. Sure, whatever. I’d take any help I could get.

  Ashley looked past me to the playground. “She can’t have gone far. You only just got here.”

  “You don’t understand.” I spun in a circle, looking for Evie. “Madison said she left her at the playground alone.” At least, that’s what I thought she’d said before the call dropped.

  “So, Madison is . . . family?” Ashley asked.

  Nathan shook his head to answer her question but also to warn her off.

  I realized with a blast of adrenaline that Madison was family, through marriage. Or almost family. My future husband’s wife, the stepmother of my future stepchild. But I didn’t want to explain that to Ashley.

  Nathan did it for me, leaning toward Ashley to talk into her ear as fireworks boomed over our heads.

  “She was kidnapped?” Ashley spoke the word with greedy, breathy horror. A tale to tell a friend over a bottle of Yellow Tail, no doubt.

  “We can use Buddy, right?” I asked Nathan. “Can he track Evie in this crowd?”

  “We can
try,” he said. “Have you got something of Evie’s?”

  I dug into my shoulder bag for Evie’s cardigan, which I’d hastily stuck in there. My bag had become a mother’s purse, filled with toys and soothers and sippy cups. “Here,” I said, handing him the sweater. Nathan, in turn, offered it to Buddy, commanding him with a cheerful “Find it!” Buddy immediately started sniffing the sand, crisscrossing back and forth in front of the play set. The number of human smells must have been overwhelming: dozens and dozens of individual scents flooding the beach. But then Buddy made straight for the swing set and we followed, with Ashley trailing behind. When Buddy got there, he sniffed a circle around the swings and then looked up at Nathan as if to say, What do you want me to do now?

  “What is it?” I asked. “Why has he stopped?”

  “I don’t think he’s picked up her scent.” Nathan offered him Evie’s sweater again. “Find it!” he said.

  Buddy sniffed the beach, circling the swings, then took off back to the jungle gym. We followed as Buddy wandered from place to place, sniffing everything.

  “Either she wasn’t here, or there are just too many people,” Nathan said.

  “But Madison said . . . I thought she said . . .” I blinked back the tears and took in a deep breath to calm myself. The air felt muggy. Lightning flashed over the bay.

  Nathan tried offering Evie’s scent one more time, pulling Buddy off in another direction. But the dog just zigzagged through the crowd, going nowhere in particular.

  “This makes no sense,” I said. “She can’t have just vanished.”

  “Someone could have picked her up,” Ashley said.

  “Or, if she made it to the water . . .” I said.

  I turned to the bay. The water.

  17

  I ran toward the water and waded into the lake with my runners on, thrashing around with my hands. It was so cold. My baby in this cold, dark water. “Evie!” I called, then listened.

  If Evie had crawled into the lake, she could be dead already. But surely someone would have seen her? There were families everywhere; surely no one would let a baby crawl into the lake alone. She had to be along this small section of shore. Didn’t she? If she’d made it to the water on her own, she would be right here, in front of the playground. And the waves lapping the shore would keep her body here. Her body.

  Nathan and Ashley splashed into the water beside me, feeling about in the shallows a few feet away.

  “If she is here in the water, she doesn’t have long,” Nathan said. He sloshed back onto shore. “We need more help.”

  While I flailed around in the water, nearly incoherent, Nathan gathered a few locals to help us search the beachfront. A barrage of fireworks flashed in quick succession, lighting up the bay in staccato bursts.

  “Evie!” My voice rang over the water. Something brushed past my leg. I reached down, but whatever it was—likely a fingerling—was gone.

  Nathan and the locals he had enlisted waded in with me, the fireworks exploding over our heads, casting shimmering light across the waves. One of the searchers approached a nearby group of teens huddled around a fire they had built with driftwood, even though there were signs everywhere forbidding campfires. The kids shook their heads in response. Beyond them, a row of sandcastles from the Canada Day competition were already crumbling away.

  “Anything?” Nathan called out to the searchers in between the bursts of fireworks. And they echoed back:

  “Nothing here.”

  “Nothing here.”

  “Could she have gone deeper?” I asked Nathan. “Farther into the water?” The bay was shallow. A swimmer could walk far out and still be only waist-deep. “Could she have floated out?” Nathan had lived all his life by this shore. Surely he would know these things. About currents and drownings.

  “It’s only been a few minutes since Madison left her in the playground, right? It’s unlikely. If she’s in the water, she would be here.”

  I splashed and splashed, feeling with my hands in the dark. Someone brought a flashlight and shone it on the waves. That only made it more difficult to see, the light reflecting off the surface.

  “Evie!” I cried, and the searchers echoed me down the shoreline. Evie, Evie, Evie, Evie . . . Lightning flashed and flashed again over the bay. In the relative quiet between fireworks, I heard the rumble of thunder.

  Then there was a holler from just down the shore. “Hey! There’s something here!”

  Something in the water. Something in that vast expanse of black. Evie. My tiny Evie, lost in all that. I felt like I was trapped in a dream of running but going nowhere, the stretch of dark beach expanding as I struggled to get there. I stumbled once and fell, panting, on all fours.

  Ashley helped me up, her thin, cold fingers holding my bare arm. “Are you okay?” she asked.

  I shook her off and pushed on without answering, staggering into the group of locals who had gathered on shore to watch a man haul something from the water. Something small and heavy, the size of a child.

  18

  I pushed through the circle of men on the beach. It took a moment to understand what I was seeing on the sand. Not a child at all. Not Evie. A fawn. Perhaps injured and disoriented, perhaps abandoned, it had fallen into the lake and been washed, wave after wave, to this sandy shore. Now it was little more than a bloated bundle of bones, its legs like twigs, snapped as the carcass was tossed against the rocks at the point.

  “I imagine that’s a relief,” Ashley said.

  Relief? “Evie could be anywhere,” I said. “She could be anywhere out there! Dead.” As dead as this poor young animal.

  The men around us shuffled in the sand, embarrassed by my anger. Ashley held both hands beneath her armpits. Her tank top revealed bony shoulders. I had yelled at this woman, just as Aaron had yelled at me when I told him Olive had run off. For no reason. Because she was there. Because I was terrified. Because I blamed myself. Because she also loved Nathan.

  Nathan rested one hand on the small of my back. It felt warm and solid there, grounding. “We’ll find her,” he said. But then, that’s what he’d said about Olive.

  A barefoot man in a red T-shirt and jeans jogged up to us. He looked familiar, like so many of the locals helping us search for Evie, though I couldn’t place him. “Jamie said a couple of women were asking about you, Kira. Where you lived, who your friends were.”

  Jamie? Who’s Jamie? “Just now?” I asked. “I mean, within the last half hour or so?”

  “No, earlier in the evening. They were at the ice cream shop.”

  So they had arrived on the island before the girls and me, and had been snooping around in my life, looking for opportunities to get to Olive.

  “The questions they were asking Jamie seemed a little strange,” the man said. “But he just assumed they were friends of yours, up for a visit and trying to track you down. Jamie pointed them to your place, Kira, and to Teresa’s house, as he thought you might be there. Then, just before the fireworks started, he saw the same women, talking to Teresa outside her house. One was holding a baby.”

  “He’s sure it was the same women?”

  “He’s sure. He said one of them was dressed up, in a pink suit and heels. The other, not so much.”

  “That’s them,” I said, jogging toward the boardwalk. As an afterthought, I waved my thanks.

  Nathan ran after me, leaving Ashley behind. “Madison wouldn’t hurt Mom, would she?” he asked as we climbed the stairs. “I mean, she took Evie, for god’s sake.”

  I didn’t answer. She had taken Evie. She had broken into our house. And now, it seemed, she was trying to hurt me through the people I loved.

  We jogged down the boardwalk together. I had walked these boards with Nathan many, many times. When we were teens, we had made out on those benches on the beach. I had lost my virginity to him on that dune, under this boardwalk. We had met here at midnight and waded, naked, far out into the shallow bay, the sand deliciously textured under our feet, the da
rk water around us shining with a thousand reflections of the stars above, the Milky Way cutting a swath through the sky and dipping below the horizon of Lake Huron. But now, under this stormy sky, reddened by flashes of fireworks and crowded with dark figures, the boardwalk felt like the surreal setting of a nightmare.

  Teresa’s house—and my cottage—was only a short run from the beach, but a small patch of bush, mostly pine and milkweed, covered a sand dune that blocked it from view of the boardwalk. The house was little more than a box with a roof, a two-story structure from the Edwardian era, but without the characteristic Edwardian elements, no veranda or columns.

  There were no lights on, but I banged on the door anyway.

  Nathan pressed past me and opened the door. “Mom?” he called out. When he got no answer, he said, “She’s likely at the beach watching the fireworks.”

  “We already looked there. I didn’t see her.”

  “But with the crowd—we could have missed her. And we didn’t try the ice cream shop.”

  I raced back to the boardwalk and pushed through the crowd, the smells of beer, sweat and suntan lotion mixing with the scent of the lake that wafted up from those who had spent the day swimming.

  The ice cream shop normally closed at nine, but was open late for the fireworks. Families sat at the wooden tables outside, sucking back ice cream cones with their heads tipped upward, their faces rapt, as the dark dome of the sky shattered into a million sparkling pieces, another fireworks barrage exploding overhead. They were bringing out the big guns now as the show came to a close. I waded my way through them to the shop, opened the door and heard a baby’s cry.

  19

  Evie sat on Teresa’s lap inside, fussing as she held a mini-cone, her face sticky with ice cream. Her car seat sat at Teresa’s feet. “Mum-mum,” she said on seeing me. She dropped the cone, holding out her arms as Nathan and I stepped through the door.

  “Oh, thank god,” I said, rushing toward her.