by Gail Bowen
She swore softly. “I’ve lost a whole day, but there was no way around it. My new best friends from head office insisted on getting an early start. On what, I still haven’t figured out. Jo, I was tracking down stuff for them all day, figures, employment records, old interviews. And whatever I got wasn’t enough, they’d just send me off again. I felt like that girl in the fairy tale who had to keep spinning straw into gold, and no matter how much she spun it was never enough. What was the name of that story anyway?”
“Rumpelstiltskin,” I said.
Jill laughed. “Jo, you’re so well read. Anyway, after I spent the day spinning my straw, I came home and there was a threat on my machine.”
The hotel manager leaned forward; he was so close I could smell his aftershave. It was artificially piny, like the little deodorant trees people hang from the rear-view mirror of cars.
“What kind of threat?” I asked.
“Just a garden-variety death threat,” Jill said quietly. “I’ve heard worse. Anyway, that’s where we are now.”
“I think you should call the police,” I said.
“Not yet,” she said. “This one’s still mine. Jo, I can feel the adrenaline. Something’s coming.”
“Be careful,” I said. “Please, please, be careful.”
I had a troubled sleep that night. I dreamed I was at the back door of the Lily Pad. I could hear a child crying inside, and I was frantic to get in. I had a card for the security system, but every time I tried to use it to open the door, the system spit the card back out at me. No matter how many ways I tried, I couldn’t get the card to fit. Then Blaine Harris was there in his ponytail and his beaded moccasins. “The rain,” he said urgently. “The rain,” I said, and it seemed to be the right thing to say because he smiled at me and gave me an old paper dollar. I put the dollar into the card slot, and the door opened. Then I woke up.
The next morning I was up with the sun; after the puzzling dream of the night before, I was glad to see it. A car pulled into the parking lot in front of the unit next door, and that was reassuring, too. It felt good to be part of the solid world where the sun shines and people come and go. I could hear the voice of our neighbour, the sunburned man who had talked to Taylor when he came in from fishing the night we came. It was obvious that he and the man who had just arrived were old friends who met somewhere every year to fish. As I heard my neighbour and his friend exchange their bluff hearty greetings and run through the familiar litany about the condition of the roads they’d driven and how much booze they’d brought and where the fish were biting, I was smiling. Unreconstructed, unrepentant Real Men. No one needed to give these guys drums to get in touch with their inner selves.
Then the man who had just arrived lowered his voice. “So where’s the hairless pussy around here?” he asked.
The sunburned man laughed. “On an island, if you can believe it. You need a fucking guide to take you there, but, sweet Jesus, it’s worth it.”
Beside me, Taylor, still asleep, rolled over onto her back. She muttered something, then she smiled and stretched out her arms in a gesture of animal trust.
I felt my stomach lurch, and I sat up, tense, alert to danger.
Next door, the sunburned man said, “First things first. Come on in and we’ll have an eye-opener.”
The screen door slammed. For the next fifteen minutes, as I sat, still and silent, I could hear the low murmur of the voices on the other side of the wall. Finally, the screen door slammed again, and I could hear the men’s voices fade as they moved toward the dock. I walked onto our porch and watched until they got into the boat and started the motor. I didn’t stop watching until their boat disappeared into the line that separated the blue of the sky from the blue of the lake. I hoped they would drown.
When I went in, Taylor was sitting up with the candy box full of dolls on her knees.
“We’re going to the island to make breakfast,” she said. “Remember, Jo? You’re going to make a fire and we’re going to cook bacon. I dreamed about it even.”
My heart was pounding so hard I thought it would beat out of my chest. I wanted to take Taylor’s hand and run.
Oblivious, Taylor arranged her dolls on the bedspread. “Kokom says on the islands you can find moss that will keep my dolls from breaking when I carry them. She says when she was a girl people used to put that moss around real babies.” She looked up at me hopefully. “Jo?”
“Just trying to remember how to make a campfire, T.,” I said. “Come on, let’s get rolling. Get dressed and we’ll pack up our food. I’ve already looked at the lake this morning. It’s like glass. Perfect weather for a shore breakfast.”
Three-quarters of an hour later, picnic cooler loaded, Thermos filled, we were fastening our life jackets. It was going to be a great day, hot and still and sun-filled, but the man at the boat rental had been cautious.
“Where you want to go is South Bay,” he said. “You’ll be okay there. It’s close, and on that map of yours, the Xs show where the rocks are. Don’t go through the narrows into the lake proper. Too much can go wrong. Hit a rock, get stuck out in the middle when a storm hits, and you and the little girl here will buy it.”
I looked at my map; there were a lot of Xs, but it was reassuring, for once, to know where the dangers were.
It had been years since I’d driven a motorboat, but it wasn’t a complex skill, and it felt good to put some distance between me and Blue Heron Point. As our boat cut through the shining water, Taylor’s eyes were wide, taking in all the sights. When we came to the bay, I cut back the motor. There were perhaps twenty islands to choose from. They weren’t the gentle islands of children’s books; they were steep, with shirred rock faces that rose sharp and hostile from the water. The treeline was high on these islands, and it wasn’t until you climbed to the top that you were protected by bushes and evergreens.
“You pick,” I shouted to Taylor over the low hum of the motor. “Which one looks good to you?”
“Can we move closer?” she said.
“Sure,” I said, and we moved slowly through the bay, checking them out.
Finally Taylor pointed to one that seemed tucked away behind the others. “That one,” she said. “No one will ever find us there.”
It was as if she had read my mind.
We pulled the boat up on shore and tied it to a rock. When we were sure it was secure, we climbed up the rock face in search of wood. At the top of the hill the terrain was hospitable, flat and tree-covered. The sun came through the evergreens and made shifting patterns on the moss. I was standing there admiring the view when Taylor called me.
“Look,” she said. “People were here before.” On a stump between two trees, someone had piled stones and made a little altar. A plastic figure of the virgin was wedged into the stones at the top. On the ground in front of the altar was a ring of stones enclosing the charred remains of a fire.
As I looked at the garish little figurine I thought of Theresa and her brother. Two children on an island. At night it must have been terrifying: the unbroken darkness of the northern sky, the birds swooping to shore, the lake black with secrets. Had Theresa built a fire? Had she found a plastic Mary like this one to mother Jackie and her through the night? So many terrors. But she was a child who was used to terrors.
“Jo? Jo, what’re you thinking about?” Taylor was tugging at my hand. “Are you thinking about eating? Because I am.”
“Time to make a campfire then,” I said.
We built a fire on the rock, and we cooked bacon and made toast and boiled the lake water for tea. The tea tasted of twigs and smoke. After we cleaned our dishes and put out our fire, we explored the island, then we swam in the icy water. Taylor dog-paddled for a while, then she floated on her back and looked at the birds circling in the blue sky. When we got tired, we came ashore and lay in the sun on towels stretched over the rocks.
With the sun hot on my back, the warm rock under me and the sound of birdsong in the air, the tension seeped
out of my body, and I drifted off to sleep. I awoke to feel my bracelet burning from the sun. Taylor was sitting on her towel, carefully arranging the moss she’d collected around her wishbone dolls.
“You were sleeping,” she said with a smile.
I looked at my watch. It was twenty to twelve. By the time I got back to shore and changed, the pubs would have been open half an hour. With luck, Jackie Desjarlais would be ready to talk.
As we tied the boat to the dock in front of the shacks, I decided I’d try the Kingfisher first. That way I could check for phone messages, too. Taylor and I dropped our picnic gear at our cabin and walked up the hill to the hotel. The steps were filled with blank-faced kids smoking – Lily Pad north. When I asked if anyone had seen Jackie Desjarlais that day, they didn’t even bother looking up, and as we went up the steps, Taylor and I had to walk carefully to keep from stepping on them.
It wasn’t hard to find the bar. A plastic muskellunge arced over the doorway to a dark and cavernous room. Burned into a block of cedar under the fish were the words “Angler’s Corner.” It was only half an hour after opening, but already the pine room deodorizer was losing out to the smells of stale beer and cigarettes and urine. I waited for my eyes to adjust to the darkness, then Taylor and I started across the room. We didn’t get far. I hadn’t taken three steps when a hand reached out from behind me and closed around my upper arm.
“You can’t be in here with a kid.” The man behind me was huge and menacing; they grow their bouncers big in the north.
“I’m not staying,” I said. “I’m just looking for someone.”
His hand didn’t relax its grip.
“I’m looking for Jackie Desjarlais,” I said.
He looked at me stonily.
“Can you help me?” I said.
“If I see him, I’ll tell him you’re lookin’,” he said, and he started pushing me toward the door.
“Tell him I’m a friend of Theresa’s,” I said. “My name is Joanne and I’m staying at the shacks down by the lake.”
By the time I finished the sentence, I was out the front door, blinking in the sunlight.
I had just started down the steps when I heard someone call my name. I turned and I was face to face with Jackie Desjarlais. I would have known him anywhere. He was, as my grandmother would have said, the dead spit of his sister: the same slight body, the same dark eyes, the same wide, generous mouth. Except that everything that was fluid and graceful in her had gone slack in him.
I smiled at him. “Hello, Jackie,” I said.
“You know me?” he asked, surprised.
“You look so much like her,” I said.
“No,” he said, “she was beautiful.”
Unexpectedly, his eyes filled with tears. He lit a cigarette and began to cough. He coughed so hard that he bent over double; finally, he straightened and wiped his lips and eyes.
“Fuck,” he said. “These things are goin’ to fuckin’ kill me.” For the first time he noticed Taylor. “I’m sorry,” he said to her.
She moved toward him. “It’s okay. My brother Angus says that, too.”
Despite everything, I felt a warmth. “My brother Angus.” The words sounded good.
Jackie’s face seemed to open a little.
I touched his arm. “Talk to me,” I said. “Tell me about Theresa. She was my son’s girlfriend, but I never really got to know her.”
“I know who you are,” he said. “Terry showed me the Christmas pictures.”
“You must have been so proud of her,” I said.
He looked at me as if I was insane. “Proud?” He repeated the word uncomprehendingly.
“Proud of all she accomplished. Going to university. Putting the sadness she knew here behind her. How did she get out of here, Jackie? Tell me.”
He drew deeply on his cigarette and blew a careful smoke ring. “There’s only one way for girls to get out of here,” he said. “I got nothin’ more to say.”
He opened the door to the hotel. Somewhere in that stale-aired darkness Dan Seals was singing “All That Glitters Is Not Gold.” Jackie looked at Taylor. For the first time, he smiled. His smile was Theresa’s smile. As his mouth curved into that familiar mocking line, my heart lurched. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a loonie and handed the coin to Taylor.
“Little Sister,” he said, and he turned and walked through the door.
I guess I had known how Theresa Desjarlais became Christy Sinclair from the moment I saw the bleak sandy streets of Blue Heron Point: no businesses or offices where a young girl could work to earn enough money to get away, just hotels and bars where women’s work was menial and permanent.
As Taylor and I walked down the incline from the hotel, I felt leaden. Taylor’s hand was small in mine, something to hold on to. The rain started when we were halfway down the hill. Just a few drops at first, then more, closer together. By the time we reached the fishing shacks the heavens had opened, the wind had picked up, and there were whitecaps on the lake.
Taylor and I were soaked to the skin. We got inside, towelled off and changed into dry clothes. Taylor pulled down the bedspread and crawled into bed.
“I didn’t sleep on the island, Jo,” she said. “I had to watch.”
I sat at the table by the window, listened to the rain pounding into the turbulent lake and thought about the lonely life of Christy Sinclair.
She had been a prostitute. The little girl who had been beaten by her drunken parents had used her only asset to get out. Somewhere between Blue Heron Point and the University of Saskatchewan, where Peter met her, Theresa Desjarlais had transformed herself. She’d become educated, learned how to dress, changed her name. She’d walked away from everything that made her a victim, started a new life. She’d escaped.
At least for a while. But the past was there, as permanent as the teddy bear tattoo on her left buttock, the teddy bear tattoo that was the same as Bernice Morin’s. And then … And then what? Christy had walked into Mieka’s store one afternoon, and Bernice Morin had been there. What had happened after that?
I was so deep in thought that I guess I didn’t hear him knocking. Finally, frustrated and soaked to the skin, he opened the door. It was the boy who had delivered the message the night before. He was wearing a bright neon shirt and a cap like the one of Taylor’s he’d admired so much.
I smiled and told him I liked his hat, but he didn’t smile back. He was solemn with the importance of his message. “There’s a phone call at the hotel for you. An emergency, they said, for Joanne. They sent me to get you. Quick.”
I looked at Taylor sleeping, warm in her bed, and I looked at the rain outside.
I decided in a second.
I grabbed my bag, took out a five-dollar bill and handed it to the boy. “You remember Taylor. Stay with her for a while, will you? I don’t want to take her out in this, and she’ll be scared if she wakes up and I’m gone.”
His hand shot out and grabbed the five dollars.
“I’ll give you five more if you’re here when I get back,” I said.
“I’ll be here,” he said, sitting down at the kitchen table.
I grabbed my jacket. It wasn’t much use against a rain that seemed torrential, but it was something. As I climbed the hill, the gravel gave way beneath my feet. It seemed I took one step forward and slid back two. The whole summer had been like that – filled with frustration, filled with rain, filled with death. I was glad to see the soft fuzz of light from the hotel through the grey. I ran across the parking lot. Incredibly, the kids were still sitting on the steps. A couple of the more sober ones were holding green plastic garbage bags over their heads as protection, but the rest were so drunk they didn’t seem to realize it was raining. A girl was standing at the side of the steps vomiting. I could hear her retching as I ran past her into the hotel.
The hotel manager was wearing the shirt he’d been wearing the night Taylor and I arrived, the one that said, “Jackfish in Lard Makes a Fisherman Hard.”
“There’s a message for me,” I said. “An emergency phone call.”
“Says who?” He was smiling, enjoying his role as rustic funny man. This was going to be rich.
“The boy who brought the message last night came by the fishing shacks a few minutes ago. A little guy about ten, wearing a neon T-shirt and a new cap.”
“He must’ve been playing a joke,” the proprietor said.
“A joke?” I said.
“Yeah, a joke.” His face rearranged itself into a mask of concern. “Of course, he could be a thief. These kids around here learn fast. If you’ve got valuables in that shack, you might be smart to hightail it back there. This hotel is not liable for anything that gets taken from a guest’s room. You’re warned. There’s a sign on your door.”
“There aren’t any valuables there,” I said. And then I thought of Taylor. Taylor was there.
For a split second I considered asking him to help me. Then I looked into his eyes. He wouldn’t have crossed the room to save his own mother. I was on my own. I ran down the hill, slipping in the loose wet gravel, catching myself on bush branches to keep from falling. I ran and fell and picked myself up and ran again. I went as fast as I could, but it wasn’t fast enough. The front door to the shack was open. There was no one at the table. There was no one in the bed.
I called her name. I called and called, but as I sank down in the chair at the kitchen table, I knew she couldn’t hear me.
I ran outside and looked along the shoreline. It was deserted. I thought I saw a boat heading through the north channel, but it was raining so hard I wasn’t sure. I tried to listen for the sound of a motor, but it was no use.
As I walked to the shack, I could feel the panic rising. I opened the screen door and went in. “This is how it starts,” I said, and my voice echoed in the empty room. “This is how it starts.”
In the mirror above the dresser, I could see myself. My hair was dark with rain, and my face was wet, but I looked like my ordinary self. I thought of the dozens of times I had seen the parents of abducted children on television. For all of them, the nightmare must have started just like this, on an ordinary day when, just for a moment, they had dropped their guard, and everything had changed forever. They had been ordinary people living anonymous lives, and then, in the blink of an eye, they were famous, their tense faces flickering across our television sets, their voices breaking as they justified themselves to the audience. “I only turned my back for a second; she was right there.” “We never left him alone.” “I always told him not to talk to strangers.”