by Becky Wade
Nineteen
Willow was sitting cross-legged on her bed at Bradfordwood, folding clean laundry, when her phone rang near noon the following day. “Hi, Nora.”
“Hi. I’ve located the title to Foster Holt’s fishing cabin on the Fraser River,” her sister said proudly.
“Already?”
“I found it through tax records.”
“You’re amazing! Thank you.”
“I’ll text you the cabin’s exact address.”
Moments later, Nora’s text arrived. Willow lifted her laptop from her bedside table, set it before her on the mattress, and mapped the location of the cabin.
A long segment of the Fraser River meandered horizontally through southern British Columbia. The cabin appeared to be located in a remote stretch of that segment, far from civilization.
Shoot. Josephine’s age-progression poster would need to be seen by a large number of people to have any hope of creating even one good lead. The two towns nearest the cabin were both tiny. In a radius outward from them, numerous other small towns dotted the map. The population appeared to be thinly spread through the whole area.
From the starting point of the cabin, where might Josephine have gone?
Willow had no idea.
She tucked her cell phone in the back pocket of her jeans and carried her computer downstairs. Last night when she’d returned from The Pie Emporium, she’d placed the wooden Josephine box on the dining room table.
Bradfordwood’s dining room stood adjacent to the foyer and overlooked the home’s front drive. At the moment, the sky beyond its windows hung low, streaming rain.
The Pacific Northwest was famous for its rain, and with good reason. The movie Sleepless in Seattle, for one. The fact that it really did rain a lot, another.
Of all twelve months of the year, November was the rainiest. Willow hadn’t spent a whole November here since she’d left for UCLA and had forgotten the reality of a Merryweather November. It had rained more days than not so far this month. Even when it wasn’t raining, sunbeams only reached the ground a third of the time.
She thoroughly enjoyed the rain. It was beautiful. Moody. And since she was a homebody at heart, snuggling up at home with a fire, a mug of coffee, and a book was no hardship. Yet even she was beginning to crave the sun. Perhaps she needed to start taking Vitamin D supplements.
Willow flipped the switch to light the room’s chandelier, then set her computer on the glossy table. She carefully opened the lid of the box that held everything Melinda had left of her sister Josephine.
Willow’s mind spun with a kaleidoscope of memories of all that she’d shared with her sisters. Afternoons playing make-believe in the woods. Weekend mornings sailing on the Hood Canal with their dad. Birthday parties. Fights over clothes. The camaraderie and trust and friendship of their adult years. Her sisters were inextricably linked to her. Their histories were intertwined more tightly than any braid.
Like Josephine, Willow was the eldest of the three. She couldn’t imagine having one of her sisters vanish. Just the thought of it chilled her. Nor could she imagine, four decades later, having nothing more to show for that sister than a wooden box and a host of haunting questions.
What happened to you, Josephine?
She wanted to find the woman who’d disappeared on the day of the year that would become Willow’s birthday. Josephine, the smiling brunette in the terry-cloth one-piece. Josephine, who’d been smart and determined and idealistic enough to involve herself in politics and social work.
Had Josephine’s husband killed her? Had the man from church she’d been rumored to be having an affair with kill her? Or his wife? Why had Stan Markum disappeared the same day? Did Senator Holt, with his affinity for curvy, dark-haired women, have anything to do with it? Or had Josephine’s disappearance been the result of terrible chance? Had a vicious man, like the man who’d killed Nora’s mother, come upon her at exactly the wrong moment? Or had Josephine’s disappearance been purposeful? Had Josephine decided to walk off the stage of her own life either through suicide or through a carefully crafted escape?
Lord, grant me wisdom.
She spent the next forty-five minutes removing every item from the box and aligning them in chronological order across the table. When she stepped back, the display created a timeline of sorts depicting Josephine’s life.
Photos and mementos from her girlhood. Her graduation portrait and diploma. The charm bracelet. A photograph from her wedding. And numerous other items.
And then came April 12, 1977. That day was the line of demarcation. After that, the keepsakes were mostly comprised of articles and sympathy cards. No photographs except for the Polaroids taken by Alan of the interior of Josephine’s eerily empty car. No belongings that had been personal to Josephine in any way.
Willow scanned the articles. The back of her neck tingled with . . . what? A warning? A reminder?
Had she forgotten something she should have remembered about the articles? Frowning, she considered the timeline. Many of the articles had been published by the Shore Pine Gazette in the two weeks directly following Josephine’s disappearance. Others had run at later dates, including the five-year, ten-year, and twenty-year anniversaries of the day Josephine went missing.
Willow had read every one of the articles in the past, but now she studied each one again in turn. Two of the articles were stapled to handwritten notes. These were part of a small grouping that had been sent to the Blake family from strangers or friends living in faraway places.
Willow fingered the edge of the first one, which had been sent from Mexico, along with a card that had a picture of flowers on its front.
The second had arrived from Alaska. The brief article, which included a grainy picture of Josephine, had been stapled to a piece of pink stationery.
The third article hadn’t been stapled to anything because the sender’s short sentiment was written vertically onto the margin of the article. So very sorry. Thinking of you. Willow squinted to read the article.
It summarized the basic facts of Josephine’s case. Nothing about the article was unique, except that it had run at the top of its newspaper page, thus the date and the name of the newspaper were displayed in small print across the uppermost portion of the clipping.
The Mission Tribune
April 26, 1977
Wait. Something about that was ringing a bell. . . .
Mission. She’d heard of it before. Where was Mission located? Willow opened her computer and ran a search for Mission within Google Maps. The website gave her a menu of options.
Mission TX
Mission Viejo CA
Mission KS
Mission Tejas State Park
Mission Beach San Diego
She shook her head. Only three of those were towns, and only two were towns named Mission. Mission, Texas? Mission, Kansas? No. Neither seemed right.
She navigated to Google and typed in City of Mission. Almost immediately search results populated.
City of Mission TX
City of Mission BC
City of Mission Viejo
There. The second listing, Mission, B.C. Goose bumps rose on Willow’s skin because B.C. stood for British Columbia. That’s the Mission she’d heard of.
Willow enlarged a map of southern British Columbia until it filled her computer screen. Narrowing her eyes, she hunted for Mission.
There. Situated in a crook of the Fraser River, east of Vancouver.
She snatched up the article and scrutinized it, front and back.
So very sorry. Thinking of you had been written in messy, awkward block letters. It looked like the person who’d written it had done so painstakingly. Either because they were very old. Shaky. Or writing with their non-dominant hand.
To disguise their penmanship?
Was there any chance . . . Could this article have been sent to the Blake family by Josephine herself?
So very sorry. Thinking of you was something Josephine might ha
ve wanted to say to the people she’d left behind. Logically, it was also something a kindly stranger or an acquaintance of the family might have wanted to say.
Like all the paper artifacts stored in the wooden box, this paper showed signs of age. It had yellowed. One corner had tattered. Willow held it up to the light. A few circular stains marked it, very faintly. She set it down and ran the pad of her index finger over those spots. They were a tiny bit stiffer, more crinkly, than the rest . . . as though water had dropped on this article at some point, then dried.
Tearstains?
They could as easily have been spots of rain. Or tea. Or soda. But their circular pattern did seem to indicate droplets of some kind.
Willow conjured a vision in her imagination. A young Josephine, who’d traveled to the senator’s fishing cabin either by choice or by force, reading this article about her own disappearance. Carefully cutting it out. Crying over it. Writing the note with her opposite hand. Then mailing it to her family anonymously.
The envelopes that had carried the articles from Mexico, Alaska, and Canada hadn’t been saved. Thus, there was no way to check any of those envelopes for a return address.
Willow read Mission’s Wikipedia profile. Nestled in the central Fraser Valley in the shade of Mount Robie Reid, the town of under forty thousand had been founded in 1868 and named Mission for its nearness to St. Mary’s Mission.
She ran a search for address and telephone information on Josephine Blake, resident of Mission, British Columbia. No hits.
Undaunted, she used the address Nora had given her for the fishing cabin and researched the distance between the cabin and the town of Mission.
Just 25.02 miles.
She dialed Melinda.
“Hello, Willow.”
“Hi, Melinda. Sorry to disturb you. I was just looking through your box of Josephine mementos and came back across an article written after Josephine’s disappearance that ran in a newspaper in the town of Mission, British Columbia. The words ‘So very sorry. Thinking of you’ are written in the margin.”
“Mmm hmm. Yes. I think I know which one you’re talking about.”
“Do you know who sent this? Did your family have friends or relatives in Mission?”
“No, not that I can remember.”
“Did it come directly to your house or to your parents’ house? Or was it sent to the city of Shore Pine or the police of Shore Pine and passed to your family?”
“I have no idea. What is it about that article that’s caught your interest?”
Willow relayed the information about the fishing cabin.
“Interesting,” Melinda said.
“Do you think there’s any possibility that Josephine herself might have sent this?”
“Why? As a kind of clue?”
“Not necessarily, since she took pains to disguise her handwriting. Perhaps she sent it because she wanted to say that she was sorry and that she was thinking of you.”
“If she had the ability to write and send letters and if she wanted to say she was sorry, then she could have written a letter to us explaining what had occurred. Why wouldn’t she have done that?”
“I don’t know,” Willow answered.
“Do I think there’s a possibility that Josephine sent that article? No,” Melinda said with her trademark pragmatism. “I don’t. I’ve always believed that she died the day she went missing or shortly thereafter, Willow.”
“I understand.” Not for the first time, Willow wondered if she was doing Melinda a disservice by digging up the past. Asking questions about Josephine. Forcing Melinda to dwell on the painful topic of her missing sister. Stirring up hope when it might be more humane to let Melinda’s long-gone hope stay dead.
“What do you plan to do?” Melinda asked. “With this information about the fishing cabin and Mission?”
“I plan to ask the American Coalition for the Discovery of Missing Persons to circulate posters of Josephine in Mission, British Columbia.”
Corbin watched the teeth of his miter saw bite cleanly through a strip of beechwood. He’d been working in his garage most of the day. Physically, he’d been cutting crown moulding. Mentally, he’d been thinking about Willow.
He and Willow spent time together every day. She let him take her places. She let him kiss her. He knew that she liked him in a general sense. But he was not making the kind of progress with her that he needed to make. Willow didn’t want to talk about the future or even about the present of their relationship. She kept insisting that they were having fun but that they weren’t together. And reminding him that she was leaving soon.
He was a speeding train and Willow’s departure from Washington was a granite mountain. The train tracks ended at the mountain’s face, which meant the coming crash was drawing nearer every day.
He had to find a way to soften her heart toward him before she left. He had to.
Worry that he’d fail at that, that she’d leave him like she’d left him before, had begun to greet him every morning and stay with him until he stretched out in bed at night.
He couldn’t fail, and yet he might soon have to admit to himself that he didn’t know how to succeed with Willow. He’d been racking his brain, struggling to understand the combination of words and actions that might break apart her distrust of him.
His dad approached, carrying several more lengths of wood. Corbin acknowledged him with a dip of his chin.
He’d been lobbying his dad for a week now about enrolling in one of the clinical trials. He’d stayed up late each night researching treatments. Holistic approaches. Middle eastern medicines. South American remedies that claimed success. And every other thing the Internet had to offer. He’d read it all, and he’d talked to his dad about the less-crazy choices.
Corbin was a forceful person used to getting his way, but so far his dad was flat-out refusing to consider any of the options.
He hated that he was the only person, other than his father, involved in this decision. Corbin had no siblings. His dad had no wife. Corbin was it, his father’s closest family member. As heavy as that responsibility had seemed at other points in Corbin’s life, it had never seemed heavier than it did now.
His dad handed him a fresh piece of moulding, and Corbin positioned it beneath the saw’s blade. As they worked, Corbin launched into another speech aimed at convincing his dad to try one of the trials.
His dad stood at the end of the workbench, saying nothing, passing Corbin piece after piece of wood. When Corbin finished, he switched off the machine, tugged free his gloves, and removed his safety goggles. “So, how about it? I’ll handle everything that’s needed for the trial. I’ll get everything in place. You won’t have to do anything but show up for appointments.”
His father set his shoulders defensively. “I’ve heard everything you’ve had to say, and I know that it’s coming from a good place. I know that you have my best interests at heart, just like I hope you know I’ve always had your best interests at heart.” He waited, expectant.
“Yes.”
“In this case, your idea of what’s best for me and my idea of what’s best for me are different. But the thing is, we’re talking about my life here. I know that my life affects yours. I understand that. But I’ve lived my life my way all this time. That’s been my right and my freedom. Now I want to die my way. I want you to give me the freedom and the right to do that.”
“Dad—”
“My mind’s made up,” his dad said.
Corbin couldn’t speak through the pain.
“My mind’s made up,” he repeated.
What Corbin hadn’t seen or been willing to see until now was that time had already run out on this particular battle. His father had decided how he wanted to spend the final stage of his life, long before Corbin had even realized that cancer had taken the upper hand.
“I don’t want to argue about this with you,” his dad said. “I don’t want you staying up till all hours on the computer because that’s just
wasted time right there. What I want is for us to get along, same as we’ve always gotten along. And I want to finish this house.”
Corbin clamped his jaw shut to keep his opinions from spilling out.
“I’m not afraid of dying, but I can’t take any more talking about multiple myeloma treatments,” his dad said.
Silence.
“Son?”
Mentally, Corbin forced himself to lay down his hope that medicine might save his dad’s life. As soon as he did, a new priority rose. If he couldn’t save his dad’s life, then he needed to do what he could to secure his dad’s afterlife. Right?
Is that what it had come down to now?
His dad was going to die, and maybe soon. Which meant there was only one thing left that Corbin could do to impact his dad’s future. “I’ll make you a deal. I’ll stop talking about multiple myeloma treatments if you’ll start going to church with me on Sundays and if you’ll let me schedule a meeting between you and the pastor.”
His dad screwed up his face. “Why would I want to see a pastor?”
Corbin gave him a pointed look.
His dad’s ruddy skin turned red, something it often did when he got riled. “You—you want me to talk to him about heaven and all that?”
“Exactly.”
“There’s no need for me to talk with some fool pastor.”
Corbin and his dad had entered churches more often for funerals and weddings than they ever had for Sunday services when Corbin was young.
“The alternative is to talk to me about it,” Corbin said.
“You just started believing earlier this year. How much do you know about it all?”
“Not enough. Which is why I’d rather you talk to someone who’s more educated about it than I am.”
“I’m not talking to a pastor.”
Great. Now his dad’s care and his dad’s salvation rested on Corbin’s shoulders. He didn’t feel near worthy enough to talk to anyone about God. “You’re stuck with me, then.”
“I have been for thirty-five years,” his dad quipped, amusement cracking through the stubbornness stamped on his face. “If we talk about God, you’ll stop nagging me about those idiot treatments that won’t work?”