Left

by Theanna Bischoff

  Greg recalled pausing, mid-mow, to wipe the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand. If Natasha was running late or something, Abby couldn’t possibly manage the next dose by herself. She could barely get up and down from the couch, let alone manhandle a writhing feline. He checked his watch: forty minutes before Larkin was due for another squirt. He revved the mower and navigated around the front steps.

  Then Natasha’s car pulled into the driveway, driver’s side window down, music on, the Eagles, “Heartache Tonight.” Natasha loved ’80s music, kept burned CDs in her car of the top songs for each year of the decade. She made them in university; made him dance with her to “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” while all the songs downloaded. Who wrote that? Greg could never remember artists or lyrics. Madonna, maybe? Sometimes, he just wanted to listen to music from the current decade.

  Natasha quit the motor and the music stopped. She climbed out of her car, still dressed in lavender scrubs, her dark hair hanging around her face in loose waves. “What are you doing here?” she yelled over the roar of the mower, eyes narrowed, hands on her hips.

  Greg felt his chest seize. He turned the mower off. Tash’s lips looked red, flushed. Red licorice kissed. “Ask Abby,” he said, and yanked the lawnmower cord hard, until he felt it go slack as the plug released from the socket. The grass looked jagged now, a large chunk near the sidewalk longer than the rest. He could hardly maneuver his keys with his sweaty fingers. He slid into his car parked beside hers. He tried not to look at her. Could she smell her perfume on him?

  After Greg had recapped the story of this day, the last day he’d seen her, the detective had leaned back in his chair, cocked his head, and said, “That’s all?” like he knew Greg had left parts out. How many times was he going to make Greg sit through these rounds of questioning? Greg came in voluntarily every time—couldn’t the cop ask all his questions in one shot? What was the point of all the stop-start interviewing? As far as Greg knew, they didn’t have any new evidence.

  The detective was wearing plainclothes, dark jeans and a black T-shirt. He looked bright-eyed and intense, not like the night Tash went missing and he came to her house. That night, his eyes looked bloodshot, and he paced about, going in and out of different rooms but not in any logical order. The T-shirt made him look young—maybe late twenties? Greg’s age? Maybe he’d been drinking with buddies at the Stampede grounds when he’d got the call. Or maybe he was just deceptively young, a skilled, senior detective with a baby face. Had he spied the cat scratch on Greg’s forearm? Should Greg point it out and say where it came from, or would that just sound like an excuse?

  “That’s it.” Greg realized he’d balled his hands into fists in his lap. He uncurled his fingers and spread his hands, palms down, on the table.

  The detective tilted the chair onto its back legs. Abby had a bad habit of doing this; in grade school, she once catapulted herself to the kitchen floor and whacked the back of her skull, requiring stitches.

  Greg felt dizzy; he had barely slept since Abby called him to say she couldn’t find Natasha. That first night, he’d driven in a spiral, concentric circles widening and widening away from Tash’s house, too fast, he’d realized, as he careened crazily into a puddle and bounced up and over a curb while making a wide right turn into a cul-de-sac, his headlights spilling across the wet pavement. All these streets had the same names, too similar sounding. Schooner, Scurfield, Scepter, Scandia... one hour, two hours, four hours, five. The sun curled up over the trees. You’re late, it said, a whole new day is here, without her. You’re never going to find her. Never never never never—

  The detective leaned his chair back, stared at Greg across the table. Greg’s throat felt burnt, blackened, and he coughed, suddenly, overtaken by a spasm. His throat no longer hurt as much, but his stomach felt curdled. A side-effect of the antibiotics? Or just stress? His mother kept coming over with various remedies—Thai lemongrass soup, Neti pots. Then she’d just sit at the kitchen table and cry openly, snot and tears running down her face. He called his father, told him to come get her. He didn’t want a stupid Neti pot, he needed something to knock him out. He’d taken double the dose of liquid NyQuil the night before, guzzled it back, trying not to gag, then collapsed onto the couch and slept for a half an hour, after which he just felt lit up and dizzy.

  “Excuse me,” he said, to the detective, and got up from the table, without waiting for permission. The floor felt dirty, gritty beneath his bare feet as he made his way to the bathroom. Under different circumstances, his mother would have noticed and swept. How long had he worn this same pair of sweatpants? He put his head near the toilet basin and dry heaved.

  The detective’s questions had started to feel less like information gathering and more like trying to catch him in a lie. He’d asked Greg whether his condo complex had any video surveillance that could prove the time Greg had entered the building, prove he had not exited until Abby’s phone call. Greg wasn’t sure—he offered up the name of his property manager, though. One of his neighbours had left him a voice-mail asking why the cops were questioning the tenants about Greg’s whereabouts. So the detective had someone going door-to-door wasting police resources that they could be using to find Natasha. Couldn’t they just clear him already?

  “So,” said the detective, when Greg returned, “Go back a bit—do you have any suspicions that she could have been seeing someone else?” The guy had asked him this before, and would definitely have asked Abby, and Josie, and Tash’s parents at some point, probably that first night, and fuck, Greg was so tired, so tired. Where was she? Where was she? Where was she? Greg began to sob; he covered his face with his hands.

  “If you had to guess—was she?” The detective asked again.

  Was. Greg shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t know.”

  ABBY

  WHEN I TOLD YOU I ALWAYS USED PROTECTION, I LIED.

  I mean, come on, like I was going to tell you the truth, especially since you tried to teach me about birth control in the first place. Maybe I should have paid more attention, filled my prescription when the one you bought me ran out, yeah yeah. But you wouldn’t understand, you’ve only ever had sex with one person who’s always loved you.

  I’m pretty sure I know exactly when I got pregnant. We didn’t use a condom because Cam couldn’t find one. He’d probably used them all up with his girlfriend, Jessica the Bitch, my former best friend. Cam and I hadn’t been dating that long, but it was pretty good, I thought, until she swooped in. She was telling everyone they were going to colour coordinate for prom. Seven months in advance, he’d already bought a purple tie.

  Perched on the edge of the pool table outside his bedroom, I crossed my arms over my bare breasts, watched him dump the box of empty Trojan wrappers onto his duvet. I never told you that when I got pregnant he was dating Jess, either. I mean, if I’m confessing here, I might as well lay it all out.

  I’d climbing up onto the edge of the pool table, still fully clothed, and pulled him towards me while leaning back onto the green felt. I kissed his bottom lip. He tasted kind of like the sour cream and onion chips he’d been munching on in the car on the way home from school. He kissed me back. “Hey,” he said, between breaths. “We’re supposed to be finishing our project.” Serves Cam right for picking me as his partner before Jess man-trapped him. Mrs. Augustine said no way when he asked to trade partners mid-semester because he’d traded girlfriends.

  “So?” I reached down and fiddled with the button on his pants. He hadn’t yet changed out of his school uniform. Before either of us started dating him, Jess and I used to get coffee by the gym where he worked with a trainer on Thursday evenings. We’d stand outside the glass, sipping our lattes. More shoulder presses, Cam, more shoulder presses.

  “Last time was the last time. I told you, Jess and I—”

  I pulled him closer to me. “Has Jess ever fooled around with you on a pool table?”

  Okay, I know, you don’t want to know the details
. But, it was my fault, I came onto him. Not that he really resisted. Much.

  Afterwards, he went to roll off me, and his foot got stuck in one of the pockets. In the process, he tumbled off the edge of the pool table and hung there for a second before gravity yanked his leg out of the hole and he collapsed to the ground. It was kind of funny, I’m not going to lie.

  “FUUUUUUCCCCCKKK!” he screamed.

  I scrambled off the pool table and pulled on my underwear.

  “I—fuck! I think it’s broken!” He closed his eyes and clenched his jaw.

  I reached for his ankle. “Let me see.”

  He flinched. “Don’t! Oh, God, go get some ice or something. Fuck!”

  Upstairs in his kitchen, barefoot and wearing only a pink satin thong, thanking God that his parents hadn’t come home yet, I found a half-empty bag of peas in the freezer.

  That’s right, half empty. You would have said, “Half full, Abby. Focus on the positive.” You always thought things were going to work out, no matter what shit happened. Look how much good that did.

  Anyway.

  Cam’s face loosened up a little bit once I pressed the cold pack against his ankle. “How’s it look?” he asked.

  “It’s swelling pretty bad. Do you want to try to stand on it?” I helped him to his feet, but when he tried to bear weight, his face contorted.

  He leaned against the pool table instead for support instead of me. “Fuck! It kills!”

  “We should probably go to the ER. You might want some pants for that, though.”

  He glared at me, then squeezed his eyes shut. “Not funny.” He held the bag of peas and grimaced. “Here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to call my parents and tell them to meet me at the ER, and then I’m going to call Jess and tell her I tripped on the—”

  I crossed my arms. “You’re calling Jess?”

  I went into the bathroom while he dialled. My skin looked yellow under the harsh lighting. I sucked in my stomach, snapped one of the elastic bands from around my wrist and pulled my hair into a loose ponytail. I looked crumpled. A used Kleenex. Trash.

  I could have left him by himself, let him wait for his parents or Jess to come get him, let him explain to her how he’d injured himself while naked. Instead, I let him brace himself on me and helped him struggle into boxers and sweatpants and drove him to the hospital.

  This is where you came in. After dropping Cam off in the ER, I took the elevator to your unit and had one of the other nurses page you. It took you forever to come to the desk; you must have been taking someone’s temperature or dispensing meds or something nursish like that. You finally came out wearing your floral scrubs.

  “What are you doing here?” You peeled your gloves off and flicked them in the trash. They had a little bit of blood on them. Gross.

  “I was studying with Cam,” I said. “He hurt his ankle.” Both parts true.

  “I thought you weren’t dating Cam anymore,” you said. You checked your watch. Like you had better things to do, like I was wasting your time.

  “I’m not dating Cam anymore,” I said. Also true. “We have to do a speech for Model UN. We’re Uganda. Can you take a break? We could go down to the cafeteria and get a coffee.”

  “I can’t,” you said. “I have tons of patients right now.” Yeah, yeah. Always busy saving people’s lives. You probably also told me coffee was bad for me and I shouldn’t be drinking it.

  I went down to the cafeteria anyway and bought a plastic container of cold vanilla pudding with the skin on top and a squirt of whipped cream from a can. When I was little, you made me warm pudding in the microwave, heating it slowly to prevent clumps. When I tried to make pudding on my own, I got too impatient, stuck it in for five minutes on high, and it bubbled over and then Mom screamed at me for not cleaning it.

  I could have given her away, you know. I thought about it. Not that night with the cold, hospital pudding. I didn’t know then. I sat downstairs in the cafeteria with my empty plastic pudding container and tore apart three packets of Sweet’n Low, made a tiny saccharine ski hill on the table. Cam’s parents had probably arrived. And Jessica. They were all probably still in the waiting room. They would be tending to Cam’s swollen ankle, fawning over him. His dad would be trying to get him bumped to the front of the line, and Jess would be snuggling up under his arm, telling him she hates seeing him in so much pain.

  If you come back, I’ll never lie to you again. I’ll tell you everything. I’ll pay attention when you lecture me about strategies for saving money, about how many grams of protein I should be eating a day, about flossing, about packing my bags for the hospital in advance, about how to clean around a baby’s umbilical cord.

  And I’ll actually do it, all of it.

  I promise.

  JOSIE

  JOSIE’S CAR WAS PARKED JUST OUTSIDE NATASHA’S HOUSE. After the detective left around noon on Saturday the seventh, Josie went to get inside her own vehicle to leave, too, but then noticed the pile of cigarettes. She squatted to take a closer look at the pile, crushed up against the curb. Josie reached out to pluck one of the cigarettes to examine it further, then thought better of it, withdrew her hand. What if the cigarettes were relevant to the case? How had Detective Foley missed this?

  “Call me Reuben,” he’d told her. That didn’t sound very professional. Did he even know what he was doing? Shouldn’t he have taped off the perimeter? What if whoever had done this to her best friend had sat outside her house chain smoking and waiting for her to come out, thinking about all the evil things he was going to do to her? Josie felt lightheaded. What if these cigarettes had touched his lips, his saliva, his DNA?

  Inside Natasha’s house, Josie rummaged in the cutlery drawer for a pair of chopsticks and a Ziploc bag. Natasha had an ample supply of chopsticks, still in their paper casing—excellent, sterile! Back outside, Josie delicately plucked each cigarette and placed it inside the baggie.

  In retrospect, she probably should have just called Detective Foley and told him to come back to bag the cigarettes himself. But, in the moment, all she could think about was getting the evidence to him as fast as she could.

  Plus, when she actually gave the evidence to Detective Foley, he’d sneered. Sneered! Then he’d sort of collected himself, tried to pretend like he hadn’t just made an awful face. “You found these where?”

  “Right outside the house! By the driveway. In a big pile.”

  Detective Foley dropped the baggie on his desk. “Good, it’s good that you’re keeping an eye out.”

  “You can test these, right?” Josie said. She’d heard that most people who get kidnapped are killed within the first twenty-four to forty-eight hours. Natasha was possibly still alive, then. On TV, a DNA test could get done in a couple hours. They could still find her. But only if—

  Detective Foley cocked his head. “There are procedures. The lab can’t randomly test cigarette butts you found on the street—we can’t just spend taxpayer’s dollars unless there’s substantial…” he trailed off. “Lots of people smoke. When I went to the neighbour’s house to ask if they’d seen anything, their house reeked of cigarettes.” He plucked the baggie back up off his desk and held it close to his face. “These are generic, too. I’m sorry.”

  Josie would not cry. She would not cry.

  GREG

  GREG HAD TOLD JOSIE HE’D MEET HER BY NOON TO HELP coordinate the search party, so he’d had to leave the station, even though Reuben was still chomping at the bit. This had been the fourth round of questioning in a couple of days. But, as Greg walked out of the station, Reuben had cracked his knuckles and said, “Thanks. I’ll be in touch.”

  Be in touch? Again? Greg shielded his eyes from the sun, scanned the parking lot for his car.

  What was your relationship like? Reuben had wanted to know.

  Could Greg even answer that question? Thirteen years and then everything that had come after. Even if he put it into words, would the detective understand?

 
Reuben was the guy’s name—Greg had finally memorized it. Perhaps not a fatal flaw, but an embarrassing one, Greg’s inability to remember names. When their teacher had first read Natasha’s name off the class list way back when, Greg had memorized only the quiet way she’d said, “here,” the dimple in her cheek, how she’d tucked her hair over her ear. He’d mentally referred to her by the wrong name for a good week, until he asked a friend of his whether he thought “Natalie from homeroom” would ever go out with him. “Who?” the friend had asked.

  Reuben—was that a last name, or a first name?

  Josie and her twin brother had dropped by Greg’s condo parkade the previous night and the three of them had hauled carton after carton of plastic water bottles for the volunteers, along with boxes of Missing fliers from Josie’s trunk into Greg’s for transporting to the search site. Josie had so much equipment for the search that she could not transport it all in her own vehicle.

  Greg hadn’t seen either twin since Josie’s wedding last summer, shortly before Natasha had broken up with him. Dressed identically in jeans and fluorescent orange T-shirts that bore Natasha’s grinning face, the two looked more similar than Greg remembered from when they were all teenagers together. Jason’s blond hair had grown out a little bit and Josie had twisted hers on top of her head into an efficient bun.

  Josie had plastered the back window of her Accord with Natasha’s giant laminate stick-on face and the address of the website her brother had constructed. Josie updated the website continually, even in the middle of the night. She had search parties scheduled in shifts starting at eight a.m. in a matter of days. Days—had it been days, already? Injured and stranded, Josie had insisted. Natasha had to be injured and alone, which meant days—without food, without water, in pain. And this was the best-case scenario.