Left

by Theanna Bischoff

  Cam sits beside her on the couch. “Didn’t you want something like this to happen? I mean, this could be the break you were waiting for.”

  “You don’t get it,” Abby says. “This means she’s really gone.”

  Of course she’s really gone. She’s been missing for eleven years. She’s probably been dead this whole time. It’s pretty much mathematical certainty. Do the bones really change anything?

  “She was the only person who ever—” Abby paces over to a window she’s left open and slides it down. “You should go home.”

  Cam gets up. He pulls his phone from his pocket. R U safe? Jess has texted him. If he owns up to cheating, especially with Abby, she will probably leave him for good. He texts back, Yes. Hope you’re safe too.

  JOSIE

  THERE, IN THE TREES, A FLASH OF ORANGE. A DARK PONYTAIL. Josie pushes branches out of her way. She can barely see through the rain. “Wait!” she calls, but Natasha doesn’t stop. Mud sucks at Josie’s feet. “Wait!” she yells, but the rain masks the sound. She can’t catch her breath.

  Natasha scrambles down a small embankment. Josie follows, her pajamas streaked with mud, her hands raw and red. In her orange tank top and black leggings, Natasha is much more equipped for this trek. When Josie finally catches up, her friend kneels on the ground, digging under a small bush with her bare hands. Josie’s soaked cotton PJs cling to her skin.

  Natasha stops digging, looks up. Wordlessly, she unties the black windbreaker from around her waist and passes it to her friend. Josie fumbles as she slides her arms into the coat and struggles with the zipper. She pushes her wet hair out of her face. Natasha reaches deep under the bush, deep into the hole she has dug there. When she emerges, she holds a naked, squalling baby, a little boy. “Here,” she says, and she hands the baby to Josie.

  What is Josie supposed to do with him? The baby is so little, so cold, so slippery. With one hand, she gropes to undo Natasha’s windbreaker, then tucks the baby inside, pulls the zipper back up, clutches the baby to her chest. “I’m so sorry!” Josie sobs. “I didn’t know! Will you forgive me?”

  RAIN POUNDS AGAINST THE BEDROOM SKYLIGHT. JOSIE opens her eyes wide in the dark, stares up against the square of glass. The skylight was how she knew, when she and Solomon first got married, that this was the right house for them. That little square right above where they would sleep, open to the sky, to Heaven. In the morning, the sun would come in like a hug from God.

  Now, the glass is blurred by the incessant rain. Before Solomon, all those years she spent single, Josie slept sprawled in the middle of the bed, hoarded all the pillows to herself. Now she sleeps neatly against the right, the other half of the bed empty. Josie flicks on the bedside lamp, pushes herself to her feet, plucks her glasses up off her nightstand, along with her phone, in case Reuben calls her back, and paces into the kitchen. She tried him three times before going to bed. Fish Creek Park. Greg, all along.

  “Auntie?” comes a small voice.

  Josie had forgotten about Summer—wrapped in blankets just hours ago, on the couch, since Finn was already set up in the spare room. She sits down at Summer’s feet. “Did the storm wake you up?”

  “Do you think they’re going to cancel school?” Summer asks. Just waking up, she looks younger than almost-eleven, lost in one of Josie’s faded T-shirts.

  “Probably,” Josie says.

  Summer’s brow creases. “I’ll have to call my mom.”

  “In the morning,” Josie says.

  Then a key turns in the lock. Josie tenses, feels Summer tense beside her, and before she can stand, Solomon staggers into the house. Water splatters to the floor as he pulls an umbrella closed.

  Josie’s heart races. “What are you doing here?”

  Solomon raises his eyebrows. “My neighbourhood was evacuated. I’m going to stay here until I get the all-clear from the city.”

  Josie stands and approaches him. This soggy, pathetic man, standing in a puddle in her doorway, is her husband. His hair looks greyer than she remembers, though she knows, rationally, that this can’t be true.

  He didn’t come to Jason’s funeral, she thinks, in Natasha’s voice. “You didn’t come to Jason’s funeral,” she says.

  Solomon’s eyes look behind her, and she turns, aware again of Summer. “Go into my bedroom, Honey,” Josie says—so calmly. “I’ll be there in a second.”

  As Summer leaves, Josie and Solomon maintain their positions in the doorway, and then Solomon starts to unzip his coat.

  “You can’t stay here,” Josie says, and takes a step forward. “The children are here. And I want a divorce.”

  NATASHA

  JULY 6, 2002

  Standing on the front step, Natasha pauses before she starts her run, breathes in the crisp night air, the stillness. She feels on the cusp of something, like at the top of a roller coaster, the pause right before it descends. A relationship is beginning. A new life is emerging. She checks her watch and places her headphones on her ears.

  Parked right out front is a bluish grey pickup truck. As she descends the few steps to the sidewalk, she realizes she knows the driver. That can’t be right. He’s not supposed to be driving, not within six months of having a seizure.

  He rolls down the window.

  “What are you doing here?” she asks.

  He leans over and unlocks the passenger side door. “Can we talk?”

  Natasha inhales. She doesn’t want to hurt his feelings. Okay, she thinks. Just for a second.

  And when she opens the door to the truck, she notices the other person in the back seat.

  HIM

  THE FIRST TIME WAS MY HALF BIRTHDAY. FEBRUARY SIXTH, 1983.

  We used to celebrate half birthdays in my family. That’s how fucking happy we were. My mom inflated fifty helium balloons and let them float to the ceiling all over the house—like in my bedroom and in the family room and even in the kitchen—the strings hanging down like tails. I got to eat Pac-Man cereal for breakfast and watch cartoons and then my aunts and uncles and cousins came over for dinner. Hawaiian pizza, my favourite. I ate six slices and nobody said anything because my parents were distracted looking at pictures of my auntie and uncle’s trip to Las Vegas, and I felt a bit sick, and my cousin said, “Hey, want to go play in your room?”

  This doctor my parents took me to see as a kid told me that anger is like a monster inside of you, trying to get you to do bad things. I imagined my monster as a swamp monster—black and slimy, like a bad guy from a video game. He’d open his sludgy mouth in a lopsided grin; teeth lined with metal braces; nasty breath. He didn’t have any eyes. Just gaping holes, hollow sockets. When he expanded in my stomach, I felt like I was going to puke, like the puke was bubbling and bubbling up in my throat and just going to explode.

  The psychologist was like, “Call me Dr. Jack.” He made me sit in this chair and practice taking deep breaths, making my stomach rise and fall. He said taking deep breaths would keep the angry monster from making me do something bad, like hitting somebody or throwing the snow globe in Dad’s office into the wall and making it break into a million pieces. I had to clean up the mess that time and it reeked like antifreeze. I thought I would inhale the fumes and die, but I didn’t, even though I wanted to.

  Dr. Jack had curly brown hair and big glasses that were kind of dirty up close. He said, “Imagine your tummy is like a balloon, fill it right up,” and then he reached over and took this limp blue balloon off his desk, put it to his lips, and started blowing. The balloon got bigger and rounder right in front of my face. It made me think of all the balloons hanging from the ceiling, about lying down and watching the balloons bobbing up against each other. I was supposed to be happy, it was my half birthday, and the whole time, my cousin was saying, “Doesn’t that feel good?”

  The balloon was getting bigger and bigger. It wouldn’t stop!

  I took a swing—hit Dr. Jack right in his stupid dirty glasses. The balloon shriveled up and fell to the floor and Dr. Jack s
tared at me, his eyes wide, a little bit of blood trickling from his nose.

  Wow, I thought. I did that? Dr. Jack was a real grown-up, and I made his nose bleed. It felt kinda good.

  Except Dr. Jack was the only doctor who actually tried to help me. It wasn’t him I was mad at, really. All the other ones didn’t even try to teach me tricks to make the anger go away. They just slapped me with a bunch of labels. ODD, ADD. Not one of them ever asked me where the monster came from. Not one ever thought to ask, why’d he get all those letters? What I didn’t get was, why did I have to have the monster inside of me? I didn’t do anything!

  You’re the only one I told, Tash—you know that, right? I thought you would get what it was like to be broken. Lying there, tied to the chair, looking at those balloons, I was thinking, I’m different now. “Before” ten-and-a-half and “after” ten-and-a-half. That kind of thing, you can’t change. I only told you about the first time, too, because you started freaking out, saying I would have to tell. She came over again at Easter, and then in the summer she started coming over all the time to tutor me in math. One time, she was there and you were there and you asked her to curl your hair, and she said, “Okay,” and I thought good, I won’t have to deal with the monster today, but instead of going to play I just sat there, watching her wrap your hair around the hot curling iron, thinking, if she hurts you in any way, I will break her neck.

  It kept happening even after I told you. Like, the day before your birthday party, she was babysitting, and I flooded the toilet by putting a T-shirt down it so that my mom and dad would have to come home early. Except they were at a work thing for my dad, so they didn’t actually come home early, they just called a plumber, and then they grounded me for a week and I wasn’t allowed to go to your birthday party. I hadn’t talked to you since the night in the closet. But you made me feel like maybe it wasn’t my fault. Maybe you would be a goody two-shoes and tell even though I told you not to.

  I made you the best birthday present ever—a cassette tape of songs I recorded from the radio on dad’s ghetto blaster. I had to be sneaky about it, too, because I wasn’t supposed to touch the ghetto blaster. I put eleven songs on because you were turning eleven, and I stole some of Josie’s stickers to decorate it. I gave it to you the next day at school—do you remember that? You were totally psyched—you said, I remember this exactly, “I love it!”

  Also, in case you were wondering, the night I plugged the toilet, my cousin made me play with her in the basement in the dark and I could hear the furnace hissing at me, like my monster, laughing.

  That Christmas, she and her brothers stayed for a sleepover, and I couldn’t fall asleep. I kept thinking she was going to come into my room any minute. But then she didn’t. And it just stopped. I don’t know why. I guess she just figured I wasn’t worth it anymore, I don’t know. But even when she stopped, the monster stayed.

  Sometimes I could make the monster shut up for awhile by playing video games. Sometimes, that put the monster to sleep. But then, when he woke up, he was bigger than before.

  I thought I could love you. I thought I could make love to you and not feel the monster slipping and sliding around inside of me. Not feel the puke rising and rising.

  I thought you were broken, too. Your mom abandoned you—left you behind. And then Greg broke you, too. I could see it in your eyes—like all the light went out. Sometimes I wondered how you put your monster to sleep. And then I watched you running, listening to music I couldn’t hear, and I knew. Your ’80s music. It probably reminded you of being an innocent little kid. Probably reminded you of your own “before.”

  At least, I thought you were broken. Then I saw your emails. I want you. You know what I mean. You filthy slut.

  You sounded just like her.

  JOSIE

  IT’S FINALLY SAFE ENOUGH FOR ABBY TO DRIVE OVER TO PICK up Summer. With the kids downstairs watching TV, Josie stands at the window waiting for Abby to pull up. The rain has stopped. For now.

  “I’m getting a divorce.” She says it aloud, alone in the empty room. The words taste so unfamiliar. She remembers the sweetness of I’m engaged! And I’m Mrs. McKinnon! The bitterness of it’s negative and my mom has cancer. The numbness of my best friend is missing.

  There’s Abby, coming up the walkway—and, behind her, is that Greg? Abby didn’t say he was coming, too. Fire rises up Josie’s throat like reflux. She throws open the door and pushes past Abby, makes fists with both hands and slams them into Greg’s chest. He stumbles back a bit, his mouth open.

  “How dare you?!” Josie screams, her heart galloping.

  Abby tries to get in-between them. “What the hell?”

  But Greg has already put his hands up, as though surrendering. “What’s going on?”

  “Fish Creek Park!” Josie spits. “All this time! All these years!” She’s crying now. Her arms fall at her sides.

  Greg still looks stunned, all the colour washed from his face. “Jo—” he says. “I swear to God. I swear to God, I never hurt her. I had nothing to do with it. I miss her every day. Every second. I’d gladly kill myself if it meant she would come back.”

  Josie raises her eyes and looks into his. He looks pained. Like he’s telling the truth. But then, Solomon stood in front of their entire church congregation and pledged to be faithful to her until death. And there’s a body in Fish Creek Park. “I need to know,” she says, “that I did everything…that it wasn’t…” the words come in gulping sobs. “…my fault.”

  Abby sounds confused. “Why would it be your fault?”

  Summer hovers in the doorway. “Hi, Mom,” she says to Abby, but her eyes dart between them, and she bites her lower lip. “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing, nothing,” Abby says, and starts walking towards the door, so Josie follows, and then Greg, too.

  Abby gives Summer a hug. “We have to go down to the station after this. Reuben needs to talk to me about the, uh, about Auntie’s case. But the three of us—” she gestures at Josie and Greg “—need to talk a little bit first, okay?”

  “Okay,” Summer says, chewing on a fingernail. She descends the stairs back into the basement.

  Josie moves into the living room and Abby and Greg follow her. She sinks onto the edge of one of the sofas, and Abby sits on the other side. Greg stays standing at first, then eventually lowers onto the arm of the loveseat.

  It comes out all at once. “The last time I saw her, we had a fight,” Josie says. “She was—she was so stressed, she got upset—she said, ‘Do you want me to have a complete breakdown?’” She holds out her fingers, the way Natasha did, an inch apart. “She said she was this close.” She can’t look at either Greg or Abby. “What if…?” She fiddles with her fingers in her lap.

  Abby shifts on the other side of the couch, moves a little closer. “Jo, they found her watch. She didn’t take off on her own.”

  “Even so,” Josie says, “she was so stressed, and the last time I saw her, I made it worse. Maybe she wasn’t thinking clearly when whatever happened…maybe she let her guard down because of me.”

  Abby shakes her head. “If she was stressed about anything, it was me. I basically moved into her house, pregnant, moody…she paid for everything, took care of everything. And, trust me, the two of us argued all the time. I mean, we loved each other, but it wasn’t easy.”

  Josie says quietly, “I feel so guilty!”

  “I do, too,” Greg admits. “I go over and over it every day. Maybe if we hadn’t broken up, or maybe if I’d checked in more…”

  Summer appears at the top of the stairs again. “Can I get a glass of water?”

  “Sure,” Josie says, and hops up off the couch to go retrieve one. Is Summer actually thirsty? Or just worried about what’s going on with the adults, making excuses to come upstairs? When she comes back out of the kitchen with the glass, Finn has emerged, too. He’s introducing himself to Greg.

  “What time are we going to see Reuben?” Summer wants to know.
<
br />   Abby glances over at Josie. It’s like she’s saying, are you okay? Josie nods. She has no choice.

  “Why don’t we all go?” Greg suggests. “We can take two cars.”

  “Can Finn ride with us?” Summer asks her mom.

  Yes, Josie thinks, they should all go. They all need answers. It’s time.

  ABBY

  THEY NEVER FOUND THE SKULL.

  Just the left clavicle, some metatarsals of the foot, three ribs, and the pelvis. But it was enough to exclude them as yours.

  “I’m sorry,” Reuben said. As though it was his fault the bones were male. Somebody else’s loved one. Somebody’s father. Somebody’s brother. Somebody’s son.

  Looking out the window now, you can’t even tell there was a storm. You have to go closer to the river to find it, or go down into people’s basements to see the damage. The broken windows, the thick sewage, the soggy books, the rotting walls.

  When we finally got back home from the station, it was pitch black outside, but Summer wanted to check on her garden. She was sure the rain would have damaged the flowers she and Greg had carefully planted that spring. No way was I letting her go outside in the dark alone. So I followed her around the side of the house to the little patch of dirt along the back fence. I couldn’t see much in the dark. Summer knelt right there in the wet soil.

  “How are they?” I asked, holding my breath.

  Quietly, she said, “They’re bent. The storm got them. But—I think they’ll be okay.”

  The garden was one of Summer’s bucket list items. Summer’s had this bucket list for awhile now, I think it started with Greg and Sylvie. You would like Sylvie, by the way. At least, I think you would. She isn’t you though. Just so you know.