The Runaway Midwife

by Patricia Harman

  “Nah, Burroughs. You’re takin’ us wrong.” Big Chris stands up, lightening the mood. “We want your money!” Everyone laughs, even the investor. “We just weren’t sure about the casino . . .” He sits down quickly with a red face, almost tipping his chair over and Molly Lou puts her arm through his proudly. I look over at Dolman and raise my eyebrows. People are surprisingly thoughtful tonight.

  “We’re not saying that we aren’t going to do anything, just that we have to be careful,” Austin Aubrey answers Kristie. “We need to figure out how to develop in a way that doesn’t change the fundamental character of our home.”

  “I have an idea I’d like to share.” It’s Wade from the New Day Farm and people shift in their chairs. Who’s this new voice and how dare he intrude?

  “I’ve been thinking about this quite a lot.” The hippie man walks confidently toward the front. He’s wearing a button-up shirt with clean khaki slacks and has his long hair tied back in a ponytail.

  “I can see the island needs something, but my friends and I moved here for the peace and quiet, the clean environment and the chance to raise children where they won’t be afraid. What if, instead of a casino, we ask Mr. Burroughs to build a health spa and resort, a really nice place with healing pools, massages and a high-end restaurant with locally grown organic veggies and meat as well as fresh fish from the lake? The commune owns ten acres in the north end that we could donate.

  “We could have classes on health or stargazing or weaving or painting. We could have art shows and concerts. In the long run, even the B and Bs and the cottages would thrive. People would come for the healing and then bring their families for vacations . . .”

  No one says a word for a moment and I’m not sure if what Wade said makes sense to people or if they think he’s a starry-eyed fool.

  “I know I’m an outsider, but I’ve lived here two years now and I love it,” Wade goes on. “The idea of a place of peace where people could come and relax and connect with nature is what the world needs. And those qualities are moneymakers too. What do you think, Mr. Burroughs? You’re the potential financial backer. Would a health spa and resort interest you at all?”

  All eyes go back to the front and when the investor stands again you can hear a pin drop. “It’s definitely something to consider,” he says. There’s a positive noise from the crowd and it’s not just the Nature Conservancy people either. “Maybe you could get up a committee and we could discuss it sometime.” More murmurs of approval from the crowd. This is something that feels good. Feels right. It’s doesn’t matter if the idea came from a hippie . . .

  “SO,” I SAY to Dolman as we pass the wrecking machines and bump into my drive, “that was a surprise. When we walked in, I was expecting the worst, more bad-mouthing and shouting each other down.

  “You want to come in for a cup of tea?” I ask Peter, just to be friendly, though in truth, I’m exhausted. Crowds tire me out.

  “Nah, I gotta get an early flight to Windsor in the morning.”

  As I stand on the porch, watching the taillights of the squad car blink out, I feel hopeful. I might not be able to live in the cottage, but the beach will probably still be available for people like me to walk on, and the bay will be here for the geese and the ducks and the seagulls.

  OoOoOoOoooooo. OoOoOoOoooooo, an owl calls in a quivery voice from out by the cottonwoods and I smile. It’s the first one I’ve heard since I came to Seagull Island.

  EASTERN SCREECH OWL

  A brown spotted night bird with pointy ears

  Common over much of eastern North America

  Spends the day roosting in holes

  Becomes active at dusk

  Brown and white with a pale green beak

  Diet: Small mammals

  Voice: A quivery trill

  Habitat: Woods, farm groves, shade trees

  Size: 7–10 inches

  Wingspan: 18–24 inches

  The Past Is Past

  For two days it snows and I wander the house wondering what now? The Nelsons have withdrawn, which is welcome news, but someone must own Seagull Haven and it isn’t me. I should get serious about finding another place to live. “Could I really just move into Nita’s?” I ask myself. “What do you think, Tiger? Are we two lost souls or just two travelers on the edge of an adventure?”

  Tiger, I’m sure, knows the answer but doesn’t get a chance to tell me because the phone rings and when I run in to answer it, it’s Peter.

  “Hey, want to go over to visit Terry? I need to see how she fared in the last storm. Someone told me her house had some damage.”

  “Sure, I was just feeling restless. I need to get out.”

  THIS TIME WHEN Dolman and I visit the Fibre Guild’s shop, Terry’s leading a knitting class. I’ve always wanted to learn to knit and now I have time. Maybe I could ask for a private lesson. Helen is sitting in the circle of participants along with a blond woman in her thirties who must be her daughter. I watch as they lean their heads together, laughing at each other’s ragged first attempts at knitting.

  Terry nods and raises her hand to indicate she’ll only be a few more minutes, so while Peter goes out to look at the ice that was rammed against the house on the night of the storm, I look around. Maybe it’s time to do a little Christmas shopping.

  Everything in the store is pricey, but I have a bank card and plenty of green hidden in my briefcase, so I try not to concern myself and just buy what I like. After all, the money goes back to Terry and the other artists. Might as well share the wealth!

  That’s when I notice a basket with three skeins of thick homespun red yarn and a knitting book. Ten Patterns for a Beginner, the cover says. That would be me! There’s a red bow on the handle, as if it’s meant to be a gift . . . a gift to myself, I decide. Maybe I don’t need a class.

  Terry takes the money for my purchases and then I sit down on a flowered sofa under the window to wait for Peter while she takes care of the last few customers. I’m surprised when Charity sits down beside me.

  “So you’re Sara, the midwife,” she says.

  The hair on the back of my neck goes up. “No, just a nurse.”

  “Oh, I thought you were a midwife. My cousin, Molly Lou, told me you delivered a hippie woman’s baby at the old Nelson place.” I watch her face when she speaks of Seagull Haven. No frown or darkening of the eye.

  “Molly Lou said it was awesome. The coolest thing. I had a midwife for my babies too in Montreal.”

  “I used to be a mother-baby nurse in the hospital a long time ago. It was a pretty straightforward delivery . . . It’s nice to see you on the island. I’ve heard a lot about you. I know your parents are thrilled. Helen was showing everyone pictures.”

  “That’s Mom for you.” She laughs and runs her hand through her short blond hair and that’s when I see it, a silver bracelet with a heart-shaped charm engraved with one word. Charity.

  “That’s a pretty chain,” I say, taking her hand.

  “My husband got it for me.”

  I take a big breath. There’s no time to think whether this is the right thing to do. Nita would say, Just do it. “I found a bracelet almost like that between the floorboards of the bedroom in Seagull Haven the other day, only the charm was a sailboat. It said Charity too. Maybe it was yours?”

  “Nope. Must be another Charity.” We stare at each other, my blue eyes into her green ones.

  “You were never in the cottage?” I asked. “You never knew the Nelson brothers or their sister, Charlene? Maybe you dropped it there.”

  “No,” she says again, more firmly. I’m still holding her wrist and I run my finger gently along the silver chain. “You should be a midwife,” she says, changing the subject.

  I let go. “Yeah? Why?”

  “You have a way about you. You’re a person who could deal with a woman’s secrets, if she had secrets . . . you wouldn’t be shocked . . . and your hands are warm.” She stands up and pulls on her parka. “I’m happy in Montreal, S
ara. The past is past.” Helen waves to her from across the store. “Got to go. It was nice meeting you.”

  The past is past, I think. My past and Charity’s. The past is past.

  The door blows open as Dolman comes in, stomping snow off his boots.

  “So, what do you think about the chunks of ice behind the house?” Terry asks. “Some of them are half the size of a bathtub and right up against the foundation. Except for Christmas, the store doesn’t bring in much this time of year . . . Just give me a ballpark figure, Pete. What do you think it would cost to have someone come in and remove them?”

  “Couple of hundred,” Peter answers her.

  “Whew!” Terry says. “I’ll think about it. Maybe I’ll be lucky and we’ll get a few warm days and they’ll melt.”

  “You might,” Peter agrees. “Or another storm might come in and slam the ice into your house and crush the foundation.”

  “Thanks! I really feel better now!” Terry gives him a little shove and he grabs the back of her wheelchair and spins her around.

  CHAPTER 49

  Lighthouse

  Returning home from Terry’s, Dolman turns north instead of south when we hit Sunset Road. At first, I think maybe he’s dropping by the Estates for some reason.

  “Where are we going?” I ask, still thinking about Charity.

  “I want to show you something. It will put what we did the night of the rescue in perspective.”

  “Sure . . . I guess.”

  Twenty minutes later, we pull into a parking lot surrounded by an orange snow fence. A sign pointing to the beach says, LIGHT HOUSE NATURE PARK. DANGEROUS CURRENTS.

  “I met Charity at the weavers’ shop,” I say before Peter has a chance to turn off the engine.

  “I saw her there with Helen. Seems like she’s doing great,” Peter responds, looking out the window at the ice sculptures along the shore. “I was wondering how it would be for her to come back.”

  “She was wearing a silver bracelet almost like the one I found. It had a heart on it that says Charity. I asked her about it and told her I found one like it at the cottage.”

  “And?”

  “She denied ever being in the cottage.” Peter lifts his eyebrows as if he doesn’t believe it.

  “She said something else. ‘The past is past.’ ”

  “What do you make of that?” he asks as he turns off the engine, takes his keys and we get out of the cruiser.

  “Maybe it’s like you said—she doesn’t want to think about what happened so long ago . . . or maybe she’s forgiven them.”

  Peter doesn’t say anything at first. “Well, without her willingness to testify, there’s no point reopening the case. Let sleeping dogs lie, I guess. The Nelsons won’t be back.” Then we walk in silence until we get to the lighthouse.

  THE BIG STONE structure, about sixty feet tall, towers over us. It’s clear it hasn’t been used as a lighthouse for years. There’s no glass in the windows and the openings, like eyes, stare out at the water.

  “It was built in 1830, the first of its kind in Ontario,” Dolman tells me. “Pelee Island got a similar one in 1833. The province paid for materials, but the homesteaders built it themselves . . . probably because they were tired of risking their lives to save the crews and passengers of ships that came too close to the shoals. Scores of boats have sunk here.”

  “Molly Lou has a map that shows where ships went down.” Touching the rocks, thinking about the people who lived on the island when the lighthouse was built, I walk around the building.

  “I always imagine a rough sea,” Peter explains, looking out at the water. “Waves ten feet tall, like the other night, a wooden passenger vessel powered by steam is on its way from Detroit to Buffalo. It grounds on the shallows about a hundred meters out. The boat breaks apart. Island men must brave the rough water to save the drowning victims. Some don’t make it . . .”

  “You’re right. It puts things in perspective. I don’t know if I have enough courage to do what you guys did the other night . . . or what the old timers did with only wooden rowboats, no gas motors, no safety equipment. Probably not even a life preserver.”

  HIKING BACK TO the cruiser, I notice the sun is close to the horizon and a wind has picked up. Time to get home and build a nice fire.

  Now and then we come to chunks of ice, big thick slabs like the kind that were thrown into Terry’s backyard, and we have to walk around them. Out of habit I look down for colored beach stones and that’s when I see it . . . a Timberland boot.

  Dolman stops. It’s not the boot, it’s the leg connected to it that brings him to a halt. Strangely there’s no smell, probably because the corpse is frozen again. The body I discovered last spring, still clothed in torn jeans and a ripped black jacket, may have been sucked twenty miles off shore, but the recent gale has brought it back again.

  The cop squats next to the man and with a stick carefully pulls away the sand and ice. “Don’t look if you’ve got a sensitive stomach,” he tells me.

  “I’m a nurse,” I say but turn away when he gets to the victim’s face. “Peter, I have to tell you . . . that boot is familiar. Last March I saw it on Gull Point.”

  “Timberland is a popular brand . . .” Dolman pulls out his cell. “I have to call the division chief in Windsor. Since we’re so close to the States, this may be an international issue and they’ll get the Mounties and the FBI involved.”

  “No, what I meant is . . . I didn’t just see a Timberland boot. I saw the body too. On Gull Point . . .” I wait for his reaction.

  “So you saw this body on the beach . . . ?” he asks in his cop voice, lifting his sunglasses, his gray eyes like steel. “When was this exactly?”

  “Just before the blizzard, in March, maybe April.” I sit down on a nearby log that’s been worn smooth by the waves.

  “I’m sorry. I realized I should contact the authorities, but I had no phone and didn’t know anyone. I was afraid Customs would discover that I was here without a passport. I didn’t want to be sent back to the US or thrown in jail.” I begin to cry softly. Peter holds up his hand.

  “Slow down.”

  “The guy was already dead! I wasn’t thinking clearly. I didn’t consider he could be someone’s father or someone’s son or even a drug dealer. I just wanted him to go away. There was a dead swan too, lying next to him . . . I was scared . . .” The sobs are harder now.

  Peter Dolman, social-worker-cop, throws the stick he was using to uncover the body out past the lake’s white collar of ice.

  “You aren’t who you pretend to be, are you, Sara? Let’s go back to your house. . . . You’re going to tell me everything.” We move toward the squad car, but I stop to look at the dead man one more time. “Can we say a prayer first?”

  CHAPTER 50

  Confession

  So,” Dolman begins, sitting in the rocking chair with his little cop notebook on one knee. “What were you afraid of?”

  I begin my story with coming to Canada without a passport and the snowmobile ride across the ice, but have to backtrack to the Mountain State Federal Bank and stealing all of my husband’s money, then go further back to Richard’s most recent affair, losing my connection with my daughter, my feeling of failure as a mother, the home-birth death of Robyn and the suicide of my friend Karen that so affected me.

  Peter stops taking notes about halfway through and just listens. When I start to cry again, he goes to the bathroom for tissues.

  “Let me see if I’ve got this straight. Your friend kills herself, your OB patient dies, you’re in this big mess and want to run away. You take all the money in your joint bank account . . . You leave without telling your almost-grown daughter where you’re going, but she hasn’t been communicating anyway, and you abandon your asshole of a husband. That doesn’t sound so horrible . . . I still don’t understand why you were so afraid you couldn’t notify someone about a dead body.”

  “Well, I didn’t have a passport. Don’t you get it?” I stare
into his eyes. “I never came through Customs. I came in the night illegally on a snowmobile. If I reported the dead guy, someone like you might start wondering about me and I didn’t want to be sent back. I still don’t know what’s going to happen if I’m returned to the States.” I lick my dry lips.

  “Also you have to understand, I’m not talking about a little money! There was over thirty thousand in the bank, mostly my husband’s, and Richard takes his money very seriously . . . Also, I stole a woman’s ID. And I’m wanted for manslaughter, did I mention that? So, I’m a liar, a robber, an identity thief, on the run from the law and an illegal immigrant besides.” Dolman closes his notebook.

  “Are you going to arrest me tonight? I have to find someone to take care of Tiger.”

  “Settle down, Sara. I’m not arresting you tonight. I have to think . . . I wish you hadn’t told me you saw that body last spring . . . but then you wouldn’t have told me the rest of your story.

  “I knew something was off when I kept hearing different versions about your dead husband. First he died in Iraq. The next time Afghanistan. I did a background check on Sara Livingston three months ago. There are hundreds of Sara Livingstons in the US and Canada. Not one driver’s license photo looked like you.”

  “I know you have to do what’s right, Peter, but please don’t send me back. I’d rather go to jail in Canada.”

  IT’S NOT A good night for me. You’d think I’d be relieved after finally telling someone my secrets, but now I have to worry about what Dolman will do . . .

  For a long time, I sit in front of the fire watching the flames with Tiger in my lap. I’m a dead woman washed up on the shores of Seagull Island.

  CHAPTER 51

  Attack

  Three mornings later, I awake with bright light shining in the window. New snow covers everything—the deck, the breakwall, the roof of the gazebo, but not my misdeeds. They are exposed.

  Then, CRASH. There’s the sound of metal on metal. BOOM, BANG. More metal and then a deep voice and the roar of an engine.