“Excellent,” he said biting her bait. “Well, drive safe, I hope you guys have a really nice time.”
Part of him had been hoping she’d decide to stay home instead. Every time she didn’t leave would be another time he wouldn’t have to wait for her return. He tried not to let it show, and thrust his shoulders up and back. He believed in the boomerang. But he would wait with bated breath for the sound of their tires returning up the driveway, the deep rolling grit of the trampled gravel.
Violet and Ben shouted, “Goodbye!” as they opened the front door and stepped outside. Ben stood on the porch for a moment, not sure what to do.
“Is there anything else?” he asked. Violet assumed he meant anything they had forgotten, anything they hadn’t packed and should have.
“No, there’s nothing else,” she said, thinking she was offering reassurance.
Ben stared at her with a scared look on his face. He had meant, What if this is the best we’ve got?
Violet walked toward the car with long strides. She didn’t look back, forced herself not to, in fear of seeing Jeremy in the window. If he looked out as she tried to escape, she would screw it up, stumble, or worse, turn around and go right back inside. Could he have that power over her? Could he hold up some invisible chain and reel them back in? She felt no strings, no strain, nothing yanking her back. Just the weight of her own body.
She opened the car door; Ben did the same. They buckled up. Ben stared at his big sister, knowing she would tell him what happened next, and next, and next, until the whole thing was over.
“Okay,” Violet said as she turned the key in the ignition. “This is it. Take one last look back if you want to, because this is the end of it.” She had no idea which way to turn when the gravel road became a T.
Ben did look back. And, even though she told herself she wouldn’t, Violet did, too. It had been their home. Homes aren’t always the happiest of places, but they have people within them who love. There had been love in that home. Strange love, maybe forced love, maybe unhealthy love, but all love is like that sometimes.
There was Jeremy in the window. He must have finished the dishes. He stood there with his hands crossed in front of him. They were far enough away that Violet couldn’t read the expression on his face. She couldn’t see the valleys etched in his forehead or the white line of his lips pressed together or how huge his eyes looked.
Violet’s breath caught in her throat. She rolled down her window and waved goodbye to him, trusting that they were far enough away that he couldn’t read her face either.
“Wave bye, Ben,” she said quickly, desperately. “He’s there in the window, so wave goodbye.”
Ben did, and Violet pressed on the gas pedal to take them down the driveway. When they got to the bottom, she turned left. Why not?
She drove and drove. There was no way of knowing where she was. Ben was no help and she didn’t recognize the streets. She hadn’t brought the map Jeremy had drawn. She should have; it would have helped. She could easily have gone into Bob’s Corner Store to ask for directions into town. But instead, she had left them in her bedroom, sitting out on her set of drawers. It would be one of the first things Jeremy would see if he walked into her bedroom. She had left her door wide open.
Both hands stayed clamped to the wheel. The gravel felt loose beneath her tires and she feared it would send her reeling in one direction or another if she hit it too quickly. She crawled along slowly at 20 kilometres an hour.
“Vi?” Ben finally said, “Why are we going so slow?”
“I’m just making sure we don’t skid out. It’s like driving on ice,” she exaggerated, because it wasn’t really like that at all. A year away from the wheel was enough to make anyone cautious. No one could fault her for that.
After driving straight for a long time, Violet turned to Ben. “Alright,” she said, “What way?”
“Right,” Ben said instantly. He had thought about this, had been sitting there wondering when it would be a good time to tell her they should get off this road, the same road Jeremy lived on, the first road he would take if he were to come looking for them.
She turned right, looked to the horizon. Just natural landscape, aside from the road, as far as she could see. Looking at the clock, she saw that only five minutes had passed. They had some time before Jeremy would begin to miss them.
Time crawled slowly after that, country scenery all around them. Sprawling fields, tall trees, a couple of brave squirrels who darted freely onto the gravel, unexposed to the graveyard most roads become with frequent car use.
“Now what way?” Violet asked.
“Left,” Ben said. Farther away, was what he really meant. He wasn’t sure how he felt. There were things he didn’t want to leave behind, and a part of him would feel okay if Violet decided to turn the car around and go back. But now that he was here, in the car, driving away for the first time, he realized that he wanted his mom. He did want his own bed, his own friends. He wanted to tell them the story about the man who had stolen them, and suddenly felt a pang for back-to-school clothes, new haircuts and pencil sharpeners.
He looked over at Violet. She was so quiet, and he could see how high her shoulders were raised.
“We’re gonna be okay, Vi,” he said, unsure if it would be comforting or annoying.
She didn’t say anything, just turned to him with a big, fake smile and nodded her head. The nod had been their code, for all the times when it had been too much to muster up the words for emotions they had no vocabulary for. When sometimes the only thing to do had been to just nod. Violet wondered if, going back into the real world, nodding would be enough. Maybe people would pry more out of her, not allowing her to fall back on a simple bob of her head.
In the distance, a barn appeared.
“Look!” they both said at the same time, as if they had never seen civilization before.
“Alright,” Violet said, “At least that’s a sign of another person. Maybe we’re getting closer.”
They were. Continuing straight on that road would lead them to Blind River, the town they had been absent from for almost a year.
When they saw the first signs of residential sprawl, twenty minutes had passed. They didn’t recognize the area but the gravel turned to pavement, the street signs turned from numbers to words and cars began to pass them on the road. The presence of other drivers made Violet nervous. She felt as though she could easily swerve into the wrong lane at any moment. Her depth perception had always been shoddy and she was particularly jittery that day. She probably wasn’t fit to be driving, and part of her wanted very badly to pull over, to sit and wait awhile until the sky got darker and all the other cars headed home.
“Do you recognize any of this?” she asked Ben. He shook his head.
“Me neither,” she admitted. “Let’s pull over at the next gas station and we’ll ask how to get home. Sound good?”
The nod.
A gas station soon appeared before them. Violet flicked on her blinker, something she hadn’t been doing on the back roads, and turned in. Parking wasn’t as hard as she had anticipated, and she successfully maneuvered between the two lines.
“Wanna stay in here?” she asked Ben. He did.
Getting out of the car, Violet walked towards the entrance of the store and saw a line of three phone booths on the outside wall.
Her home phone number sprung into her head; she could see the seven digits display themselves behind her eyelids. The unique code that would allow her to access home, no matter how far away.
I could call. The thought leapt into her head as suddenly and vibrantly as the numbers. She fumbled in her change purse for a quarter. Remembering the price increase on phone booths, she dug out another.
Approaching the nearest booth, she lifted the receiver and felt the weight of it in her hand. She pressed it firmly to her head, feeling the vacuum seal against her ear. She dropped her two quarters into the machine and cringed at the monotonous drone of the
dial tone. It was such a haunting noise; she wondered who had chosen it. Couldn’t it be a song? A soft melody, or at the very least a more friendly pitch?
She entered the numbers into the phone slowly and deliberately. She didn’t want to press the wrong one and have to start all over. The gap between entering the numbers and the connection lasted a lifetime. Violet could hear the suspension, the seemingly endless hollow. But finally, a ring.
Then another ring, and one more.
What if she doesn’t answer? Violet wasn’t sure if she would leave a message. Before she had to decide, there was a small click, a pause and a “Hello?”
Violet recognized the voice instantly, and was secretly relieved that she did. Thank god she hadn’t forgotten.
“Mom!” Violet said quickly and loudly, “Mom, it’s me!”
Another pause. “Who is this?” Anger laced her words in a way that Violet didn’t expect or understand.
“It’s Violet! Mom, it’s me!” She hadn’t imagined she would have to announce her identity so many times. Shouldn’t her mom just know?
“This is cruel,” the voice said, dripping with menace. “Is this funny to you?”
“What? No, mom, it’s really me, it’s Violet! And I’m okay, and Ben’s okay too, and we’re coming home! We’re coming home right now!”
Violet wanted to shout out the whole story, tell her every word, but it would have to wait until after they were able to share an embrace. They would have to hang on to each other for a moment so they knew for certain it was real. Before she could say anything else to convince her mother or herself that she was really on the way home, Holly interrupted her with a shout.
“Fuck you,” she said loudly. “Whoever you are, fuck you. How dare you put me through this. How dare you.” She hung up.
Violet stood with the phone in her hand for a long time. The sound of the disconnection, that staccato beat, was even more eerie than the dial tone itself.
There was only one reason her mother could have reacted that way. She must have thought they were dead. Violet wondered how she could have come to that conclusion. She had hardly scoured the earth, searched the area thoroughly and completely. Had she given up on them? Violet squeezed her eyes shut, swallowed, shook her head and put the phone back down. She would pretend she hadn’t made that phone call, that her change purse was still two quarters heavier. Their mother was, at this very moment, sitting at home. Thinking about them. She must be so upset. Making that phone call had only delayed them, and Violet chastised herself for her weakness.
Pressing open the door into the store, the chime sounded to alert the cashier. Stop picking your nose, stop reading dirty magazines, the bell announced. The young boy behind the counter jerked his head towards her. Violet wondered for a moment if he would recognize her. Maybe posters of them had been plastered around town, on signposts, the evening news. Perhaps her face would be forever recognizable to the town folk who had been haunted by her image for weeks on end as the devastating search for the missing siblings continued. The Stolen Siblings, that surely would have been their headline.
But nothing flickered over the cashier’s face besides boredom. Violet’s hand self-consciously snapped up to her hair; she ran her fingers through it. She hadn’t striven for conventional beauty in so long. It wasn’t as though she had given up the façade, the strategic placing of her hands on her hips. Those thoughts had come back to her after she regained access to a mirror and a shower within Jeremy’s house. But that had been different, that had been easy. Back in the real world, the insecurity and constant self-evaluation began to creep back in.
She arrived at the counter before she even knew what she wanted to say.
“Hi,” she started, “I was just wondering if you could give me some directions back into town.”
“What town?” he asked, a fair question.
“Oh, sorry. Blind River. There are so many side roads out here that I have no idea where I ended up.”
“Sure thing,” he said. Immediately, he got out a pen and napkin and began to draw a map. What was with men and intersecting lines? It was as if they needed to know how to conquer from all angles instead of just one, Violet thought, as if they wanted to avoid the use of language at all costs, conveying messages by data alone.
“It’ll take you about five minutes if you follow this road right here,” he said as he gestured to his offering. “You’re not far.”
“Wow,” Violet said. “Really?” It felt as if they should have to drive for days.
“Really,” he handed over the scrap.
“Thank you,” she said sincerely, “I appreciate it.” She turned and walked out of the store, given a final farewell by its chime. When the car was back in her line of vision, and Ben within it, she gave a thumbs up and the biggest smile she could muster. Ben gave her a small one in return.
Violet climbed back in the car and hoped Ben wouldn’t ask her about the phone call. But he did, and she couldn’t blame him; it had been so long since a phone call had been an option.
“Did you talk to mom?”
“No,” she said quickly. She was about to continue when Ben asked another question.
“Did you talk to Jeremy?”
“Jeremy? What? No,” she said, alarmed that he would think so. “No, I called home, but no one answered.”
“Oh,” he said, sounding too downtrodden for someone of his size.
“I have a feeling she’s at home though,” she soothed. “And we’re going to be there sooner than you think. How long do you think it’ll take us?”
“An hour?” Ben said, time being a concept that didn’t mean much to him yet.
“Nope, the person inside told me we’re only about five minutes from town. I’ll bet we can make it home in less than fifteen minutes. Are you excited?”
“Yes,” he said, but he wasn’t. Violet could tell. She wasn’t sure why, but her heart wasn’t as light as she imagined it would be either. It was alarming how neutral she felt towards the idea of being able to go home. Being behind the wheel and steering in the direction that would take her there, she felt nothing.
Not nothing, that wasn’t accurate. She couldn’t describe it, and wished she could draw a map of it to explain.
They drove on and urbanization began to explode around them. Grocery stores, fitness centres, cars and homes. Violet knew where she was but the landmarks had changed. She passed a plaza that had been a park when she left.
The traffic lights scared Violet a bit; the sun had come out and she couldn’t see the colours changing very well.
“Is that – is that green?” she asked Ben more than once. He nodded yes, without pausing to think of the need to be accurate.
Three honks raged at her from behind as she had fouled someone again, somehow. She couldn’t take the time to wave or apologize in fear of being lambasted with another honk from someone else she was sure to offend in the process.
“Here we are,” Violet breathed. Their neighbourhood. The streets were the same, children out playing on bikes. Be careful, little ones, she wanted to say to them, Don’t get into a car with any strange men. She knew she was the minority, that it didn’t happen often, that most likely those children were safe. But she couldn’t shake the feeling that they were bound to be snatched up as they sat passively on their bikes, while their mothers painted their nails or talked on the phone to a friend. Flirted in the backyard with men. Bad things could happen when no one was watching, and even when they were.
Violet looked over at her little brother. Mouth open, eyes wide, he looked back and forth without saying a word.
“Are you ready?” she asked him. As if he had a choice, as if they had ever had a choice. But he nodded, little sport that he was, lying for her benefit.
“Good,” she said, making the final left turn onto Norwood Crescent. A big, friendly circle of a street. In the wintertime, the snowplough piled all of the snow into the middle of the court, forming a great white mountain, or at least a g
reat grey one, depending on how fresh and pure it was or wasn’t. As a child, Violet had played on that hill for hours, digging tunnels through its core, riding her bicycle down its side. At the moment, the centre of the court was an empty, concrete void. Right beyond it was home.
“Home,” Violet said out loud, as if reinforcing it to herself and to Ben. “We’re home.”
The house was a bungalow; a squat, long structure made of mostly brown things. Brown bricks, painted brown trim around the windows. A chimney somewhere on the back of the roof poked up. The front door was painted a deep forest green, the same colour as when they had left it, but with fewer chips and scratches. Sparse, bedraggled gardens patched the front lawn, and Violet’s heart sank a little in her chest. Their mother had loved the garden and been so proud when it flourished. Perhaps she had been too heartbroken to grow something new, something beautiful out of the earth when the two things that meant the most to her were gone. Violet held this thought close to her and hoped.
It amazed Violet that the house didn’t look more beautiful. Shouldn’t it appear to be glistening, glowing like the North Star beckoning them home? It should be an oasis, Violet thought. But it wasn’t. It was a small bungalow that their mother had a very hard time affording. The tiled walkway up to the front door was still cracked; Holly hadn’t gotten much farther than the door’s paint job. No vehicle sat in the driveway, but the closed garage had always sealed their mother’s red car away. It was probably nestled safely within right now.
Violet pulled into the driveway and slowed to a stop. Neither of them jumped out of the car. When Violet unclasped her seatbelt, she heard Ben do the same. As her hand reached out to pull the handle on the door, Ben’s little hand did too.
“This is it,” she said, preparing them. Ben didn’t say a word. They got out of the car and shut the door gently. Neither wanted to make much noise. After pressing the power lock button on the car, she grimaced. The beep was far too loud. Violet looked expectantly up to the windows of the house. She thought for certain she would see the ruffling of a curtain, the curious peek of a mother who had been waiting for that sound for months on end. But there was no motion, and Violet realized she was just going to have to walk up to the front door. She did, and Ben followed along beside her, one step behind.
Once, We Were Stolen Page 28