Lilah

by Marjorie DeLuca

  His instincts had been right. She did already know him. And now he couldn’t believe how this was all falling into place. This unbelievably gorgeous, sexy girl had studied him and his work and had come here to find him. He was so deep into the fantasy he barely noticed Ike Dewar hovering over him like some iron-haired, ex-marine drill sergeant.

  “So pretty boy Hendricks scores again,” he said, a crooked smirk forming on one side of his mouth. “Too bad the real men in this town can’t get a piece of that foxy ass.”

  “Maybe she’s not into your particular brand of masculinity,” Nick said, watching as Lilah approached.

  “Think you’re real smart, Hendricks,” he said. “All them big words and fancy ideas. But see Rosie over there – she got wise to you.”

  By now, Lilah was right behind Ike. Nick stood up and reached for the glasses. “Oh – Ike Dewar. Meet Lilah.”

  When Ike turned and met Lilah’s cool eyes and dazzling smile, it was like some epic biblical moment when the lion lies down before the lamb. All the swagger and bravado disappeared and he started to behave like a big, blathering kid. “P-p- pleasure, Miss – Miss…”

  “Beaumarche,” she said, holding her hand out to him. “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Dewar.”

  “Call me Ike,” he said, hovering like a big, tame bear. “I have an acreage on the outside of town. My wife Madge and me - we’re hosting a Winter Hayride next Saturday. I hope you’ll do us the honor of coming along.”

  “Wouldn’t miss it, Mr. Dewar,” she said, “I rode horses ever since I was a kid in the mountains.”

  “I look forward to seeing you, then,” he said, backing away, his face frozen into a stunned smile.

  Lilah turned back to Nick. “So were you going to invite me to this Winter Hayride?”

  His heart did a triple somersault at the thought of cozying up with her on the back of Ike Dewar’s hay wagon. He felt nervous at the thought of it. “As a matter of fact I have to do a report for the paper – so yeah – I was going to ask you.”

  She chinked her glass against his. “Then we have a date next Saturday, Mr. Hendricks.”

  He couldn’t tell if it was his sweaty palms or the condensation from the drink, that made the glass almost slip from his hand. “We certainly do, Miss Beaumarche,” he said, smiling as he drank to the beginning of something new and incredibly exciting. But he couldn’t suppress the faint chill of fear that he would never measure up. That he’d somehow disappoint her when she really got to know him.

  4

  Lilah was in his head after that night at Rusty’s. She’d arranged the date then left him sitting there nursing his last drink and wishing he didn’t have to wait another seven days for Saturday to roll around.

  For the next few days, he’d wake up to the image of her face at the tail-end of his dreams. Then he’d drive by her store, searching the window for a glimpse of her face. At work he’d try to dream up reasons why he should drop in on her. Then every morning he took twice as long to drink his morning coffee so he could sit in The Beanery and gaze at her storefront.

  “You’re like a lovesick kid,” said Danny. “I’ve never seen you this bad.”

  “So maybe there’s more at stake here,” Nick said, downing the bitter final dregs. “Maybe I’m tired of short term flings.”

  Danny stacked freshly baked brownies in the display case. “Well you’ve been such a jerk with the ladies. Maybe it’s your turn to feel the pain.”

  Nick grabbed the last brownie on the plate. “Okay Pops, everyone has to grow up at some point and this just happens to be my time to get serious.”

  “Well, now that you’re accepting the fatherly advice, I’m gonna tell you to take it easy. You don’t know anything about her yet.”

  “I know how I feel,” he said, climbing down from the stool. “And right now I can’t stop thinking about her.”

  “Red flag, Nicky. My humble experience says proceed with extreme caution,” he said, snapping the display case shut.

  But Nick was already out the door, his head so deep into dreams of the weekend, he almost walked right into the path of an approaching snow plough, and just stepped back in time to see the driver give him the finger.

  The lights were on in Lilah’s Aesthetics, but she was in the middle of styling Tracy Ross’s hair, so he passed on by. It gave him a warm feeling to know she was just a few doors down from him. There in her cozy store while he sat in his cramped, little office. Living their lives side by side, then coming together for the party at the weekend. His head buzzed, the nerves on his fingertips tingled. He was waking up from a long sleep. A sleep of his own design. Since high school and way before that. Since a time he didn’t want to think about.

  He looked back at Lilah’s store. There’d be no shortage of customers for the first week or so, while the locals tried to pump her for any juicy tidbit she’d offer about her past. But once they got wise to the fact she was trying to keep a low profile, they’d report back to their book clubs and coffee klatches, then move on back to the chain hairdressers at the mall.

  Even Nick’s pathetic exploits had provided some tasty fodder for the local gossips. The legend of Nick Hendricks had reached epic proportions when he broke up with Leah Carter after proposing to her in a drunken stupor at the Fourth of July fireworks display. Next day she’d arrived on his doorstep with a copy of the Forevermark Diamond Catalogue. Too bad his head was swollen with a massive, sickly hangover and he’d promptly withdrawn the proposal. Vowing she’d wipe him out of her life like a squashed bug on a windshield, she’d gone and joined Violet Olsen’s book club and provided some pretty lurid stories about their sex life and other personal trivia like his taste in underwear and his preference for sitting rather than standing to take a piss.

  By Wednesday he hadn’t seen Lilah at all since the night at the bar. At the weekend there’d been no sign of her or her car anywhere, then on the Monday and Tuesday she worked at her shop non-stop. Each night, when he left work, the store windows were dark and only one light was on in the apartment upstairs. It didn’t feel right to call on her. It was like she’d made the arrangement for Saturday and all he could do was wait until then to make last minute plans.

  He forced himself to finish a piece on the upcoming Ice Golf Tournament. Once that was saved, his curiosity started to poke at him again, like an annoying finger on his back. He typed in a search: Beaumarche, Northern Alberta. Nothing came up except a bunch of pictures of oil wells, forests and resort hotels, and when he searched her full name he got pictures of a singer in dreadlocks, two squeaky clean kids making peace signs into the camera, and Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz. No connection at all. She didn’t exist anywhere in cyberspace. No mention, no trace.

  Itching to find something interesting, he typed in “Silver Narrows disappearances”. A string of results popped up, so he sat back and scrolled through a bunch of them.

  From what he could gather, the disappearances had started in the late 1990’s. All the disappeared people were between fifteen and nineteen. Boys and girls. The first two were troubled kids who’d disappeared in 1999. The conclusion was that they’d run away to the big city. One had even sent a letter from Chicago, but was never seen again. No bodies were found. Then in 2002 an eighteen year old cheerleader disappeared. After combing the entire area, the cops concluded she’d been abducted, so the search expanded nation wide. Two more kids vanished over the next couple of years, until in 2006 another girl showed up filthy and starving on the side of the highway and claimed some trucker had picked her up when she was walking home, taken her to a seedy motel in the next town, raped her and imprisoned her in the room. She’d escaped after three days of captivity and found her way back to Silver Narrows.

  Of course the cops found the guy and arrested him. He turned out to be a logging trucker from Wisconsin who denied any knowledge of the other kidnappings. But as far as the cops were concerned, they’d found their man. Once he was locked up, the disappearances stopped. The case was close
d even though none of those kids was ever found. To Nick it seemed just a bit too convenient to pin everything on this one creep of a guy, but the local cops and the FBI closed up the file after that.

  It looked like most of families of the disappeared kids drifted away from Silver Narrows, unable to face the daily torture of being around the places where their kids had once wandered happy and free. A couple of them remained in the area, but they kept quiet about the whole thing. Nick couldn’t recall anyone ever talking about them since he’d arrived. Only Rosie, and now Lilah. It was one of those nasty secrets pushed aside and left to fester in the dark places of the town’s memory. And he of all people knew about secrets and the way their poison sometimes trickled into your consciousness when you least expected it.

  Still, it was a fascinating case and his inner writer kept telling him there could be a great investigative feature or entire book just waiting to be written about The Lost Children of Silver Narrows. If he could only get his ass in gear and do some nosing around. It’d been a long time since he felt excited about writing something. And like Lilah had said, it was as if some uninvited stranger came into your home and stole your children, because Silver Narrows was such a tight knit family community. He could be Minnesota’s answer to Truman Capote, writing his own version of In Cold Blood except there was no enigmatic killer conveniently confessing to the crimes and even worse, no bodies.

  He was just checking the shelves where the newspaper archives were kept when he spotted Ray Gorman making a beeline right for Lilah’s place. What the hell was he doing there? Maybe he was gonna ask her to be his new supplier of hairpieces. Little pinpricks of jealousy started needling at his skin until he couldn’t think straight. He hadn’t felt like this since Anthea Wallis had been picked for debate club captain instead of him – and that was back in tenth grade. Jealousy was something Nick Hendricks didn’t feel. Nothing, or rather no one had mattered enough to him - until now. And when Lilah walked out from her store as that slimy creep Gorman held the door open for her, sparks seemed to explode in his head.

  She glowed in her white fur lined parka, and her hair was stuffed into a creamy wool hat. Gorman virtually greased along beside her, his hands flapping in accompaniment to the endless stream of drivel he was probably spouting at her. What the hell was she thinking of? By now a full fledged spasm of jealousy had gripped his throat, squeezing the breath out of him. He told himself to calm down, take it easy. Then, when they stepped into The Beanery, he realized it was the perfect time to take a coffee break.

  Before he stepped out, he checked himself in the mirror. His face looked peaky, wide-eyed, brows arched with anticipation. He forced himself to take a few deep breaths just to bring himself down to a reasonable state, smoothed his hair back and straightened his collar. He was a good six inches taller than the paunchy Gorman and had no need of a rug. That gave him some satisfaction as he pulled on his black parka and wrapped a blue scarf round his neck. Rosie had always liked the scarf. Said it brought out the blue of his eyes.

  Trying hard to stroll casually across the street, he checked out The Book Cove window for a few moments then, confident he’d given himself enough time, stepped into the cinnamon-scented warmth of The Beanery. A couple of high school kids skipping class sat in one corner, a group from the local hospital took up the middle table and Gorman sat opposite Lilah in Nick’s window seat. Deep in conversation, they didn’t even register him.

  “Take it easy, Nicky,” said Danny, cutting through the chaos in Nick’s head. “She’ll soon realize he’s a sleaze ball.”

  Nick leaned on the counter. “Dunno what you mean.”

  “I’m talking from experience,” he continued. “Seen too many guys mess up their lives when the old green eyed monster grabs them at the throat.”

  “Just get me a coffee.” Nick immediately regretted the curtness of his tone.

  “Yes boss,” he said, slamming a cup down. “No need to be an asshole about it.”

  “Sorry, Danny. I just didn’t sleep well,” said Nick, turning towards the window. His heart did a backflip when Lilah waved him over.

  “Everything okay now?” said Danny, pushing the coffee forward. Nick nodded and headed over to the dark haired vision in white.

  “Do you guys know each other?” said Lilah, pulling out the chair beside her. Gorman’s eyes flashed a look that said get the hell out of here. If he’d had a knife in his hand, he would’ve stabbed Nick between the eyes right there and then. But Nick just gave him his best phony smile and said, “Sure, we go way back. Isn’t that right, Ray?”

  “We’re doing business here, Hendricks,” he said, shuffling the pile of papers in front of him. “Why don’t you go hide in your office and write your little stories.”

  “Actually I’m looking for a house,” said Lilah, oblivious to the tension. “Something more secluded. I’m not sure how long I can take that musty little apartment above the store.”

  “Well there’s some real nice places out by the lake,” said Ray, turning away from Nick as if he’d just disappear. “Your only neighbors will be deer, foxes and rabbits and they don’t gossip.” He nudged her and snorted at the corniness of his own joke.

  “I like the sound of that,” she said, clapping her hands. “Can we see some today?”

  “Matter of fact I’ve got three lined up,” he said. “We can drive out as soon as we’re done here.”

  Though Nick didn’t relish the idea of Lilah in Gorman’s fat black Escalade, he did like the thought of her living in seclusion by the lake. Warm visions popped into his head. Frosty evenings sipping wine by a roaring fire, with only the sound of the loons piercing the night. Bolstered by that thought, he pushed his chair back and stood up. “Well I’ll let you guys get on with your day,” he said watching Gorman’s tight mask of a face relax into an expression of total relief. “Are we still on for Saturday?” Gorman’s face sank into despair again.

  “For sure,” she said, looking up at him with bright eyes. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”

  “See you then,” Nick said, but she’d gone back to studying the spec sheets. His head was all mixed up. On the one hand he was glad the date was still on schedule, but couldn’t help feeling as if it was all on her terms. Like she’d filed him neatly into her schedule of activities for Saturday and right now was time for him to run along because she had important things to do.

  As he trudged through the slush, he realized he’d become way too accustomed to being the one who called all the shots. Now it was his turn to agonize while he sat and waited for the phone to ring. His turn to go crazy while he waited for just a glimpse of the person who made his insides turn to jelly.

  5

  By Friday he’d dug out all the archives on the disappearances, and had been tossing around possible titles inspired by Lilah’s idea that Silver Narrows was a family violated by an evil perpetrator. He still hadn’t decided whether to write the piece as a book or a series of investigative articles. The thought made his blood race with the kind of enthusiasm he hadn’t felt since grade school. In the meantime he took a trip to Violet Olsen’s place to buy one of those classy moleskin journals, hoping it would solidify his commitment to the project.

  Violet was putting up her Christmas decorations. “I always get so sentimental at this time of year,” she said, cradling a cheeky looking Santa in a checkered neckerchief and suspenders. “Like I’m saying hello to a whole bunch of friends I love spending time with.” Violet was known for her Santa collection. She’d haul out a massive trunk and the Santas would begin to appear in various nooks and crannies of the store. She had silver Santas, Santas on skis, in tropical gear, on dirt bikes and so many more. Parents would bring their kids in each day to check the progress of the Santa invasion. It was a clever marketing trick because they inevitably left with a bagful of books.

  “I haven’t even put mine up yet,” he said, thinking back on his miserable Christmas day last year. He’d woken up with a throbbing hangover to a pho
ne call from his Mom who nagged him for an hour about how he couldn’t even make the time to come to Phoenix and spend a few hours with the only family he had. She was so pissed off she didn’t call him for two weeks.

  Violet looked down through her dark framed glasses. “Poor Nicky. You need to find the right girl. Follow my favourite author, Robert Heinlein. He said, Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own. Your little world is too small for your big heart, Nick. You have to find someone you can worry about. You take care of her, she takes care of you. Simple as that.”

  She climbed off the stepladder. “If only I was thirty years younger, you handsome rascal,” she said, patting his cheek. “Oh and not married to someone I adore.”

  Violet had that silky white hair that should never be coloured, and at five foot one, she barely reached Nick’s shoulder. She and Tray had been married thirty five years.

  Nick squeezed her shoulder. “No more broken hearts. I promise.”

  “Go for quality and character, Nick. It’ll win out every time.”

  Nick took a notebook from the display case and Violet swiped the bar code. “Doing a new poetry collection?”

  “Nah – something different. A little investigative piece.”

  “Really. I’m intrigued,” she said. “Our book club loves a good crime thriller.”

  “Actually, I’m doing some research on the Silver Narrows disappearances.”

  The moment he blurted it out, he regretted it. Her book club was the clearing house for local gossip. Now he’d blown any hope of secrecy. Also, a flicker of something like fear, flitted across her smiling, friendly face. “Why d’you want to go digging that old stuff up again,” she said, stuffing his notebook into a brown bag. “There’s a lot of people here would like to forget that whole business.”

  Nick shrugged. “Don’t worry. Knowing me I’ll lose interest after the second day of hard work.”