“Jim did. Tracked him down. Made sure he was doing okay. But I can’t tell you where he is, just that he loves you and misses you. He wants you to be strong for your mom and your brother.”
Audrey’s words and her fake kindness didn’t feel right, but Elena had to believe that what she said was true. He was still alive and he was going to be fine. Everything was going to be fine. Tears welled up in her eyes.
“Have you already told them?” she asked.
“Who?”
“Mamma and Rob.”
“No. They wouldn’t believe me. It’s our secret for now, okay?”
“Yeah.” Elena’s voice wavered. We found him. He’s in the forest. He’s still alive.
“Your dad can’t go to prison. He’s not the prison kind. He’s better off living in the bush the rest of his days than being locked up. Now, me and Jim are gonna to do everything we can to clear his name and make sure he gets back to you, but that might not happen for a while ... maybe a long time. So you gotta be strong and keep goin’ and keep this to yourself. And your dad said he doesn’t want you getting involved anymore, alright? He was very clear about that. It’s too dangerous.”
“Okay,” Elena said, nodding. She couldn’t imagine not saying anything to anyone. This was the best news they’d had in a long time. At the very least, she had to tell Rob.
“Elena, I’m serious. You gotta promise me you’ll leave this alone now. Don’t say anything to anyone, don’t follow anyone, don’t accuse anyone. Keep your head down.”
“I promise.”
Audrey gave her a hard stare. “I gotta go.”
Elena gave her a goodbye hug but Audrey stood stiffly. It was like she was trying to be happy and trying not to cry at the same time. Elena had never seen her like that before—in pieces.
As soon as Audrey left, Elena looked around for Rob and the girl. They’d gone off somewhere, which meant Rob probably hadn’t even seen Audrey. Elena walked around the park a few times and allowed herself to imagine Dad in the forest, thinner than the last time she saw him, surviving on berries and leaves, rabbits, deer and grouse. He was thinking of them just like she was thinking of him, and he was safe. He was coming home, hopefully soon, but maybe not for a while.
She sat on a swing and rocked herself back and forth until Rob appeared. He smelled funny, a sour sweet smell, and his eyes looked tired. He talked slowly. She told him about Audrey, and about how Jim had found Dad, and he was doing fine. Rob just laughed and laughed and laughed.
It was late when Mamma came home. Elena didn’t look at the time, but her eyelids were still heavy with sleep. She had been woken by the sound of Mamma in the kitchen, opening cupboards and scraping back a chair.
Elena pattered into the room in her nightie. Mamma was sitting at the table staring at the empty cupboard that used to be crammed with dried goods like pasta and rice. The makeup Mamma had put on before her shift was running down her cheeks in quivering black lines. Elena hugged Mamma, who pulled her in closer.
“What are we going to do?” Mamma whispered.
“About what?” Elena asked softly.
Mamma wouldn’t say. She assumed Mamma was referring to Dad. His disappearance hit them at odd times. A deep sadness could surge up in Elena’s chest out of nowhere. It would sit there inside her all day and there was nothing she could do to get rid of it. Sometimes she didn’t want to get rid of it. Missing him had become part of her. If she let go of that, there’d be nothing of him left.
“I’m going out. I’ll be a few hours.”
Mamma peered into the kitchen as she slid earrings through her lobes. Rob glanced at her before picking up his cereal bowl and draining the last of the milk from it in one long slurp. He didn’t seem to care about Mamma’s plans.
Elena studied Mamma’s face, perfectly made up, not like the night before. She was wearing a pant suit, the only one she owned, and she looked very professional.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m going to look for a new job.”
Rob dropped his bowl onto the table. “What about the Inn?”
“Frank had to lay me off. Business is slow. There was nothing he could do. But don’t worry. Someone will be hiring.”
Mamma smiled as if this was good news and disappeared into the hallway. Elena and Rob looked at each other. Elena didn’t want to be like Kathryn’s family; she couldn’t imagine her home boarded shut. They belonged in Stapleton.
Mamma hummed a little tune to herself as she checked her hair again in the hallway mirror. “Frank says we should leave town but I told him we’ll stay until your dad gets home. I can find work here.”
As soon as Mamma left, Rob said: “It doesn’t matter where she looks. She won’t find anything.”
Mr. Peterson was seriously injured in the explosion. He had severe burns to most of his body. Elena didn’t know him or his family. His boys were much older, almost adults, but he worked shifts with Dad, and she’d seen the two of them acknowledge each other in passing.
The Petersons were a rough family. Elena had never heard anything about a Mrs. Peterson, but Mr. Peterson and his sons came up sometimes in gossip at the café or in the playground. People said Mr. Peterson poisoned his neighbour’s dog because it wouldn’t stop barking, and his youngest son was arrested for breaking into a house on Spruce Drive and throwing a party there while the family was on vacation.
Elena heard Mr. Peterson wasn’t doing so well. His was one of the names people brought up when they talked about the explosion, whispering about how unrecognizable he looked and how many surgeries he was having. People only spoke about him sympathetically now. They called him, “that poor man.”
Mamma had been out of the house all afternoon. She was busy plastering the neighbourhood with flyers advertising her cleaning services and she came home with a stack of them still in her hands. She called Elena and Rob into the living room. Elena hoped she had something to say about Dad.
“Mr. Peterson passed away this morning,” she said.
Mamma paused, and then she explained very gently that he had gone in for another surgery and this time he hadn’t come out. Mamma was talking so delicately that Elena wondered if she should be feeling upset about Mr. Peterson. It was sad that he’d died but she didn’t know him. It took Mamma a while to work up to what she really wanted to tell them.
“His family is obviously heartbroken, and they need time to grieve. If you see his sons around, just avoid them for now, okay?”
“I hardly ever see them,” Elena said, still confused. “Well that’s good, but if you do see them, try to stay out of their way,” Mamma said.
“But why ...”
Rob interrupted. He was good at getting to the point when Mamma wouldn’t. “They think Dad killed him. They think it’s Dad’s fault Mr. Peterson died. Mom’s worried about what they might do to us.”
Elena looked over at Mamma wide-eyed.
“Rob!” Mamma said. “Don’t scare your sister. I just don’t want either of you getting into any confrontations with that family. The last thing we need is more trouble.”
Elena wasn’t actually scared. She didn’t believe the Peterson boys would want to hurt her, even if they did think Dad was responsible for their dad’s death. She and Rob were just kids and Mamma always overreacted.
Mr. Peterson’s death was followed almost immediately by another big local story, one that did make Elena anxious. The news came from Ken again, but this time he didn’t bother coming around to tell them in person. Mamma’s frown deepened as she listened to him over the phone. She hung up and turned away from them for a moment.
“Ken says there’s a rumour going around the café ... that Dad has been seen in Stapleton.”
Elena’s eyes lit up but Mamma was quick to crush her hope.
“This isn’t what it seems, Elena. If he was here, he would come home.”
“Then why did someone say they saw him?”
“I don’t know. Maybe they saw someone who
looked like him, or maybe they just wanted to cause trouble.”
She thought about telling Mamma what Audrey had said, that Dad was safe and hiding in the forest. She could have told Mamma about that earlier, but she always stopped herself. Mamma would tell her it wasn’t true.
The cops came by the house again, two men this time, and they didn’t pretend to be kind. Even their doorstep introductions sounded like threats. They took Mamma into the kitchen and closed the door. They didn’t stay long, probably because Mamma didn’t have anything to say, but Elena caught what the dark-haired one said as they left. “Be careful who you help, Mrs. Reid. If you lie to us, you won’t see your kids again.”
Mamma held Elena tightly as they stood by the living room window and watched the cop car pull away. Mamma said they could intimidate her all they wanted but all she could give them was the truth. They couldn’t take her kids away for that.
COPS APPEAL FOR INFORMATION
It never took long for gossip about Dad to appear in print. The next morning, the local paper was encouraging people to contact the police with any information they might have about a possible sighting of Curtis Reid. He had been spotted near the secondary school when all the kids were in class. Elena was getting so used to seeing his name in print it almost didn’t seem like him anymore. Curtis Reid wasn’t Dad. Curtis Reid was some guy reporters liked to talk about.
What really upset Elena about the article was that it had little to do with Dad. The journalist quoted one person several times; Vivian Lennox, the councillor. She had seemed so concerned about Dad when she approached Elena outside school, but she was a different person in the paper.
“It’s absurd that while the victims and their families are still grieving, the main suspect in this investigation appears to be free to come and go whenever he wants and has no trouble evading the police. The people of our community deserve answers. We’ve suffered enough.”
She had trusted the councillor. Vivian said it was her job to look after them, Elena and Dad, because they were members of the community too. Elena actually thought there was one person, somebody important, who believed as she did, that there was something more to the mill explosion. Rob took one look at the article and said it was all bullshit, a word he chose because Mamma wasn’t in the room. Either way, it was all coming back up again, rising quickly like the river water.
Mamma had left the house by the time Elena got up the next morning. She was giving an elderly neighbour a free trial of her cleaning services and she had told them she’d be gone for a few hours.
Elena rubbed her eyes as she studied the view beyond the kitchen window. The hills looked the same as they always did but the river had crept over its bank and was lapping the edge of their lawn. She called Rob over to take a look, and a few minutes later they were both dressed and heading across the yard. The river was higher than they’d ever seen it, pushing against the edge of the grass.
“Don’t go too close,” Rob said, pulling her back.
The far end of the yard was spongy and the muddy water squelched up around their shoes. It was coming.
Rob and Elena biked over to the gas station. Rob thought he could buy a few sandbags with his remaining paper route money and give someone a few extra bucks to drive them to the house.
The attendant appeared, a scrawny guy a couple of years older than Rob, and Rob swaggered up to him like he was the boss. “Where are the sandbags?”
“We’re sold out. We’re getting more in on Thursday.”
Rob huffed. “What a joke.”
By Thursday, Elena imagined, the river would’ve swallowed their house whole. It was only one storey high and not very wide.
“Frank might help us,” Elena said. Rob huffed again. “No one’s going to help us.” He wheeled his bike off the gas station lot and headed home.
Elena went to the Inn. She still didn’t know whose side Frank was on but that meant there was a chance he’d be willing to help, and he was the kind of guy who knew how to get hold of things.
Elena pushed through the side gate and balanced her bike against the fence. Frank’s jade cutting device was in pieces in the far corner and the boulder was gone. Elena wondered if the blade had managed to cut through the rock or if the boulder had won and broken the blade, but then decided that she didn’t care about Frank’s projects anymore. The powder blue truck was parked in the same spot with its hood popped up, and Frank was standing behind it. There were a couple of other people back there with him, disguised by the curved truck body.
She crept through the long grass, carefully avoiding the half-hidden metal scraps as she approached the vehicle. The other two were young men; one wiry like Frank, with dull blonde hair that lay flat until it ended abruptly at his chin. He wore a blue plaid shirt over a t-shirt. He was speaking.
“... can’t just get rid of ’em, Frank.”
“I know that, but we need to do something.”
The blonde guy replied but the wind blew his words away. Frank’s voice again, more forceful than usual, but she couldn’t make out his response.
Frank and the blonde guy could probably both fit in the third man’s biker jacket, festooned with chains over ripped jeans. She pictured the two strangers standing outside the trapper’s cabin, the skinny one stepping forward trying to detect Rob among the trees. They could have been the same men she’d seen in the forest but she wasn’t certain.
Their low voices petered out and they were on the move, the two strangers heading towards the gate. She tried her best to backtrack through the junkyard but she wasn’t quick enough.
The big one stomped toward her, crushing everything in his path. “Whatcha playin at? You spyin’ on me?”
His words weren’t lazy like Frank’s. He wasn’t joking around. Elena locked her eyes onto his and tried to look defiant. That’s what Dad told her to do if she ever came across a growling dog. “Make yourself big. Don’t run.”
Frank was coming around the truck, wiping his hands on a rag as if he’d actually been doing some work back there. The big man spoke under his breath.
“Go play with your fuckin’ dolls before you get yourself into trouble.”
He glared at her again but she couldn’t run. She was stuck.
“Elena! Get over here!”
Rooted to the spot, she blinked twice and then raced toward Frank without looking back as the other two left the yard.
“Were you eavesdropping?”
She didn’t answer.
“Some of my business is my business.”
Anger and disappointment in his voice. Elena didn’t know what to say. It didn’t seem fair that he could keep all his secrets and also be annoyed with her.
“Who were those men?”
“Old friends.”
Those boys were too young to be Frank’s “old friends.” Maybe what Frank meant was, they’d worked together before, around the time of the mill explosion, for instance.
“What happened to my dad?”
“I don’t know Elena. Why are you asking me?”
“I heard one of your friends talking about getting rid of people.”
“When?”
“Just now.”
“Nobody said that. You shouldn’t have been listening in the first place. Your mom raised you better than that, didn’t she?”
Elena didn’t like being scolded by Frank. She wanted it to go back to how it used to be, when he cracked jokes and told stories. But they could never go back because she knew he was hiding something.
“We weren’t talking about your dad. I told you before. I had nothing to do with that.”
Frank took a five-dollar bill from his pocket and pulled it taught to straighten out the creases. “Go buy yourself something and stay out of my yard.” She took the note but not because she believed him. Frank stared at her as she tucked it into her jacket pocket.
“A few of my albums have gone missing. I’m not accusing anyone, I just wondered if you might know anything about it.”<
br />
“No.”
Frank waited for a moment, but Elena didn’t offer him anything else.
“Ah well. They’ll turn up.”
Frank stumbled back toward the powder blue truck and lifted things from his toolbox. Elena wandered halfway back to her bike before remembering the sandbags. She called over to him.
“Can you help us find some sandbags to stop our house getting flooded?”
Frank didn’t even look at her. “Not right now ... got business to deal with. Your house won’t flood if it hasn’t already.”
The way he spoke it was almost like he controlled it, when the river rose and fell. The Stapleton Inn loomed behind him; his family’s legacy, the town’s heritage. Mamma never trusted Frank and his ways, but even she had been sucked in for a while.
“How do you know?”
“I listen to the news. The water levels have peaked. The river isn’t gonna get any higher without some serious rainfall. At most, we might get a few light showers.”
Elena wasn’t going to take his word for it. She couldn’t trust his opinion on something as important as their home.
By the time Elena got home, Rob was pulling furniture out of the kitchen door. She dashed into the middle of the yard and jumped up as high as she could. The ground spewed water when she landed. Bits of mud clung to the edges of her jeans.
The powerful river awed her. The neighbours who hadn’t lost their homes to the bank already had sandbags neatly piled against their fences.
Elena and Rob pulled out the kitchen table and tipped it on its side. Mamma never liked it that much anyway. They dragged it onto the grass, positioned it so it faced the river, then secured it with big rocks. Beside it they stacked the garden chairs, also pinned down with stones. There was a pile of leftover firewood. Rob could carry more pieces, faster, so that soon became his job. Elena did her best to line up the wood so the water wouldn’t seep through the cracks. She stuffed the holes with fistfuls of grass or the crushed beer cans she’d found within throwing distance of Dad’s garden chair.
Unravelling Page 20
