The yard got mushier and it started to rain; little drips that soon became big ones. Yet it was hardly a downpour, as Frank predicted. Rob trotted in and out of the house, alternating between passing her more logs and moving valuable items to safe places. Rob hadn’t said anything, but Elena knew as soon as he started working indoors that he thought their barricade would fail, and the river would come into the house. “Finish the wall and don’t go any closer to the river,” he said. “It’s deep at the end of the yard.”
Rob brought over the last of the logs and Elena examined the remaining gap between their makeshift wall and the fence. There weren’t enough logs, even if she only made one tier out of them. She’d have to space them out and then find other things to cram between them. There were some stones Dad had used to build a fire pit at the bottom of the garden. She could see a couple of them sticking out of the water close to the willow tree.
Rob went back inside and thumped around, stacking pieces of furniture atop each other. Unplugging all the electronics. Putting the things that would suffer the most damage on top of things that didn’t really matter.
The wind had started to whip the old willow tree, water sloshing its trunk. She stepped over their makeshift barricade and moved toward the fire pit stones, icy water slopping around her ankles. She leaned down and pulled at a stone, but it didn’t budge. It was too heavy. Rob could probably manage that one. There were a couple of smaller ones that she could lift but they were submerged.
She looked back. Everything was there, in that house. All her memories, her things, the secret spaces that hid her diary, her desk with the stationery that made her feel grown up, Mamma’s old photos of Italy, photos of her and Rob since they were babies. That house was their home.
Rob burst out of the back door. “Elena! Get away from there!”
Reluctantly, she headed back. The rain stopped but they’d run out of items to reinforce their wall. Rob said they might as well take a break, at least until they came up with another idea. Elena went through to the living room only to find that Rob had unplugged the old TV and dumped it on top of the sofa.
Through the living room window, she spotted Mamma coming down the road dragging a blue tartan bag on wheels. It would do for her cleaning equipment until they got the truck back.
The bag clunked along their gravel driveway, Mamma steadying it as tipped from side to side. She was almost at the front door when the patrol car drove up and stopped. Mamma turned around and one of her cop dramas unfolded right there on the gravel.
Two male officers got out of the vehicle and quickly accosted Mamma. Elena knew this time they hadn’t come for a chat. Mamma stretched her arms out in front of her while a young, blue-eyed officer cuffed her wrists. Elena pushed her fingers flat against the glass, willing them through it and onto Mamma’s, pulling her into the house. The older cop spotted Elena watching from the living room window. Mamma noticed her then and took an instinctive step towards the house but the older cop held her back. She wore her despair like a trapped animal. Mamma mouthed something at her but Elena couldn’t catch it before the officers tore her away from their home. Mamma was disappearing, just like Dad. All Elena could do was watch, tears slipping down her cheeks. Mamma made Dad’s absence bearable, but only just, only because Elena knew he was going to come back. They couldn’t take Mamma away, too.
“Rob!” she shouted, voice trembling. She banged on the living room window hopelessly. He rushed in, jaw dropped, and looked.
“What ...?”
He started toward the front door but a second car pulled into the drive. This one had no lights on top. A middle-aged couple, in suits, marched up to the front door and knocked loudly. Elena looked at Rob.
“We have to let them in,” he said, “but do exactly what I say, okay?”
Grey suit and grey skirt and hair specked with grey. Rob opened the door and Elena hovered behind him and the grey couple smiled and showed them name badges and the woman said they were going to help them while Mamma was away, but Elena didn’t understand.
“Are you here to help us with the flood?” she asked.
“No. They’re going to take us away,” Rob said abruptly.
She might have attempted to run then but Rob seemed to sense her panic and latched a hand onto her arm. Hard.
“There’s absolutely nothing to worry about,” the woman said softly. “We’ve got a couple of really nice families in Stony Creek who are going to take care of you until this is all sorted out.”
She said families. Plural. They were going to be split up. She couldn’t be on her own. It was bad enough without Dad. They couldn’t do this to them. When she looked up at Rob, she could see something in his eyes the grey people couldn’t. Defiance. He wasn’t going to let this happen.
“Me and Elena have some things we want to take. Can we get them quickly?”
The grey couple exchanged looks.
Rob pleaded with them. “The river’s flooding. If we don’t get our things now, we won’t be able to.”
The woman loosened. “Quickly then,” she said and she nodded to her companion.
The man followed them into the home while the woman waited by the doorstep. As soon as there was enough distance between them and the stranger, Rob whispered one word in Elena’s ear.
“Dubov’s.”
They filled their backpacks while the male social worker hovered in the hallway outside their bedrooms, doors open so he could see what they were doing. There was no way for them to escape as long as he was standing there. Elena shoved in some clothes and her nail polish and her diary and heard Rob start up a conversation with the grey man about sports. The man said he was a Canucks fan, so Rob showed him into the living room and pulled out a radio from the bookshelf and put the game on with the volume up.
Elena sneaked out of her bedroom and into the kitchen. She slipped across the vinyl in her socks, grabbed the too-tight sneakers that were sitting by the back door and turned the handle as delicately as she could. She darted across the damp grass in her socks, not wanting to slow down long enough to put her shoes on. She climbed over the low fence, squelched her wet feet into her runners and waited for Rob in Mrs. Dubov’s yard.
Rob scrambled over the fence a minute later and they ran through the yards and down a back alley until their chests burned with the cold air.
“Don’t look back,” Rob said. “It’ll slow you down.”
A treed area broke up the homes and popped them out into another quiet residential street. Elena almost sprang into a hedge when a vehicle approached. It was white and much larger than the grey couple’s car. Rob led them into another alleyway. Dogs barked and a woman yelled at her pets from behind a tall fence.
“Come on, Elena. We’re almost there.”
Almost where? she would’ve asked him, if she’d had any breath to spare. He led her through a small neighbourhood park that connected another set of houses. Finally, the backyards opened into a large ranch that wound around the base of one of the surrounding hills.
This is it, she thought, their big escape. When Rob hit his teens, he had become obsessed with the idea of leaving. He wanted to get a job in Stony Creek, a place of his own and a car. Mamma said it was part of him becoming an adult, needing to be independent. Elena had never wanted to leave, and now that they had to, her heart lurched with every step. She wished she had a deep root like the sagebrush, anchoring her deeply in the ground, but she remembered they only had shallow roots so it was easy to be swept away.
“Just a little further,” Rob said.
The fields nearest the road had been tilled and green shoots broke out of the soil. There were large greenhouses further down the road, but the pair ran in the opposite direction, where they were less likely to encounter other people. They scrambled up the hill in tracks carved out by dirt bikes and ATVs. Beyond them was uneven scrubland that took a gradual incline toward the forest.
“I need to stop.” Elena’s chest was burning so much her stomach c
hurned. Her legs shook. Rob was on full alert. He permitted a break but insisted they crouch down. His head swivelled like an owl’s.
“Where are we going?” she asked as her body began to recover.
“Stony Creek. But we can’t go yet. It’s too risky trying to hitch a ride when everyone’s looking for us. We’ll have to stay in the forest for a few days until the social workers leave. Then we’ll go to Stony Creek.”
“What about the bears?”
“Don’t worry. They aren’t interested in you.”
He sounded just like Dad, except Dad would say it with a goofy grin. Now that Rob was getting bigger, he looked a lot more like Dad.
The problem was, the real reason things fell apart was, Rob wasn’t a man yet. He was going to be, but he wasn’t yet. He didn’t think of all the things Dad would’ve thought of when they escaped the social workers at the house. It was dusk when they crept into the forest without food, water, matches or enough warm clothing. It was early spring and the nights still got cold. Luckily, they’d both packed sweatshirts but those didn’t keep the chill off their bones once the sun had left the sky. They huddled together into the shoulder of a large rock. Elena’s feet were wet, toes crushed inside the shoes she’d outgrown. She pulled off her sneakers and thought her toes might freeze off as the wind circled them. Her back hurt after a while so she lay down on the pine needles while Rob kept watch.
Neither of them could sleep. Elena rolled around and complained of being hungry, then thirsty and then both. Rob told her to stop being a baby but he wasn’t doing much better. He twitched every time a branch creaked.
“We should go back home.” Elena whispered, as if the conifers that surrounded them might be listening.
“We can’t. They’ll find us.”
“No, they won’t. They’ll be at home in bed by now. We can sneak in and get what we need for a few days in the forest and leave before they come looking for us in the morning.”
“What if they’re watching the house?”
“We can go in through the yards again. If we’re quiet, they won’t even know we’re inside.”
Rob’s stomach growled.
“There’s food in the house,” she said. “We should pack as much as we can if we’re going to be out here for a while.”
Elena couldn’t see his expression in the dark but she could tell he was thinking about it. He got his flashlight out and scanned the trees and then he stood up. It was decided. Elena squeezed her sneakers back on her aching feet and he led the way back to town, downhill this time and at a slower pace. It was comforting, seeing all the familiar houses between the streetlights.
Her legs felt so tired by the time they reached their lane that she just wanted to run inside and crawl into bed but Rob stopped her. They scooted into a neighbour’s yard, one of the boarded-up houses, and made their way carefully back toward Mrs. Dubov’s house. Water seeped into Elena’s shoes again, but the river didn’t seem any higher since they’d left.
When they reached their own yard, Rob was especially cautious. They had to make sure there weren’t any cops or grey people hiding in the bushes. When Rob was finally satisfied the house was empty, they ran through the yard and unlocked the back door. Rob was still paranoid about attracting attention so they left the lights off. Even a nosy neighbour could give them away. The floor was dry; the river hadn’t oozed into the house, at least not yet.
They found bread and honey in the cupboards and ate in silence on the living room floor. Rob said he was going to set his alarm for 4 am. That would give them enough time to sneak back to the forest before the sun came up. It was midnight already. She heard him go into his room and close the door, and she dragged her own tired legs slowly to bed.
She smelled it in her dream, the fire. The mill burst into flames and bits of it landed in her house. Red hot limbs of broken machinery, blackened lumber and falling ash. Tiny pieces fell into her mouth, sticking inside her throat, choking her. She heard shouting; her name, Rob’s voice, but it wasn’t terrifying until she woke up and discovered the smells and sounds were not dreams.
A loud crack had woken her but she couldn’t see where it came from. She shot upright, inhaled a lungful of smoke and tried to cough it out. But it became a thousand tiny razors in her throat, scraping and scratching and making her cough harder.
Covering her mouth with her pyjama sleeve, Elena crouched and crab-walked to the door. The handle was hot and scalded her palm. She leapt back, cradling her hand. Rob’s shouts sounded distant through the fire’s noise.
Pushing and pushing against the stiff window lock with her burned hand, she screamed hoarsely in relief when it flew open, admitting a rush of cool air. She heaved herself through the frame and hit the ground, hard. It knocked the wind out of her and she lay gasping, throat on fire. It passed. She had to find Rob.
She stumbled toward the river, toward their makeshift barricade, desperate to spot him among the dismantled pieces of their home. Clouds had rolled in; she couldn’t see him.
Heat and smoke at her back. She turned around and watched their home crumple like the paper house Mamma always said it was. The curse had finally found them. Rob couldn’t be in there; he must have escaped to the road. She had to get back to the road.
The yelling man came out of the blackness, charging toward her, his face hidden under his big jacket and hat. He was screaming like a maniac, coming to get her. She clambered over the firewood section of their barricade to get away from him and the grass squished beneath her feet and the shouting got louder and their lawn became the river. She tripped over the fire pit stones by the willow tree and fell. The water pulled her in.
She moved with the muddy river and it dragged her back. Weeds loomed from its rocky belly. She merged with them like a fish. It took Elena no strength at all to move downstream. The powerful river carried her where it wanted her to go.
Someone else splashed into the water behind her and she thought it might be the yelling man, but the water made his shape black and blurry. His movements were heavy, arms and legs attacking the river, and she realized he was trying to reach her.
Everything was dense underneath. That person grasped at her body, but the river separated them. It propelled her onward, faster and faster until the other person’s flailing shape became distant and she knew she wouldn’t see anyone if she could look back. They were both part of the river now.
CHAPTER 22
2 0 1 9
“VIVIAN, YOUR SON’S here to pick you up!”
His voice is too soft. Vivian distrusts men with soft voices.
“He’s going to take you for a nice afternoon drive. Would you like that?”
The attendant hauls her upright out of her armchair, holding her until she’s steady on her cane.
The figure standing at the front entrance is not her son. This man is tall and dark-haired and the look in his eyes frightens her. She opens her mouth to object, but there is never enough time to get the words out. The attendant lowers her into the stranger’s car and she grips his bare arm with all her might. Seatbelts click. The stranger is sitting beside her. The attendant brushes her hand off his arm like a fly.
“Have a lovely time! It’s gorgeous out.”
The car door closes. The attendant waves. Vivian stares helplessly through the window like a trapped insect.
A city surrounds them. They weave through trucks and cars and noise, slowing down beside a hotel and an Indian restaurant. The lights change and the world whizzes by too fast for her to identify anything.
“I’m taking you home, Vivian.”
He reminds her so much of an old friend, except she knows, somehow, this man is not a friend. This man is dangerous. She steals a sideways glance. He’s facing forward watching the traffic, both hands on the wheel.
“How exactly did you get a sawmill built on contaminated land?”
“No,” she shakes her head firmly. She pulls on the door handle, but it won’t budge. She yanks it again.
He grins. She resolves not to look at him. Suburban homes meet the road. A pregnant woman manhandles two small children into an SUV. Vivian doesn’t shout. No one can hear her. Where’s Tim? No, Todd. Why isn’t he protecting her?
“I don’t have any illusions about who my dad was,” the man says calmly. “He was a criminal, a liar and a coward. But I believe he died with regrets. Do you have any regrets?”
He’s driving far too fast, making her sick. The houses are further apart now, set back from the road.
The sky becomes large and blue and the land is hilly and empty. Some time later they turn onto a smaller road. They enter a desperate place with older homes and more boarded-up businesses than functioning ones. It upsets her, the broken glass and graffiti, weeds where the lawns should be.
“Do you know where we are?”
She doesn’t answer him. She doesn’t like these games. They’re always out to trick her, all of them. They are making her crazy.
“We’re back in Stapleton. The town you ruined.”
Now they are close to the river. There’s a little row of mobile homes with an overgrown gap in between them. The vehicle stops in front of the gap. He lifts her out and takes her by the arm, a thin folder in his other hand. She couldn’t manage the uneven ground without him but she doesn’t like being so close.
The gravel of an old driveway crunches under her feet, grass sparse between the rocks. He points out a concrete slab in the middle of the derelict lot. “The house used to be over there.”
Hundreds of tulips are flowering along the riverbank. Bright reds, yellows and oranges bursting out of the sandy soil. She refuses to take the one he picks for her.
“When Giulia Reid lost her house ...”—he looks back at the empty lot behind them—”... Frank took her and Rob in. Rob moved to Stony Creek as soon as he finished high school but Giulia stayed, as you know.
Unravelling Page 21
