In the Grip of It

by Sheena Kamal

  Dedication

  For my mother

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  An Excerpt from It All Falls Down Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also By Sheena Kamal

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter 1

  The man is lying, has been lying all afternoon. I’m almost sure of it. I would be very sure if it wasn’t for the over-the-counter painkillers I’ve been taking for the persistent ache in my shoulder, but we all have to make sacrifices to feel less pain in this world. I have given up some of my instinct for lies and Vikram Sharma has clearly forsaken the truth.

  I have taken a ferry to get here, from Vancouver to Salt Spring Island, and have showed shown up unannounced among the blackberry bushes, looking for a spiritual-retreat-slash-working-farm-slash-racially-harmonious commune. The desire to call bullshit on this social experiment has been there since I stepped onto the grounds but, with great effort, I swallow the words. Everyone knows racial harmony doesn’t exist.

  “You know, our volunteers—potential new members of our community, like yourself—are always surprised to discover how peacefully we live together on this part of the island,” Vikram Sharma says. The one-man welcoming committee, Vikram is full of a brand of tranquility that most people associate with monks and that I associate with stoners. Tall and serene, with brown skin and dark hair that brushes his shoulders, he looks the part of a gatekeeper to peaceful living. He’s giving me a tour of the main compound of this . . . whatever it is. “We have our own generators to use when the solar panels don’t do the work. Our farm does well and we earmark a portion of our produce for our own consumption. We are vegans, so what little we need apart from what we grow is easily accessible at the grocery store. All in all, it is a fairly sustainable environment. Our harvests are quite fruitful.”

  “It sounds nice,” I say, trying to look interested in veganism and sustainability. “Quite fruitful” is an understatement for Spring Love, one of the most prosperous farms on Salt Spring Island. Despite Vikram’s lies, from what I’ve seen so far, it does seem like that elusive thing that people the world over come to the west coast in search of: a happy place full of nature and organic produce.

  The midday heat sits heavily on us, the way it only seems to do during the month of August. Vikram is handling it a lot better than me. He doesn’t look as if he could perspire, even if he wanted to, whereas I’m covered in a fine sheen of sweat that has been slicked to my body since this morning.

  “Oh, it is nice. Working together to plant and harvest and feed our people has been the delight of my life. I’ve been here for five years now and I don’t think I could live any other way. The only thing we ask of people who come to join our lifestyle, or even just to try it out, is to relinquish their connection to the digital world while they’re here. So that they can fully immerse themselves in the experience. Unplug. We usually make that clear to volunteers before they get here, the ones that call first, that is.”

  This is a not-so-subtle rebuke, but I don’t mind. The reason I didn’t call first is because I didn’t want to take the chance they’d say no. “You want my cell phone?”

  He laughs and I’m almost certain the laughter is real. I wonder just what it will take to ruffle this man, whose soulful brown eyes remind me of a golden retriever. It’s possible that I’m missing my dog Whisper but I know she’s doing okay back in Vancouver, safe and complaining about the heat in the way that she does. With her mournful stares and silent demands for ice cubes in her water bowl.

  “Yes, we want your cell phone, your laptop, your personal reading device and your video-game console. You can leave at any time, but if you want to stay with us awhile, you’ll be trapped here without Big Brother looking over your shoulder.”

  It’s clear he’s expecting me to join in the laughter, so I do, but I’m not a good actor and I wonder if I’m fooling anybody.

  Haha, yes. I definitely want to join a commune on Salt Spring Island, the hippiest of the hippy Gulf Islands. Who wouldn’t?

  When I hand over my phone, Vikram leads me to the women’s quarters, off the main building. On our way there we pass the schoolhouse, where, through the open door, I see a handful of children varying in age and shades of brown sitting at long tables, working independently of one another. For a moment I zero in on one, a boy about ten years old, with dark skin and a little afro, but am careful to move on quickly.

  Vikram notices my interest, though. “That’s the camp for the kids. We have a supervised afternoon program for them. One of our members here, Shoshanna, is a teacher. Do you have children of your own?”

  “Yes, a teenage daughter. She lives in Toronto now.” I’m careful to keep my tone even, but Vikram is perceptive. He puts a hand on my shoulder. Reflexively, I shake it off. Some habits die hard, even when you’re trying to convince someone—and even maybe yourself—that you genuinely want to be part of this island love fest.

  He notices the gesture but doesn’t apologize for it. Then he continues as though it never happened. “It’s a shame about your daughter. Parents should never be separated from their children. It’s an aberration of modern society, one that disturbs the natural order of community. It takes a village to raise a child and children to lift their villages up, spiritually. This is something we strongly believe in here at Spring Love. Healing through the power of community.” There’s something in his voice that I don’t like, something hard beneath his dulcet tones. The golden retriever turns pit bull for a fraction of a moment, then he’s back to looking at me with his big brown eyes.

  In the women’s quarters, he shows me to a small room with a bed, a closet, and a dresser. “Bathroom facilities are at the end of the hall. After you get settled you can help out in the kitchen for the evening meal. Oh yes, I can see you’re surprised. We all pitch in for meals, even on our first day. It’s part of what makes it so special. I think you’ll be very happy here, Nora. I really do,” he says, lying again.

  “I was hoping to get started on the farm.”

  “I’m sorry, we’re full up with the farm these days, but need a hand in the kitchen. Don’t worry, spaces open up quickly.”

  He’s only shown me a fraction of the grounds, which I know contain fields for harvesting crops, living quarters, a retreat center, and private yurts for families. Before Vikram goes, he takes my cell phone. “Aren’t you tired of it all, Nora? All this documenting life without actually living it. These digital tethers that drag us down? You did the right thing coming to us. I can see you need our help, and to help people throw off the shackles of capitalism is why we’re here. You can rest assured we will help you.”

  “Throwing off the shackles of capitalism is exactly why I’m here. Thank you for agreeing to let me be a part of your community.” I smile through this absurdity, though it feels strange and wrong. I am here because of capitalism, but because the shackles are firmly on—and will stay that way until I get what I came for. Everyone’s gotta eat.

  Vikram smiles back. On the surface we seem to be in perfect agreement, but the thing is, he doesn’t think I’ll be happy here at all.

  I’ve not fooled him and he hasn’t fooled me. We both know that I’m not here to be part of their so-called harmonious society. I have an ul
terior motive and he wants to know what it is before he shows me to the edge of the property and, hopefully, gives me back my phone. So I guess I have to work quickly to get what I came here for.

  Without the phone, though, I’m left with no way to communicate with the people who sent me to Spring Love in the first place.

  Chapter 2

  Last week a man came into our PI office, looked around the shabby interior, frowned, and said, “I must have gotten the address wrong.”

  “Depends,” I replied. “What are you looking for?”

  “An investigator.”

  “Nope, you’re in the right place,” I said, looking at his nice suit, shiny shoes, and expensive watch.

  “Are you sure? Maybe I should come back later.”

  He was clearly trying to make a graceful exit. Before the man could leave, I got up from behind my desk and opened the door to Leo Krushnik’s office. “Leo, there’s someone here to see you.”

  “Well,” said the man, who was hesitating behind me, “I’m not really sure that this is the right fit for me.” He was trying to be diplomatic about the condition of our office and what it might say about his own level of desperation that he was here, but we weren’t about to let a potential client go without a fight. His level of desperation was no match for ours.

  Leo Krushnik, the head of our little operation, walked around his desk and beamed at the man. “We’re the right fit for anybody,” he said, grasping the man’s hand and giving it a firm shake. “We prefer to keep our overhead low so that we can offer competitive rates to people who need our services, regardless of their personal incomes. Please, have a seat.”

  The man sat, a little overwhelmed by Leo’s charm, which is considerable. That day Leo was dressed in linen pants and a simple cotton shirt, as a nod to the heat wave the city was experiencing. He could pull off this look as easily as he pulled off the lie about our rates. We keep our overhead low because this dump on Hastings Street, in the derelict Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, is all we can afford, but clients didn’t need to know that. And even I could admit that the “competitive rates” line sounded good—even true—coming from Leo.

  “How can I help you?” Leo asked.

  “My name is Ken Barnes, and I’m concerned about my son, Trevor. My ex-wife Cheyenne moved to Salt Spring last year with Trevor and I think she’s gotten into some kind of trouble there. She won’t bring him back to Vancouver and visitation has been difficult.”

  Leo frowned. “Because they’re on an island?” Salt Spring wouldn’t be easy to ferry to and from on a regular basis.

  “Yes, but that’s not the only reason. She keeps putting off my visits and it’s been difficult to arrange for Trevor to come into Vancouver. I think . . . I think she’s in some kind of cult, to be honest. They call it a commune, but you know those stories about Bountiful?”

  “Yes,” said Leo. Everyone knew the stories about Bountiful, British Columbia, where fundamentalist polygamous communities live and proliferate seemingly freely.

  “Well, I think it’s something like that. Cheyenne wants to be in some kind of crazy sex cult, sure. She’s not my wife anymore and I really don’t care what she does. But I’m fighting for custody of Trevor. I want him out of there.”

  “And you need some ammo.” Leo looks up from his pad, where he’s been taking notes. “You’ve come to the right place, Ken. We’ve done surveillance work for many child-custody cases.” Another lie, but Ken didn’t notice. We’d only done a handful of those, but “many” is relative. “You understand that this won’t be cheap? We’ll have to get out to the island and spend some time gathering information.”

  “That’s fine. There’s nothing I won’t pay to get my son out of there. Cheyenne, she . . . well, she struggled with depression and anxiety for years and she let a lot of toxic people into her life who fed on her struggles. It was like a sick downward spiral. When she started doing yoga and got certified as a teacher, I thought she’d changed. But I’m not sure anymore. I know this sounds terrible—I know it does—but I don’t trust her judgment about the people she lets into her life. Especially men.”

  “She married you,” Leo said.

  “I know, but this is the thing: it’s not about me and her anymore. We’re done. This is about Trevor—and me doing my part as a father, making sure he’s safe. That he has a good life. I just want results.”

  “We can’t guarantee results.” This is the first time I’d spoken since the initial exchange. Ken Barnes’s startled gaze meets mine. He’d clearly forgotten I was there, which was not unusual. “Maybe it is a sex cult, maybe it isn’t. All we can do is take a look and document what we find.”

  “I know that nothing is certain, but I know my son deserves a healthy, normal life. Whatever they’re doing on that island is not normal. It just isn’t. It’s one step away from homeschooling, and who’s to say they’re not making him do hard labor?”

  What is normal, anyway? I didn’t ask Barnes for clarification. I just kept silent as Leo agreed to take his money in exchange for the work. Before he let Barnes go, he pulled him aside. “Nora’s right, Ken, about any sort of guarantee. But what I can say is that if there’s something to find, chances are we will get a sense of it.”

  In the next few days, I started the file on Cheyenne Barnes and looked through the information Ken had provided us. “Cheyenne scrubbed her social-media profiles last year,” he explained to me, over the phone. “I thought she was punishing me by erasing the memories and keeping me away from what’s happening with my son, but now that I think about it, there’s something fishy about this whole thing.” So he kept saying.

  Cheyenne is smiling in all the photos, and in every single one there is something wistful about her, a faraway look in her eyes. Something that suggests a romantic nature. She’s an instructor for hot yoga, which I thought was stretching for attractive people but later discovered is actually sweaty stretching. Who knew. She’d gone to Salt Spring Island two years ago to work at a yoga retreat and, according to Ken, never came back. She met a man there, a fellow yoga enthusiast, and rebuffed all of Ken’s attempts at reconciliation.

  There is very little to be found on Cheyenne Barnes’s new man. He has no social-media profiles of his own, but I did find a picture of him on the Spring Love website. Some people are so attractive it’s almost surreal, and Vikram Sharma is one of them.

  Chapter 3

  During meal preparation, I try to do a better job of seeming like I’m in need of peace and tranquility. It’s not a stretch. This past winter I had gone on a search to find my missing daughter Bonnie, a girl I’d given up for adoption as soon as she was born. During the search I got shot in the shoulder, hurt my ankle, almost drowned, and was possibly saved by a whale. If anyone can use some healing, it’s me.

  That’s what Leo thinks, anyway.

  He is too polite to bring up that my work at our little PI agency has been slower than normal because of my slack, which isn’t entirely my fault, though I feel guilty about it anyway. I’ve graduated from secretary and unofficial apprentice to secretary and official apprentice, working with him to get the hours necessary to be licensed on my own, but it is taking a while to get back into my usual groove. That’s why, when Ken Barnes showed up, Leo insisted I take the case. A simple surveillance assignment, he told me. Take good notes. Relax a little, he said, somewhat tensely.

  I told him about my hatred of ferries, but he just laughed that off. “What are you talking about? Everyone loves going to the Gulf Islands! Don’t worry, Nora. You just have to take two little ferries, I promise. One to the island and one from it. This job pays well, too, and Sebastian and I have a little staycation planned ourselves. So this will be good for all of us. You’ll free me up, and get to spend some time on the island, with expenses and half the fee. Plus, we’ll look after Whisper while you’re away. What do you say?”

  I said yes, of course, because Seb, Leo’s partner, has been looking exhausted lately. His freelance commissi
ons have been up, but it has taken a toll on his health. Seb and Leo have been sniping at each other lately, and I agree, a vacation would be good for them. And I could use the money. The only unhappy party in all this is my dog, Whisper, who loves Seb and Leo but has been stuck to me ever since my near drowning. When I left for the ferry this time, I could hear her barking at me as I walked away. Insisting I come back.

  “She’ll be fine,” Seb assured me. “I know this is work, but try to enjoy yourself a little, Nora.”

  “Yeah, you too.”

  Seb turned away. Funny, that. Sebastian Crow, the journalist I have spent the past few years working with, somehow couldn’t meet my eyes. He ran a hand through his hair, which looked dull and flat. Seb has never cared much about his appearance, but he’d never looked worse. I’m not in much of a position to judge, then or now, but I couldn’t help but notice.

  But that’s all in my past.

  In my immediate future there are vegetables to be chopped for green smoothies and a big, hearty salad, while a huge pot of vegetarian chili simmers on the stove. Vikram has been in and out of the kitchen but has left me with the cook, Kelly, who speaks in monosyllables and gives me tasks any idiot could do, which is an accurate assessment of my cooking skills.

  A battered black pickup truck pulls in behind the kitchen and two women get out. One unloads reusable grocery bags from the truck while the other disappears somewhere further into the compound. With Kelly’s blessing, I abandon the vegetables to help with the groceries.

  “Thanks. I’m Cheyenne,” says the woman unloading groceries with me. She pushes her braids off her face. Her features remind me of the boy in the schoolhouse, but I already knew she was his mother. “You must be Nora. Vik called ahead to let us know that you showed up to volunteer.”

  Cheyenne washes her hands at the sink, dries them, and offers me one. I shake it.