C h a p t e r T e n
Denny
The sky was a pale colour, neither blue nor white nor grey, and it
took Denny until Lewis was pulling into his driveway to realize
that it was dawn and he’d been at the police station all night. He let himself into the house and bent down to hug Scout. Miraculously,
his wonderful dog had held his bladder, and Denny praised him and
apologized, then stood in the backyard under the awful sky while
Scout peed in the snow.
The dresser drawers were open in the bedroom, the bedclothes
thrown to the floor. He walked from room to room, shutting drawers
and cabinets, picking up clothing, books, shoes. Had he done this or
had the police been here in the night?
He made the bed and got into it, and held his dog. He leapt up
and turned on the heat, then rushed into bed again, his breath visible in the frigid air.
A few miles from where he lay, a search team was trying to locate
his wife. He should be there, too, searching. The detectives obviously thought he had killed Vera. What a thought! Imagine him going out
to Squire Point with Vera and—then what—murdering her? Burying
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her body in the snow? To what end, he asked the detectives. Why
would I do that? Marital problems, they said. Fertility problems.
Infidelity. Life insurance policy.
They would investigate every aspect of his life and marriage, the
detectives told him. They would turn him inside out. He lay on his
back and replayed the interrogation over and over, each time answer-
ing their questions better, differently, more honestly, more deviously.
He imagined an action scene from a movie: jumping from his chair,
overpowering the detectives, fleeing the station. His hands began to
ache and he held them to his body. He didn’t want to examine the
thought, but there it was, floating in his mind. Maybe she hadn’t disappeared at all. Maybe he had driven her away. Maybe he had driven
her to suicide. Leave me alone.
He was relieved his parents were dead so they wouldn’t be dragged
into this. Vera’s parents were driving up to Whale Bay, would be here tomorrow. Or was that today? It was already seven in the morning.
A bird that he called the “whistle bird,” for lack of knowing what it was, began its morning whistling. When he and Vera had first moved
into the house, he’d spent hours researching bird calls. So many dif-
ferent kinds of finches. It had put him in a bad mood and he had
given up.
The pounding on the door startled him awake and he jumped from
the bed and ran into the living room, where Scout was pawing the
door with his big feet.
It was Lewis, in plainclothes. Stylish jeans and a black parka,
black leather boots with blue laces. He wore tortoiseshell sunglasses.
Denny regarded him as if for the first time. He hadn’t considered
until this moment that Lewis was a real person. But here he was,
holding two cups of coffee and a bag of pastries, the bottom heavy
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with grease. “My shift doesn’t start for another few hours,” Lewis said.
“May I?” said Lewis, and Denny nodded and led him into the
living room. They sat on the velvet couch and ate in silence and Lewis gave the last bite of his pastry to Scout. The dog looked back and
forth between the men.
“Scout and Vera are inseparable,” said Denny. “He’s nervous with-
out her.”
“A husky?” asked Lewis.
“Mixed with something else, too, we think,” said Denny. “Lab or
collie or shepherd.”
“Heinz 57 variety then,” said Lewis.
“Guess so.”
“I had a border terrier when I was a boy,” said Lewis.
Denny closed his eyes and felt the heaviness in his head, his heart,
his hands. “You haven’t found her,” he said finally.
“We haven’t.”
“Well. Thank you for telling me, Officer Côté,” Denny said.
“My name is Lewis,” Lewis said. “I mean, it’s okay to call me Lewis.”
“I want you to know,” said Denny, “though I’m sure everyone says
this, but I need to say it anyway. I don’t know where my wife is. And all I want is for her to come home.”
“I believe you,” said Lewis. “I listened to what you said last night.
And I believe you.”
Outside, a rattling, a garbage can being knocked over. “Shit,” said
Denny. He raced to the back door and into the yard, Lewis close
behind him. A raccoon or possum, he couldn’t be sure, skittered away.
“During the day? Really?” He bent down and righted the garbage can.
Two trash bags sat a few feet away, ripped open, their contents spilled onto the pavement. “Oh, come on,” said Denny. He turned to Lewis.
“You people are welcome to ransack whatever you want of mine if it
will help you find my wife. But please.” He dragged the trash bags
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back into the garbage can and wiped the tears that were falling fast
down his face with the back of his hand. “Please don’t destroy my
property in the meantime.”
“Let me help you.” Lewis gathered the remaining trash and
scooped it into the garbage can. One of the bags had torn and the
ground was littered with cigarette butts.
“You a smoker?” said Lewis.
“It’s Vera. She’s going to quit. She’s down to two a day.”
“Looks like a lot more than two,” said Lewis.
“Well,” said Denny. “She was trying.”
The men tossed the butts into the garbage can in silence, then
returned inside and took turns washing their hands.
“Listen,” said Lewis. “Why I’m here. There was a call placed on the
Squire Point pay phone a few minutes before Vera called the police.
We think Vera may have made this call.”
“Okay?” said Denny. His eyes were heavy from lack of sleep.
Lewis told him that someone—maybe Vera—had called a woman
named Evelina Lucchi but the call had not gone through.
“I don’t know anyone with that name,” Denny said. “As far as I
know, Vera didn’t either.”
“They’re about the same age. Maybe Vera had friends you didn’t
know about?”
“I don’t think so,” said Denny. “Look, I’m not that out of touch.”
“We don’t know for sure that Vera placed the call. But we’re going
to interview the woman to see if she knew your wife.”
Who knows. Maybe Vera did have friends he didn’t know about.
A secret life. He almost liked the idea. It was a better reality than the one in which he had driven his wife to flee him, or to kill herself.
Some other friend. A secret romance. He smiled. Vera the lesbian.
Why not?
“What about the little boy?” said Denny.
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“We have no new information.” Lewis took off h
is sunglasses,
and Denny saw that his eyes were red-rimmed, exhausted. “No one
has reported him missing, and the search team has found nothing.”
Denny felt himself softening toward this man, who seemed so
genuinely worried about his wife, him, even his dog. “Well, I hope
the little boy is okay. Whoever he is.”
The pastries had awakened a kind of deep hunger in Denny, and
he knew if Lewis left he would eat a dozen eggs, then a whole box of
cereal, and who knows what else.
“I was going to make some eggs,” Denny said, not looking at
Lewis but at Scout, who was lying on his side, panting slightly. Denny watched as Lewis knelt and patted Scout’s head, scratched him behind
the ears.
“Sounds nice,” said Lewis.
They ate in the kitchen, standing up, not speaking much, while Scout
nosed around in the snow outside. Denny dipped his toast into his
egg yolk and raised it to his mouth. The food had perked him up a bit.
He felt more rational and less guilty—more convinced that Vera was
only lost in the woods somewhere and would soon be found. She was
resourceful. She could build a lean-to, a shelter. He thought of her on her hands and knees, rubbing two sticks together.
“A lean-to,” he said aloud, not meaning to, and Lewis raised his
eyebrows but didn’t respond.
The men looked at the ocean, visible between the snow-covered
trees. Lewis gestured out the window toward Scout. “He’s got big
paws, hasn’t he?”
“We thought he’d be a lot bigger. Never did grow into his feet.”
“Like me,” Lewis said, wagging his foot at Denny. “Twelves. And
I’m not even six feet.”
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“Like flippers,” said Denny, and the policeman laughed.
The sound of laughter disturbed him. What if Vera was dead and
could hear them laughing? “You know,” he said to Lewis, “she’s a
wonderful filmmaker—her eye—she meant to make a living that way,
to really pursue it, instead of teaching it. This kind of thing—when it happens—you realize you have to do the things you meant to do. Do
you know what I’m saying?”
Lewis set his plate on the counter and looked at Denny. “I think
so. Maybe.” He gestured toward the wedding ring on Denny’s finger.
“Did you make that?”
“Yeah,” said Denny. “It’s meant to match Vera’s—the alexan-
drite.”
“What is alexander—”
“Alexandrite. It changes colour depending on the light—red to
green. They call it nature’s magic trick.” He tried to keep speaking
but felt something in his chest, in his throat. “I can’t—”
“Hey,” said Lewis. “She’s going to come home.”
Was she? He looked at Lewis. “I think I’m going crazy, you know?
Could we get out of here, take a walk with Scout?”
“Sure, sure.”
“I think I’m bored. I mean, bored out of my mind with worry. I
need something to happen. I need something to happen besides what
has already happened.”
“I get that,” said Lewis.
Denny whistled for Scout and the dog trotted into the kitchen
and sat at his feet. The two men left the house. There was an owl
somewhere in one of the Garry oak trees and Lewis and Denny
stopped a minute to listen.
“A barred owl,” said Denny. “This one I know. He’s here a lot.
The neighbourhood is full of birds.”
“Is that so,” said Lewis.
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They trudged through the snow, past the other houses, some still
lit up with Christmas lights. Professors’, accountants’, doctors’ houses.
Denny imagined his neighbours rushing to their windows, watching
him walk past. The Hill, the neighbourhood was called. The only
way to walk was downhill, toward the town, and Denny felt an ache
in his knees as he and Lewis navigated the slippery sidewalk.
He thought of Vera stumbling through snowbanks, trying to find
the road. Sticking out her thumb. Or waving wildly at a passing car.
“I think I’m done walking. I don’t want to be out if she comes home.”
“I should get going anyway,” Lewis said. “But, listen, if you
remember anything, anything at all, or anything Vera said, call us.”
They trudged back up the hill, and Denny watched the police-
man drive off. And then he and Scout went back into the silent,
empty house. He looked at the ceiling. He looked out the window.
Who did he have left? Who was there to talk to? Who could he tell
about his day if Vera never returned? What he wanted to do was
tell Vera about all of this. “Vera! Vera, you’ll never guess what happened!” he wanted to say. “You disappeared!”
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C h a p t e r E l e v e n
Evelina
The bruises unfolded over Dmitri’s face like butterfly wings. The
white light of the early morning came in through the slits in the
blinds and Evelina watched her son play with the stripes of light on
the floor. He ran to the window, hearing something. He told her there were two taxicabs outside and so she went to the window to see what
was happening. “No,” she said, her hand resting on top of Dmitri’s
head. “Those are police cars.”
A woman named Vera Gusev had gone missing at Squire Point on
New Year’s Day. She didn’t know anyone by that name. She sat at the
kitchen table with two detectives and a police officer—nice men,
gentle men, snow in their hair—her sons in their bedroom with the
door closed. She was wearing the peacock feather earrings, something
Leo would have chastised her for had he been there. His voice was in
her head. She offered the men coffee.
“This woman called my house?” she asked. She picked up a dime
she kept on the table for her scratch cards and fiddled with it. “A
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wrong number?” she asked. “I don’t know anyone named Vera Gusev.
And my boys—well, neither of them is missing. They’re in their bed-
room.”
She felt a kind of ticking in her brain, like a fire crackling, some-
thing about to ignite. She held her coffee cup to her face and looked at the detectives, at the policeman, who, she noticed, had a beautiful jaw.
“Can you explain your phone activity on New Year’s Day?” one of
the detectives said.
“My phone activity?”
“You placed two calls to local hospitals.”
“I—” The ticking was getting louder in her mind, so loud it must
be audible to the men. She took a loud sip of her coffee, hoping to
muffle the sound.
“We’d also like you to tell us about that evening, when you brought
your boy in to be treated for bruising.”
“I—”
“We’re trying to piece together what has happened.”
“My boys spent New Ye
ar’s Day with their father,” she said care-
fully. Her heart was pounding as loudly as the ticking sound in her
head. She pressed the soles of her feet to the floor. She felt she might float away from the table and through the kitchen window, get sucked
out to sea by the wind. Surely Leo couldn’t have had anything to
do with this. “They were late getting home. I got worried. Paranoid.
I called the hospitals, to see, to see if there had been any accidents—”
She looked at the men, but their heads were bowed; they were
writing things down.
“—but they came home shortly after. My youngest—Dmitri—
hurt himself while he was with his dad. He fell on the ice. That’s why I took him to the hospital. Anyway, it’s just bruising. There’s real y nothing more I can tell you.”
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“But the boys, and your husband, you can confirm they were at
Squire Point on New Year’s Day?”
“Yes,” she said. “They were. It’s a large—”
“It’s a big park, yes,” said the handsome policeman. “We know.
We’ve been there.”
When they left, Evelina bolted the door. Her legs were shaking. She
felt the caffeine in her bones, behind her eyes. She felt the weight of what the detectives had asked her deep in her abdomen.
“They’re gone,” she said to the empty kitchen and seconds later
Jesse was beside her. She decided to make a big breakfast to distract herself—boiled eggs, toast, potatoes, bacon, and fried tomatoes—and
she put on music while she cooked. Her sons sat at the table. They
listened to Al Green, then Sam Cooke. Dmitri was drawing a picture
of Jesse. She kept reminding herself that everything was okay. They
were eating breakfast together in their pyjamas. They were safe and
warm. Dmitri’s face would heal. Jesse would turn eleven this year.
They would be her boys forever. She did not know this woman
named Vera Gusev who had called her home and then vanished. A
coincidence. An anomaly. Also a coincidence that Leo and her boys
had been at Squire Point that day.
Still, she found herself unable to think of anything else.
Why had the boys been so late getting home? Why had Leo seemed
so sad when he dropped them off? Why had his clothes been wet?
“Did you,” she began, her sons shovelling the breakfast into their
mouths unceremoniously, “meet a woman out at Squire Point?”
How a Woman Becomes a Lake (ARC) Page 8
