by Jenny Manzer
It was a missed package delivery notice. Something for Ms. Nico Cavan. The notice had been left the day before, but it must have gone to the old lady downstairs. I turned around and headed to the post office, which was about fifteen minutes away. It was raining harder, but it didn’t matter. I was going to get the package, whatever it was. Ms. Nico Cavan. It made me sound like a lawyer.
The post office downtown was overly spacious for the amount of business done there, and all the staff was cheerful.
“Package for you?” asked the clerk excitedly, as if I, or he, were five years old. He winked.
“Yes,” I said, hoping he didn’t recognize me from the news stories. I had been getting second glances, raised eyebrows. The white-paper package was about a foot long and padded with bubble wrap. I tucked it under my arm, resisting the urge to split it open like a fish right there in the post office. Was that a fairy tale? Something precious lost and then found in the belly of a fish? A ring? Or maybe it was an urban myth.
When I got home, I threw my knapsack on the floor, raced to the kitchen for a paring knife, and gutted the package. A piece of paper, neatly sliced in two by my knife, fluttered to the scuffed linoleum.
I tore through the bubble wrap like a surgeon trying to get to vital organs. Under the wrapping were my mother’s CDs—all of them, it appeared. I made a sound, I think, a cry that was part happy, part surprise. I had the CDs back.
I put the two pieces of paper together and held them up.
Dear Nico,
These belong to you. I hope these find you well, and home, and well.
Your mother had good taste.
Remember to be who you are, no matter what.
Maybe we will see each other again, Nico. I hope so.
Peace and love,
Daniel
I crouched down and lined up the CDs on the floor tiles, which were the cheap press-and-stick kind, worn to a shade of dishrag gray. The bubble wrap reminded me of caterpillar cocoons. I sat on the floor, still in my jacket, and I cried. Because part of me had hoped it was a package from her. That she had finally sent word to me.
His words “be who you are” reminded me of how Cobain was always quoted as saying it’s better to be hated for your real self than loved for being a phony. Could that be true? Could it be better to be hated? I blew my nose on a paper towel, found the phone book, and flopped it open. I dialed. I waited.
“May I speak with Detective Stanton, please?” I asked. “It’s Nicola Cavan.” I surprised myself by saying my full name.
I didn’t even know if he was the man to help me. Both the Vancouver and the Victoria police had been involved in my mother’s case, and mine, but the RCMP patrolled the Sea-to-Sky Highway, where I had been found. I didn’t know the right thing to do. But I was done waiting. Stanton’s voice mail snapped on, each word of his message as crisp as a September apple. I waited for the beep.
“This is Nicola Cavan. Detective Stanton, I’d really like to meet with you and talk about my mother, Annalee Lester. I was only four when she went missing, but now I’m older and I have a right…Can you just call me, please?”
I hung up. I wondered if my call would result in a visit from a social worker. Or maybe I had just sounded childish? No, I did have a right to know. I had a right to know.
Detective Stanton returned my call two days later with a perfunctory voice mail message left while I was at school. “Be assured, we are doing all we can, Ms. Cavan, and we will keep you informed of any developments on the case.”
And so on. My phone call had been useless. Stanton might as well have patted me on the head. I stayed up most of that night fretting about my lack of progress and got up the next morning when it was still pitch dark. Verne had left early to drop the car off for repair. I hated winter. I hated everything. I walked to the front window and stared out into the street. It was 6:13 a.m. By the dim streetlights I could see there was a green-and-yellow bong left on the curb in front of our house the day before, and overnight someone had placed a bag of garbage next to it, right in our shitty front yard. A gray pickup truck I didn’t recognize was parked across the street. The sky was oily gray, like fish scales.
What the hell? Was our front yard a dumping ground now? It was true what people said: garbage breeds more garbage, and one wall of graffiti soon becomes many, because not caring is contagious. There was an actual theory about it, with a name I couldn’t remember.
Fuck it. I cared. I pulled on boots and marched out of the house in my pajamas and a fleece Obe had left behind. I hadn’t had an email from Sean in a few days, and that pissed me off. I had no money to buy CDs, and that pissed me off. There was a nasty sheen of ice on the sidewalks, which also annoyed me.
I went to the curb, anger beaming from my body like a floodlight. I kicked the bong with my slipper, which killed my toe. I was going to hurl the bag of garbage, which seemed to be old clothes, when I noticed movement in my peripheral vision and whirled around to see a man sitting at the wheel of the truck. His eyes went wide, seeing my furious face. He turned and started the engine.
The truck was enormous, jacked up. It let out a single, forceful smoker’s cough and roared to life.
“What the fuck do you want?” I screamed. “This is where I live. It’s not a garbage dump.” The man had a red knit cap, a mustache, a beard, and sunken eyes. He wore one of those puffy black jackets popular with gas station attendants. I leaned in closer to get a better look, ignoring all my years of warnings about how to stay safe in the streets. He had an ashtray full of Player’s cigarettes, the white ones, and on the passenger side was a copy of the daily newspaper with me on the front page. Me: looking as if I were about to cry, despite how brave I tried to be. Me: holding up a photo of the beautiful Annalee.
“Do you know me?” I asked.
He gunned the engine, jerking the truck to the right on the sidewalk, since I blocked his escape, and forward, swinging around in a big U. The truck bumped around the narrow dead-end street. It was like watching a wounded bison thrashing.
“Come back!” I shouted as he lurched past. BUILT FORD TOUGH. I SUPPORT SQUAMISH SEARCH AND RESCUE, I read on his bumper. I tried to run but slipped on the ice, falling chest forward, the air punched out of me.
“Four two nine!” I yelled as I stood up. “Four two nine, you asshole!” It was the first three numbers of his license plate. It wasn’t much.
My pajamas were covered in mud and grit. I brushed a cigarette butt from my thigh and limped across the street. The garbage bags appeared to have been stuffed with rags and random electronics that someone had given up on lugging around. Or perhaps they had been stolen and abandoned. There was also an old bowling trophy sitting on the curb that I hadn’t noticed. There was something looped around the trophy, which was a single fake-gold pin on a black stand. Sunrise Lanes, Third Place, it read. I was afraid to touch the bracelet hanging off the trophy, but I did. I had to hold it right up to my face to see the red insignia, the snake squiggling around the staff, and the two words: Medic and Alert.
I don’t remember going inside, but must have, because I found myself sitting on my bed still wearing my muddy slippers, running my finger over the lettering. On the other side, there was a 1-800 phone number and a medical ID number. In the middle were the words Anaphylaxis: Allergic to bee stings. Then I thought maybe I shouldn’t have touched it, fingerprints and all, and dropped the chain on my bedspread.
After changing out of my pajamas, I called the police station and asked to speak to Stanton. It was still early, but I willed him to be there. “It’s his daughter. I hit my head in practice and I need him to come pick me up!” I said, and then sniffled. “Oh please, hurry.”
“Caitlyn?” the operator asked.
“Yes.”
“I’ll put you through.”
“Caitlyn? What’s wrong? Where’s your mother?”
In an emergency, even detectives call for a mother.
“Detective Stanton, it’s Nicola Cavan.” I exh
aled, bracing for the shit storm.
“My daughter is on the other line, Ms. Cavan. There’s been an emergency. I’m going to hang up.”
“I’m the emergency,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“I see,” he said. “That was a low blow, young lady. I thought you were better than that.” He sounded more disappointed than pissed, which made things worse.
“I needed to talk to you now. It is an emergency. And I’m someone’s daughter.”
“How did you know I even had a daughter?” he asked, sounding fierce and pissed.
“You said on the radio.”
“Right, well, that was my mistake,” he said briskly. “This conversation is ending now. I feel badly for what has happened to you, but you don’t get to make jokes involving my family.”
“Wait, Stanton, please. I was just stalked by a man in a pickup. Don’t hang up.”
“Ms. Cavan, you should have called nine-one-one. I’m not your personal police officer.”
“Please, just listen.” I told him everything, from the red knit cap to the bumper stickers. BUILT FORD TOUGH. I must have said 429 a few times, because he said he’d gotten it, written it down, and I could stop.
“No letters from the rest of the plate?”
“No, sorry. I didn’t catch all of it. He had a photo of me in his car, the newspaper clipping.”
“I know. Ms. Cavan, you mentioned that. It’s in my notes.”
“There’s something else. I think he left a bracelet, and it might be hers.” I had been saving that, not wanting to sound too crazy too soon.
“A bracelet?” He hadn’t expected that.
“A MedicAlert one. It says ‘Allergic to bee stings,’ and an ID number.”
“Read me the number. I’ll send an officer to come pick up the bracelet later,” he said.
It’s probably nothing, I could hear him thinking. But at least he was listening.
“You can call me Nico,” I said. I was warming to him, now that he was taking me seriously.
“I’ll stick with Ms. Cavan.”
“Squamish Search and Rescue,” I said again.
“I’ve written it down, thank you. Ms. Cavan?” I could tell by the way his voice curled into a fiddlehead that he was adding something he hadn’t intended and would probably regret.
“Yes?”
“Are you sleeping at all?”
“Not much,” I admitted.
“I think you should sleep more,” he said. “You sound…”
“I know.”
“We’ll look into it,” he said.
He hung up, either to get on the case, or before I could repeat the information again. I hoped he didn’t think I was delusional. Then he wouldn’t look into a damn thing.
I flipped open my laptop and sat cross-legged on my bedroom floor, wondering what search terms I could enter to help me find this man. I could try Squamish Search and Rescue, but anyone could buy a bumper sticker. Too much information had passed through the turnstile of my brain, and it stalled when I heard an email land, the sweet ping like the triangle in band class. Nico, how’s things? Going indoor climbing tomorrow, you should try it. Walked past the Crocodile and thought of you. Listening to my first Modest Mouse album. When U coming back? Sean.
I read it twice. It was friendly, for sure. Thought of you. I stretched out on my bedroom rug, willing myself to grow taller, wishing for a mother to explain everything to me.
They say you should appreciate the small things in life, which I used to think meant creatures like mice or ladybugs, or trinkets like marbles or gumball-machine rings. Now I understand it’s less literal and refers to the everyday or the simple. Verne had tried to be home more, to turn down overtime, even though it meant less money. I found I enjoyed it when we could make dinner together. I was thinking this while he gutted a red pepper, trying to scrape away the white seeds, which reminded me of baby teeth. I had told him about the man in the truck and shown him the bracelet before the officers came to collect it. We were both purposefully not talking about it while we waited to hear from the police.
“Do I ever get to meet that boy in Seattle?” he asked, keeping his head down so I couldn’t see his face.
“What boy?”
“The one you met in Seattle who keeps emailing. Is he nice?”
“Yes, he’s nice. How do you know he’s emailing?”
“I have my ways. I’m a security expert,” he said, mock tough. I snorted, thinking about all the toga parties he’d broken up. There was lots of serious stuff, too, though—fistfights, thefts, and sexual assaults. “Actually, I just see you at your computer. Seriously, though, is he a good guy?”
“Seriously, yes. But I don’t know if it’s serious,” I said, and laughed. My laugh sounded as if it came from some hidden vault deep in my body.
I woke to the squawk of the doorbell and shot up as if my body were an arrow fired into the hall. Verne was already there, dressed in track pants and a cotton shirt, still wearing his navy-blue slippers. I rushed to him, clamping my arms at my sides to keep my nightie from flapping.
“Mr. Cavan?” There were two Victoria Police officers, both in full uniform. I felt impressed for a second, at the badges and buttons, at this symbol of order in the world, before I allowed myself to realize what was happening. One officer was quite young, and the other was Stanton. I recognized him right away from my Internet searches. Detective Sergeant Stanton had silver hair and impressive high cheekbones. I’d imagined him to be in his fifties, but he looked younger, rangy. My legs wobbled. Here it comes, I thought.
“We’ve had a development on the case,” said Stanton. He had the air of someone who could be called away at any time. He was important, unlike us. He got to the point. “Mr. Cavan, perhaps you’d like your daughter to wait in another room.”
There was a pause. Our old heater groaned. I could vaguely hear the woman downstairs dragging a table, metal legs scraping on tile.
“No, no,” said Verne. “It’s her life. She should be here. Please come into the living room.” We walked in silence and sat down. Both officers were tall and made the room seem tight, confined, and for a moment I couldn’t breathe.
“Mr. Cavan, Ms. Cavan, we’ve had some information in the case of Annalee Jean Lester’s disappearance on February 11, 1996. Following Ms. Cavan’s encounter yesterday, we tracked down the owner of the 2002 gray pickup truck she sighted and made contact with the owner, Mr. Wayne Cruickshank. We also determined that the numbers on the MedicAlert bracelet corresponded to those designated for Annalee Jean Lester.”
Verne nodded. I held my breath. Perhaps I would never breathe again. Did we have to say he should continue? I didn’t know. I had lived all my life not knowing. Just say it, let it come. It could be no worse than all I had imagined so many nights, so many years.
“At first Mr. Cruickshank denied all knowledge of Ms. Cavan, but then he admitted having seen her on the street when he left the MedicAlert bracelet on the curb amid the refuse.”
“I knew he left it,” I said, my voice shaking. Stanton continued as if I hadn’t spoken.
“During questioning, Mr. Cruickshank indicated he had heard the appeals for public participation in locating the whereabouts of Nicola Cavan and the media reports referencing the 1996 disappearance of her mother, Annalee Lester. He decided, at that point, that if Ms. Cavan was found safe, he would anonymously return the bracelet.”
The man had made a bargain. If I had been found dead, too, it would have doubled his guilt. But he also wanted to get a look at me. Everyone did. Freako Nico. Annalee was no doubt the biggest thing that had ever happened to him. I could tell that with one glance into his truck.
“Mr. Cruickshank was in Garibaldi Provincial Park, close to Whistler, that February in 1996, where he was hunting, which is illegal in that park. He spotted a woman we now suspect to be Annalee Lester on the trail to Garibaldi Lake, where she was hiking. Believing her to be game, he fired a shot, which struck a female Caucasian, resultin
g in a fatal wound. We will need to consult with the coroner to verify these details,” he said, regarding us with a rigid calm.
It was surreal to see those two officers sitting in the room where Obe and I played Risk, or used the Ouija board, or pawed through music magazines.
“Mr. Cruickshank stressed that he had not come to Victoria to harm Ms. Cavan, but rather to leave the bracelet for her to find.”
“But then I saw him.”
“Yes,” said Stanton. He wasn’t used to being interrupted.
“Where’s the bracelet now?” I hadn’t wanted to hand it over. It was bad enough that someone like Wayne Cruickshank had possessed the bracelet that my mother had worn on her slender wrist, the bracelet that was supposed to save her life.
“It has been admitted into evidence for the moment, but it will be returned. I understand that this news is shocking after all this time. Please be aware that we are following up on this lead with forensic reports and an exhaustive search of Garibaldi in collaboration with parks officials and local police. Mr. Cruickshank has expressed regret for his actions. Ultimately, he will answer to the courts, of course, and we must not do anything to jeopardize that process.”
Stanton glanced at us both. I turned to Verne, whose face was bleached of expression.
“So she’s dead,” I said. “Are we supposed to feel glad that this man came forward, even though he shot her, shot her like a…?”
I had been going to say dog, but people didn’t shoot dogs, not usually. I sounded detached at first, like a student asking a question about an exam.
“What did he do with her, after?” I asked, my voice splitting open on the last word.
“Shhh, Nico, shhh,” Verne said, circling his arm around me. “Enough for now, okay? Enough for now.”
He looked at Detective Stanton and led me from the room. I bottled my sobs inside me until we got to the kitchen. I heard the front door close gently.
