“I only suffer this for friends,” he said, fidgeting with his collar.
Tray readjusted Nick’s tie into a small tight knot and Violet smoothed down some wisps of hair. “Perfectly handsome,” she sighed and Tray nudged her.
“Cougar,” he growled and they all burst out into laughter.
Then the door opened and Cari, a vision in pale green, stepped in followed by Lilah. Nick’s heart swelled so large he couldn’t figure out whether to laugh or cry. She stood framed in the doorway. An angel in white silk. Images swirled in his head as if he could write a poem right there on the spot. Her hair parted at the side, rippled to her shoulders in glossy waves. A single white rose nestled above her ear. Diamonds glistened from perfect earlobes. Her shoulders were spun gold, her breasts swelled from a crystal encrusted bodice that held her waist so tight, then billowed out into a froth of cloudy white. A faint pink blush coloured her cheeks and her eyes were clear and green. Fixed on him and only him. He stepped forward and took her hand.
“You’re so beautiful,” he said and she smiled.
It was over in what seemed like minutes. One moment he heard her promise to be with him forever, to love him and cherish him, the next minute he was reading his own poem to her. Spilling out the love he’d kept bottled up for all thirty one years of his life and now it had found words. Eloquent words. And then they were signing a book and Violet and Tray were hugging them, Cari was ushering them out to the car and Danny was driving them back to Lilah’s. Cari followed close behind with the Olsens.
“Don’t check your rear view mirror, Danny,” said Nick leaning over to embrace Lilah in a kiss that lasted the whole journey.
“Take it easy guys,” said Danny. “Save that for tonight.”
“Plenty left for later,” said Nick, coming up for air. He was married. He had a wife and he couldn’t stop kissing her.
The catering van was already parked outside Lilah’s. Danny fidgeted with his tie. “Think I’m gonna push off home now,” he said. “I’ve had enough of this damned shirt collar.”
Lilah sat up quickly. “No way,” she said with a force that surprised Nick. “Take your tie off and loosen your shirt. You’re coming in to help us celebrate and I won’t take no for an answer.”
“Well I know who’s gonna be wearing the trousers in your family,” said Danny, climbing out of the car. “I guess I’ll stay awhile.”
The caterers had worked their magic. At the centre of the table was a two-tiered white and silver cake, trimmed with pale lilac flowers, surrounded by a rainbow of hors d’oeuvres on white plates. Champagne lay chilling in a silver bucket and candles glowed all around.
“So pretty,” said Violet clapping her hands. “Now let’s toast the happy couple.”
The champagne corks popped, the bubbly was poured and they held their glasses high. Nick couldn’t ever remember feeling this kind of happiness before. As if he was complete. Not wanting anything more from life except to be with Lilah. Then the doorbell rang and Brad Brenner was there with Rosie.
“We’re crashing this one,” said Brad, handing Nick a large silver-wrapped package. “Wouldn’t miss this for the world.”
Nick clasped Brad’s shoulder. “Sorry bud. We didn’t know if you were up to it.”
Brad shook his head. “Seeing you guys happy really helps me forget. Congratulations buddy. Now Rosie and I have to speed things along. She’s been nagging me for the last few months.”
“I told him,” she said, resting her head on his shoulder. “What are we waiting for?”
Nick guided them towards the table and filled champagne glasses, and before long another cork was popped as Tracy Ross dropped in with her husband Art as well as Shayla Reid and Jeff Kovac.
“I had to witness this for real,” said Shayla, giggling. “Nick Hendricks, the player, finally gets hooked.”
“Hey, sorry we beat you to it,” said Nick, leaning over to give her a kiss on the cheek. “And sorry I was such an ass.”
“No worries,” she said, holding tightly to Jeff’s arm. “I found the right guy for me – thanks to you, Nick.”
Soon the room was filled with laughter. Nick and Lilah moved around the room, chatting and laughing, another champagne cork popped. Time passed until Nick glanced around and saw Lilah was gone. He asked Cari if she’d seen her.
“She went to change – said she was tired of dragging the dress around.”
Then Violet grabbed his arm and started outlining her plans for the bookstore and her idea to have live poetry sessions. “You could be my first guest reader,” she said. “I actually really liked your poems, Nick. You have a lovely eye for detail, a real sense of beauty.”
“And I thought nobody had even noticed,” he said, marvelling at how everything good was beginning to happen for him. It was true that happy people attracted luck and more happiness.
“I’d better find Lilah,” he told Cari ten minutes later after the caterer had nudged his arm and said they should cut the cake in the next fifteen minutes. She still hadn’t emerged from the bedroom.
He left the noise and chatter behind and walked down the hallway, checking the bathroom first. It was empty. Something he couldn’t explain made his heart beat just a little faster as he swung open the bedroom door into the freezing, empty room. He ran into the bathroom. No sign of her or the dress. Then she hadn’t changed. Back inside the bedroom the door to the deck swung open. His insides seemed to slam upwards into the top of his head, blurring his vision, making his thoughts race. Sam Schuler? Had he been here and taken her? He rushed out onto the deck in time to see a plume of fire blast up into the sky half a mile away along the lakeshore.
26
Nick was paralyzed. His legs frozen to the spot. Lilah was out there and already black flakes of ash were floating onto the snow from the blaze of fire visible between the trees. The crash of the living room door bursting open snapped him out of his daze. Party guests streamed onto the deck led by Brad Brenner who was already on his phone calling for help. Danny Johnson pushed through the bodies and yelled in a voice that roused Nick out of his stupor like a punch to the head.
“That’s my fucking house on fire,” he screamed, racing back through the house. The sound of screeching tires followed. Nick grabbed Brad’s arm. He could barely mouth the words.
“Lilah’s gone,” he whispered. “She’s gone – she’s out there somewhere.”
Brad clicked off his phone. “She probably heard something and went out to see what it was. Get your boots on and we’ll go find her.
“But she’s still wearing the dress.”
By now Cari was there beside him. “Maybe she hung it up, Nick. I’ll go check.”
“Gotta go, gotta get out there,” he said, stumbling in to get his boots and coat. He could hardly feel his feet touch the ground. Faces passed by in a blur. The wail of fire truck sirens echoed in the distance.
Cari had already come back, her face white with horror. “It’s not there. The dress, I mean.”
“Keep looking,” blurted Nick. “Maybe she put it away somewhere else.”
“And Cari - stay here, in case she comes back. Call us if you hear anything,” said Brad, taking Nick’s arm. Tray and Violet followed them with Jeff and Shayla, Tracy and Art. “Tray, Violet - take your car and check along the lakeside road. The rest come with us.” Nick could barely focus on the scene as they skimmed down the deck steps and out onto the trail.
“Stay in pairs and fan out. Yell if you find her,” said Brad, taking Nick’s arm. “We’ll head towards Johnson’s place. That’s most likely the direction she took.”
Nick plunged through the snow behind Brad, his legs moving mechanically, his whole body driven by hard, visceral fear, his mind holding onto a faint image of her face.
The orange blaze grew brighter as they got closer to the burning house.
“She’s gotta be there,” said Brad. “But why the hell didn’t she come and tell us?”
Nick’s brain was filled
with images of the shadowy figure slipping through the bedroom door, dragging her outside, taking her god knew where. Fighting back the tears, he tasted the sharp bite of ash on his tongue. He grabbed hold of Brad’s arm.
“Sam Schuler was here last night,” he said, his voice dry and hollow. “He warned me to stay out of his business, Brad. I should’ve said something to you. I think he took her.”
Brad turned and shook his head, but Nick couldn’t look at him.
“I was gonna leave today with her. Get out of here for good.”
Brad held Nick’s shoulders tightly. “Wasn’t him, Nick. We arrested him last night when he left Rusty’s place, then we picked up his kid brother. We were just waiting for him to show up.”
Nick felt like laughing and crying at the same time. “Then she’s gotta be here, Brad. Everything’s okay,” he said, stumbling towards the burning house, the tears stinging his eyes. He moved so fast he barely heard Brad yelling at him to hold on.
Two fire trucks were already in Danny’s driveway as well as a patrol car. Brad rushed over and started talking to the officers inside while Nick raced blindly around searching for Lilah among the sea of faces. A tall fireman had hold of Danny who was screaming like a madman and trying to get through the yellow tape to his burning house.
Nick stopped for a moment, realizing he’d never been to Danny’s place before. Then time seemed to slow down. Silhouetted figures drifted back and forth against a backdrop of blazing orange. The air was a furnace, filled with floating ash and the sound of snapping, cracking boards, the heat so intense a window burst into a thousand fragments. Where was she in all this? For some reason he had to get home. She’d be there waiting when he got back. It would all be a misunderstanding. They’d clear out tonight. To hell with the cost. He had to find Brad and tell him.
He wheeled around. The two uniformed officers had stepped out of the car. Brad was deep in conversation with a fire fighter. He looked around, his brow knit with worry. Not Lilah, thought Brad. She wasn’t inside?
Then he was next to Brad, clawing at his arm. “Is she in there? Did they find her. You gotta tell me,” he screamed.
Brad shook his head. “Step aside Nick. It’s something else.”
The uniformed guys were moving through the crowd now. Nick watched their progress towards the yellow cordon. Then they reached out and took Danny’s arm. Danny stepped back, his head shaking as he lurched backwards and tried to shove them away. Next minute one of them seized his arm and yanked it behind his back then threw him face first against the side of a fire truck. The small man writhed and yelled fuck you, fuck you bastard as the other cop cuffed him and led him towards the patrol car. As he passed Nick, he stopped and looked at him. Nick barely recognized the friendly guy he’d drunk coffee with for the last eight years. His mouth twisted in a weird sideways grin. “And fuck you too, sucker,” he hissed, just as the cop pushed him forward towards the car.
“What the hell?” whispered Nick. “What’s he talking about?”
Brad put down his phone. “I’ll tell you this so you don’t think it’s something about Lilah. But you gotta keep it real quiet.”
Nick nodded, his breath coming in short gasps.
“We found something in there, Nick. The blast was so intense some of the walls collapsed. They found human remains among the rubble. A whole lot of them. Could be more than one body. That’s all I can tell you.”
“I gotta find Lilah,” said Nick, stumbling backwards.
“Go, go,” said Brad. “They need me here. She’s probably home already.”
Nick plunged into the forest again. He dialled the house. Cari’s voice seemed small and distant telling him Lilah hadn’t come back. If he could stop time he would. Right there and then. If he could only find her then he could think about the discovery at Danny’s house. Was Danny the guy who took those kids? The friendly guy from the coffee shop? Couldn’t be.
Thoughts circled in his head like silent screams. But it wasn’t his inner voice. It was the actual sound of someone screaming. Jeff, Jeff. It was Shayla’s voice. He broke through a low cover of pine, scraping his face and hands, the tinny taste of blood on his lips. Shayla stood at the lakeside looking down on something white, floating beneath the shallow, greyish water. A white dress, floated like a headless body under a thin film of winter ice. Nick waded into the water and threw himself towards it just as Jeff bounded into the clearing.
“Hold steady, man,” he yelled, catching hold of Nick’s coat and helping him to grasp the slippery frozen tissue of the dress. They dragged it onto the snow.
“She’s not there,” Nick sobbed. “Where is she? Where’s Lilah,” he said, sitting back on his knees and howling up at the sky. “Where’s my wife?”
Shayla was crying too and trying to steady Nick as his whole body shook. Jeff was already on the phone. Now the sound of sirens headed towards them. Nick’s eyes swam with tears. “She’s not dead,” he said, wiping his arm across his eyes. The sound of many footsteps thundered behind him. His body was cold, tired. Voices all merged into one buzzing noise, figures swam in and out of view. But across the little inlet of water, a small, black hooded figure materialized from the trees. Nick stumbled to his feet.
“It’s her,” he screamed, as the figure seemed to take down the hood and show her glossy black hair. “She’s alive. I see her.”
He blinked his eyes. Only for an instant. Opened them again. A deer nosed its way through the trees where she’d stood. “I saw her,” he said, laughing and crying at the same time. “I saw her.”
Shayla and Jeff held his arms. “Sure you did, Nick. You gotta come with us and get warm. You’re gonna get hypothermia.”
They led him away. The image of her standing among the trees was burned into his brain just before he passed out.
27
Nick lay at his house in a fog of half-sleep and half- consciousness. Day dissolved into night and back again until he opened heavy eyes onto a slate grey sky streaked with pinkish light. Somehow time slid by as he lay in bed staring at the ceiling, then dragged himself to the couch, barely registering Cari who swam in and out of his vision holding out cups of coffee or bowls of warm soup, urging him to take a sip, eat a spoonful. Blurred images from the TV kept away the numbness that paralyzed his entire body when he imagined the dress, transparent as shed skin, floating under a grainy film of ice.
Then one morning when the sky was so blue it hurt his eyes, Cari tapped on his bedroom door.
“Brad’s here to see you, Nick. It’s important.”
Nick sat up. His head felt like someone had pounded it with bricks. His eyes were dry and burned like hell. He needed water – food, anything to get rid of the grinding hollowness in the pit of his stomach. Pulling on sweats and a tee-shirt, he dragged himself into the living room. Brad sat at the breakfast counter sipping coffee with Cari. He turned to look at Nick with raised eyebrows.
“Looks like you need one of these, Nick,” he said, sliding an empty cup across the counter to Cari. “Strong and black, Cari.”
Nick nodded. “What day is it?”
Cari handed him the steaming coffee. “Thursday, Nick. You’ve been out of it for five days.”
“And you’ve been here all this time?”
She nodded. “There was nobody else. And you could barely drag yourself to the bathroom.”
“Don’t worry, Nick. She didn’t have to wipe your ass,” said Brad, taking a seat on the couch. Nick directed hot, dry eyes at him.
“Hey – sorry bud. I know there’s nothing I can say to make you feel better about what happened, but I have some news.”
The sun came out from behind a cloud, blinding Nick with its glare. “Lilah? You found her.”
Brad shook his head. “Sorry. Not a trace.”
Nick flopped down onto the chair opposite. “But the dress. She wasn’t wearing it. She must’ve taken it off.”
Brad glanced at Cari, then back at Nick. Panic bubbled up in Nick’s throat. “
You’re not telling me something, Brad. You know something. Be straight with me.” He heard his own voice rising – scared – as if he was losing her all over again and would repeat that feeling every hour, every second of every day.
“It’s true we haven’t found her,” said Brad, “but there are a few possibilities. The first – and you want me to be on the level – she saw the fire, ran out to take a look, went too close, then fell through the ice and slipped her dress off because it was weighing her down, but the cold was too much and she went under.”
“Have you found a body?” said Nick, his fingers digging hard into the chair arm.
Brad shifted his feet and looked down. “I can’t lie, Nick. A search is really tough at this time of year. Bodies stay down when the water’s freezing. We’d have to wait for the weather to warm up.”
“And the other possibilities?
Brad put down his cup and sat back, looking closely at Nick.
“How much did you know about Lilah.”
Nick felt the surge of emotion, like a tide that could level him with its power. “Enough,” he said. “Enough to know I loved – love her more than anyone I ever met.”
“What about her family?”
Nick shrugged. “Not much. She was pretty quiet about them. Said there’d been trouble in her past. She visited her sick grandmother.”
“Where’d she come from?”
“Montana. Then her family moved to Canada. Northern Alberta. Said she was in Calgary for a while too.”
“I knew it,” said Brad. “I knew there had to be a link.”
Nick shook his head. “I don’t understand.”
“Take it easy, Nick. This is just a hunch right now, but Danny Johnson wasn’t originally from Minneapolis as he claimed to be. Seems he spent close to ten years up in Canada in the 80’s. Somewhere in Northern Alberta. We also believe he was implicated in some kind of trouble up there, but we don’t have details yet. We’re just waiting for the RCMP to share some information with us. So it’s possible Lilah knew him before she came here.”
Lilah Page 20
