Why the Rock Falls

by J. E. Barnard

  As she pulled over for a truck speeding north, Lacey considered the possibility that Jan might be wrong. It still could be one of the brothers on that video. Ben knew how to get there without being caught on camera, and maybe he’d learned Orrin was about to officially disinherit him. Bart, too, had motives she hadn’t considered before: not only was he conniving to, in effect, defraud Orrin of whatever trust fund was set aside for a son, but he had been hiding his homosexuality all his life. If someone was threatening to tell Orrin, then Bart’s inheritance too might vanish like a stone into the ocean.

  Trees and forest: which were the clues, and which were irrelevant issues that only obscured them?

  The towering trees on her left gave way to a broad meadow irregularly bounded by forest. A horse loped out of a gap at the far side. Its rider slowed and waved a hat at her, seeming to beckon her closer. She squinted. Something seemed off about the person’s silhouette. Was that a second face below the first, and extra legs dangling? Likely someone’s horse had got away from them. She checked her watch. If a searcher needed a ride back to base, she could do it without being terribly late to meet Wayne.

  Something about that head and shoulders reminded her of old Susan Norris, who Ben had said owned land east of the road. She slowed further and pulled into the meadow. The horse sped up.

  Susan Norris came up at a quick trot, the sun glinting off her horse’s bridle. Now it was clearer: the old woman clutched before her an upright body, its legs and arms dangling and its head flopping sideways with every step the horse took.

  “About bloody time someone showed up,” Susan shouted as Lacey leaped from the truck. “I been yellin’ for half an hour.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  The Calgary traffic was thickening around the van when Jan pushed up her blindfold and opened her eyes. She wasn’t quite recovered, but the lie-down in the back seat had done her good. Michael and Rob were chatting away in the front seats. After his first shock at his friend being lost in the wilderness, the boy had talked it over extensively with Rob. That was surely a good sign, both of their bond and of Michael’s ability to cope with a second potential loss.

  She waited for a pause in the conversation and then asked, “How much farther?”

  “Ten minutes or so, I think,” said Rob. “Do you have to take a pill or eat or anything before we get there?”

  Jan pulled out her phone and looked at her reminders: 3:30 pill and snack. It was only 3:15, but close enough. She sat slowly up and reached for her bag. “Sorry I sagged out on you there.”

  Rob met her eyes in the rear-view mirror. “Better you should rest now than crash out in the middle of taking your pictures.”

  Michael craned his head around as far as the seat belt would allow and watched her swallow her pill with a good guzzle from her water bottle. She split the wrapper on her coconut bar and offered him the spare.

  “No, thank you,” he said. “I’m still full from my ice cream.”

  They came to the gated driveway of the Caine house in Mount Royal. It wasn’t as extravagant as she had expected. It was older, for one thing. Forty years maybe; not an exceptional era in Calgary architecture. This one was a basic brick box with lower wings — garage on one end and a slit-windowed extension on the other that was probably a single large room where parties were held. It seemed incongruent with arrogant Orrin and sophisticated Sloane. Maybe he’d kept it because the land was worth a mint, intending to eventually build a mansion to outshine its newer, larger neighbours.

  Rob explained to whoever answered the gate buzzer what their business was. Then he drove them to the front door and unloaded Jan’s wheelchair from the back.

  Michael said, “You could walk before. How come you can’t walk now?”

  “I’m like a cellphone battery that’s stuck on trickle charge. I can only go so many steps before I have to be charged up again. That’s why Rob’s driving us today. So I can recharge.”

  A dark-haired woman opened the door to them. She introduced herself as Cheryl and greeted Michael by name. Of course, they must have met when Michael went to the ranch.

  He said, “Do you know where Tyrone is?”

  Cheryl’s eyes flicked to Jan and back before she shook her head. “Not yet. But I’m sure it won’t be long now.” She stepped aside for Jan’s wheelchair. “If you’ll tell me which era of pictures in particular you’re interested in, I’ll take you directly to them, or bring them to you if they’re in an area of the house you can’t get to.”

  “Thank you,” said Jan. “Orrin — Mr. Caine — said he had Rocky Mountain art but he didn’t know titles or artists. I need early twentieth-century and late nineteenth-century mountain landscapes.”

  “Come this way.” Cheryl led them to the back of the house, into a low room that matched the exterior for 1980s blandness. The sofas were newer, mostly leather, and the off-white walls were hung with framed mountain art at eye level, if Jan stood up. Rob parked her by the patio doors, where the light was good. Cheryl pointed out pictures on the walls and left the room while Rob carried them over one at a time. As the medication kicked in and the food fuelled her brain, Jan found she was able to coherently explain to Michael that this was a Gissing, and a bit too late technically, but it might work, while that one over there that looked even more mountainous was clearly a 1960s version done in acrylic paints. “Acrylics were still pretty new then. That surface would shine oddly under film lighting.”

  Michael took it all in. He had a surprisingly good eye for composition, which Jan attributed to years of watching his father dissect film stills. When she commented on his grasp of light and shadow, he shrugged. “I had art tutors when Daddy was shooting in Italy.”

  Cheryl came back with three more pictures. “These are from the upstairs hall. There’s one more in Mrs. Caine’s bedroom, but she’s resting in there, and I don’t want to disturb her. If she’s not awake by the time you leave, I can take a picture later and send it to you.” Since Jan was at that moment showing Michael the back of a canvas, explaining to him what the stamps and other markings meant, she added, “Oh, I’ll take a picture of the back, too.”

  Jan assessed eight paintings quickly, four of them good prospects that Rob arranged in the light from the patio doors. She set up her camera and let Michael take the actual photos. He didn’t mention Tyrone again, and she was just congratulating herself on a successful diversion when a woman screamed from the doorway.

  “Ty! Baby, you’re home!”

  Michael turned, looking eagerly for his friend. Sloane Caine stared back at him, her face whitening, and sank down where she stood.

  After a few minutes, Cheryl coaxed her up to the nearest sofa. Sloane recovered enough to apologize to the guests and dredged up enough parental instinct to reassure Michael that she was all right now. She even told him she was sure Tyrone would be home soon and would be very happy to have him over to play. By the time she got that speech out, her voice was shaking. Michael leaned against Jan, trembling in the face of the woman’s overwhelming emotion.

  She hugged him over the arm of her wheelchair and whispered in his ear, “Ty’s mom really wants to believe Ty will be fine, and we’re going to help her, okay?”

  He nodded. After a moment he straightened up and said, “Can I leave him a message for when he gets back?”

  Sloane gave a tremulous smile. “You sure can. There are markers and crayons and things in his room. Cheryl, will you show him?”

  Cheryl took Michael away. Sloane, her heartbreaking smile erased, excused herself and groped her way out of the room. Jan finished photographing the last painting and Rob began to rehang pictures. He’d just finished the third when Michael yelled from upstairs.

  “Jan, Jan! They have a painting of my mom!”

  “Oh, no!” she said softly to Rob. “He’s imagining a resemblance because he misses her so much. Go get him away from whatever it is.”

  He left but came back a moment later, carrying another painting. “Jan, you
really have to see this.”

  Michael was behind him, vibrating with excitement. “It’s her! Just like when we went to England for BAFTA!” He had his phone out and was scrolling through photos before Rob had fully turned the portrait. “See? A different dress, but it’s her!”

  Jan stared. She’d never seen Kitrin with her hair piled up, but in the bright light of the patio doors, there was no mistaking the resemblance. That delicate face with the pointed chin, the wistful expression … both were classic Kitrin. Only the clothing didn’t fit. She couldn’t ever recall seeing Kitrin in a wide-lapel jacket with a wasp waist.

  Michael thrust his phone at her. “See?”

  She looked from painting to phone. On the BAFTA awards red carpet, Kitrin wore a slim-line gown inspired by Second World War fashions, with a high-fronted hairstyle that might have been seen on any Women’s Army Corps volunteer.

  Cheryl came from the kitchen with a pitcher of lemonade and several glasses. “I thought everyone could use a cool drink before you face the heat again,” she said. “Oh, that painting’s far out of your period. It’s a copy done from a much older photograph, of Mr. Caine’s mother as a young woman.”

  “The resemblance to Michael’s mother,” said Rob, “is remarkable.”

  “It’s her,” Michael insisted, his lip trembling.

  Jan suggested the first alternative that came to her. “Maybe Mr. Caine’s mother and your granny were sisters. That would make you and Tyrone, um, second cousins or something.”

  He wasn’t convinced, but the meltdown potential receded. “I’m going to call my granny when I get home and ask her.”

  “You do that,” said Jan. “And if they are sisters, we’ll come back and take a proper picture of this picture for you to send to your granny.”

  Cheryl’s phone and Sloane’s shrilled simultaneously. They both scrambled to check their messages. Sloane gave out a wordless shriek. Cheryl dropped her phone onto the tray, scattering the glasses.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Lacey ran to meet the old woman.

  “You got a phone that will reach the airstrip?” Susan yelled, slowing her horse with practised coordination between her knees and the one hand holding the reins. “Call for a chopper quick. Boy’s et somethin’.”

  Lacey took in Tyrone’s flaccid limbs, the vivid red rash around his mouth, and streaks of greenish bile drying on his shirt front. His head lolled. His breathing was louder than the horse’s. She hit her phone with one hand and steadied the boy with the other.

  “SAR base, McCrae here,” she said, praising the gods for all the oil millionaires who had ranches way out here and liked their cellphone service. “We have Tyrone Caine. Repeat. We have Tyrone.” She ran her hand up his leg, noted that it seemed undamaged but his jeans were filthy. His tanned arms, dirt streaked and scratched, hung limp. His chest strained to pull in air. A tell-tale blue tinge to his lips, beneath the rash, was a sure sign he wasn’t getting enough oxygen. “He’s in medical distress,” she reported. “His breathing is laboured. Looks cyanotic. Send EMTs and air transport. We are approximately eight kilometres south of the airstrip, in a field on the east side of Highway 40.”

  When she hung up, Susan lifted Ty’s left leg over the saddle and slid him into her arms. She lowered him to the ground and parted his lips. Green foam bubbled in his throat. His tongue had swelled to almost fill his mouth. His larynx was probably swelling, too. How much longer could air reach his lungs? If this were a movie, she’d know how to do a penknife tracheotomy in the field, but it wasn’t in her first aid training beyond the single curt instruction: don’t ever attempt it. All she could do was put him into the recovery position, using the technique drilled into her long ago at Depot: left arm out, right arm bent to support his left cheek, right leg bent and then gently tilted to the left, bringing his limp body over onto its left side. She adjusted his head to open his airway farther and was rewarded by a slightly deeper breath.

  “Can’t you do that resuscitation breathing?” Susan demanded, having dismounted. She dropped her horse’s reins, and it stayed, lowering its head to nose the dusty grasses.

  “His throat’s swelling shut,” Lacey explained. “If he stops breathing completely, all we can do is chest compressions to keep what oxygen is in his blood moving around.” She checked his pulse. Rapid, but what did that mean? “Do you know what he ate?”

  Susan pulled a green stalk from her breast pocket. “Had this in his hand when I got there.”

  “Great! The medics will soon tell if that’s what he ate, and if he’s poisoned or having an allergic reaction.”

  Lacey laid her fingers against Tyrone’s neck. His pulse was still rapid, and she thought his breathing was getting wheezier again. The blue tinge in his lips deepened, an ever-greater contrast to the paleness of his cheek. She shifted his head to open his airway farther and strained her ears for the thrashing of helicopter blades in the baked summer sky.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  As she watched Sloane and Cheryl hug each other, tears streaming down their faces, Jan’s phone rang. She fished it out of her pocket. “Hello?”

  Lacey’s voice said, “You’re going to hear it soon, but I wanted to tell you so you can break it to Michael if he’s still with you. We’ve found Ty. He’s in a bad way from something he ate out in the forest and being airlifted to Children’s Hospital right now.” Her voice trembled. “Jan, he might not survive.”

  “Thanks for telling me. Are you okay?”

  “I don’t know. Look, I’ve got to go. The search teams are arriving to try to follow his trail back to Orrin.”

  “You stay safe,” Jan told her. She disconnected and said briskly, “Time for us to get out of the way. Rob, take this gear out to the van. Michael, can you push my chair, please?” She stopped by the weeping women. “You’ll want to be heading to the hospital right away. My thoughts are with you.”

  Soon they were all three in the van. This time, too keyed up to lie down, Jan took the front seat. She settled her dark glasses over her eyes to limit the sensory overload from traffic whizzing past. Should she tell Michael his friend had been found or keep quiet until they knew whether he’d survive or not? What was the right decision for this child she hardly knew? She scanned rapidly through her mental contacts list and found not a single friend or acquaintance who worked with children and might offer guidance.

  As the van waited at a stoplight, Michael asked, “Did they get bad news?”

  Moment of decision. The truth had to win. “I think it’s good news, but shocking. Tyrone has been found but … well, he ate something that wasn’t good for him, and he’s being taken to the hospital.”

  “Oh.” Michael was silent for half a block. “He’ll be okay. I ate some berries in a park when I was little, and they took me to the hospital. The nurse gave me stuff to make me puke. It was so gross.”

  “But you were okay again soon?” Rob asked.

  “Uh-huh.” Michael grinned. “Daddy said it’s not every day he sees purple puke. I wish he’d took a picture.”

  Jan breathed a sigh of relief. The truth was out, and Michael was putting it into context with his own experiences. While Tyrone might not be so lucky, he was in good hands now. They’d just have to wait for news.

  “Terry may be called out again,” she told Rob. “You want to keep staying at my place?”

  “Sure.” He turned on the radio, and they listened in silence to the rush-hour traffic reports. The hourly news came on, but without mention of Tyrone being found. Jan glanced at the dashboard clock. Only fifteen minutes since Lacey’s call. Somehow the SAR base had managed to stave off an immediate media announcement, but it couldn’t be long now. As soon as they cleared the city limits and didn’t need the road report, she tuned to an all-music station and let that fill the silence for the rest of the drive.

  They dropped Michael off at Jake’s, seeing him right into his father’s presence. They’d barely got out the gates when Jan’s phone rang. She y
anked it out. “Lacey?”

  “Um, no,” said a strange voice. “I’m looking for Jan Brenner?”

  “That’s me.”

  “Hi. Davey gave me your name. You are a friend of Kitrin Matheson?”

  Ten minutes later, with the van idling in her own drive, Jan thanked Tootsie Williams and hung up. “Well, that’s that. Poor Kitrin had virtually no friends down in L.A., and only Tootsie is going to Regina for her funeral.”

  Rob steered the van into the garage and stopped. “And the rest?”

  “I guess you couldn’t help overhearing.”

  “Enough to know you were talking about Michael’s DNA.” Rob silenced the motor and stared straight ahead. “Did Mylo have him tested?”

  Truth was best, whatever the emotional fallout. “Yes. He’s Mylo’s son.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Lacey’s last sight of Tyrone, as he was loaded onto the helicopter, was as a thin body under a blanket, his face mostly covered with an oxygen mask. Her first sight had been only fifteen minutes ago. She watched the helicopter vanish over the trees and hoped he would still be alive when it landed at Children’s Hospital.

  Gradually, the noise faded and the smaller sounds around her came into focus once more. Three trucks filled with search teams had arrived. They were preparing to follow old Susan back to the distant cutline where she’d found the boy. Constable Markov was taking Susan’s statement while the old woman leaned calmly on a fence post. Lacey headed toward them, knowing she’d be next and wanting to hear Susan’s story for herself. They hadn’t talked beyond Susan’s curt orders on getting the unconscious boy off the horse and Lacey’s equally short answers on the first aid options.