On Her Trail

by Marcelle Dubé

  “Hello?” he said into the mouthpiece. Then he looked at Laura. “Laura?”

  Laura paled and shook her head violently. Fay stood up and went to stand by her daughter, shaking her head at him, too.

  “Sorry,” said Mack politely, still looking at Laura, “you must have the wrong number.” He hung up quietly. The three of them stood in tableau for a few seconds, then Mack smiled.

  “If I’m going to lie for you, the least you can do is tell me why.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Fay set the coffee cup down harder than necessary. The clock on the stove read five after nine, well past time to get up. Her restless gaze settled on the downstairs bedroom door, which remained resolutely shut. Laura was thirty-three years old—hadn’t she outgrown that teenage slothfulness yet?

  She rubbed her face, trying to massage herself into wakefulness. Who had called for Laura last night? The look on Laura’s face when she realized someone was asking for her…

  With a sigh Fay pushed her chair back, took her empty cup to the sink and rinsed it. She placed it on the drain board to keep company with her breakfast dishes and stared out the window above the sink. As if to spite the sun warming her face, the wind sent a volley of aspen leaves tumbling to the ground.

  She wished Laura would get up.

  James hadn’t been a morning person, either. He had slept as if drugged, and struggled every morning for wakefulness. Even when Laura was a baby, he had never been able to awaken enough to help during the night. He had worked hard during those early years, setting up a solid foundation for his accounting firm. The strain had shown in his nightmares, from which he would awaken with a shout, drenched in sweat. She had tried not to begrudge him his sleep, even as she dragged herself through her exhausted days.

  And if, late at night, her thoughts turned to Sawyer, she never let her sadness show during the day. Sawyer had gone, and James had stayed.

  Over the years, especially that first year, she found herself wondering more than once if James had said something to Sawyer to make him go. James always refused to discuss it, even though sometimes he shouted out Sawyer’s name in his restless sleep.

  “Good morning.”

  Fay jumped, her hand going to her throat. She turned around.

  Laura stood at the top of the stairs, barefoot in an old gray sweat suit salvaged from the back of her closet.

  “Sorry, Fay.” Her daughter grinned. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  Fay. When Laura had turned twelve, she took to calling her Fay instead of Mom. Fay should have stopped it right at beginning, but James teased her about it, telling her it was just a phase Laura was going through. Funny how she had become Fay while James always remained Dad.

  Fay tried to grin back. “You don’t look sorry at all.”

  Laura raked her fingers through snarled shoulder-length hair. Her face still wore pillow creases and there were dark circles under her green eyes.

  Fay immediately regretted her impatience. Of course Laura hadn’t slept well—she was worried about that Johnny T.

  That made two of them.

  “Would you like some coffee?” she asked, picking up the coffee pot.

  “Sure.” Laura went to the cupboard for a cup and held it out for Fay to fill. “You don’t work today?”

  Fay shook her head. “Only Mondays and Tuesdays.” She followed her daughter to the table and sat down.

  Laura took a deep breath. “Why?”

  “Why only two days? Well…”

  “No, why work there at all? Why do you want to work in such a depressing environment?”

  Fay studied her daughter, trying to gauge how much of the censure in her tone came from worry, and how much from disapproval. But why would she disapprove? Careful, she told herself. This one’s a minefield.

  “I work there because I make a difference. I was trained as a nurse, you know. Some of those women come in pretty battered and don’t want to go to the hospital.”

  “Jesus, Fay.” Laura’s eyes narrowed and Fay braced herself. “I know they need help, but that’s not the place for you.”

  “It doesn’t happen every day, and it’s good to feel useful again,” said Fay as calmly as she could. “It’s really not as bad as you think.”

  “What was last night all about then?” asked Laura. “I’ve never known you to faint.”

  “I did not faint!”

  “Just about!” said Laura, frowning over her coffee cup. “You deal with women and children who have been beaten up. That job is too stressful. You should quit. At least see a doctor.”

  Fay bristled. Laura was a fine one to talk about stressful jobs. At least Fay didn’t have underworld killers chasing her.

  And after weeks of no contact, Laura’s sudden concern rankled. She had called at least once a week while James was alive, no matter which part of the world she was in. Now Fay was lucky if she spoke to her daughter once a month.

  “Why the sudden interest, Laura?” she asked, unable—unwilling—to disguise the bitterness in her voice. “I can’t remember the last time you called.”

  “You know I’ve been busy!” Laura no longer looked sleepy. “And you could have called me!”

  “I’m sick of talking to your voicemail,” replied Fay tiredly. And I’m sick of you turning your back on me.

  She had tried. After James’s funeral, she had gone to Montreal with Laura for a week, but her daughter had been too busy with work to spend much time with her. What time they did spend together was strained. They had spoken exactly twice since then.

  Fay got up. “I’m sure you can get your own breakfast.”

  She went into her workroom and closed the door. So much for minefields. She’d just driven a tank across this one. After a few minutes she heard Laura go downstairs and take a shower. She looked at the square she was pinning and realized she had pinned one of the triangles wrong side up. With a sigh, she took the pins out and dropped the triangles back in the basket.

  She suspected that Laura saw her working in a safe house as an indictment of her marriage to James. She had heard the disapproval in her daughter’s voice when she found out. But it had nothing to do with James. She was now doing things for herself, not in relationship to a husband or a child.

  She leaned her forehead against the cool plastic of the sewing machine and closed her eyes. She had thought she would dream of Laura last night, but her dreams had been full of James’s sadness, of Sawyer’s loving eyes, of echoing anguish.

  Would she never be free? Why did the past cling to her when Sawyer himself had cut their ties?

  Were these two men, once friends, truly haunting her? Or were they conjured out of a guilt too long ignored?

  She could understand James haunting her, but Sawyer? Not once had she seen him or heard from him in the thirty-four years since his disappearance. No one outside the Yukon had come looking for him or asked about him. She had reported him missing, but the police had assumed he’d left town on his own. And with James standing right there, she couldn’t tell them she and Sawyer were supposed to run away together.

  What if he had changed his mind?

  After a while she convinced herself Sawyer had stolen away in the night. It was much later that suspicion entered her heart.

  James never talked about Sawyer or went near Sawyer’s cabin. He refused to rent it out, refused to even discuss it with her.

  Did he know something about Sawyer’s disappearance? Had he suspected she and Sawyer were lovers? The questions always remained, even after more than thirty years of marriage. She had never worked up the courage to ask them.

  At least now she knew for sure Sawyer was dead. But why had James’s death triggered Sawyer’s appearance? Were they to be forever linked, she and the two loves of her life?

  Her daughter needed her. She couldn’t waste time on two dead men. Maybe Laura was right. Maybe she should see a doctor.

  Or maybe, instead of snapping at her daughter, she should confide in her.
<
br />   ***

  Laura briskly toweled her hair and then straightened, flipping the wet strands back. Standing in front of the dresser mirror, she tugged at the tangle with a comb and tried to figure out how she had upset her mother.

  It was true that she had been busier than usual lately, but that was a reporter’s life. Fay had never objected before. But Dad had been around before. Maybe he had been enough for her.

  For over three months, Laura had been preoccupied with the loss of her father, and not preoccupied enough with her mother’s loss of her husband.

  With painful clarity she realized she didn’t know how her mother was feeling. Was Fay lonely? Had her self-sufficient, distant mother actually missed her?

  She suddenly felt as confused and uncertain as she had yesterday when Mack told her Fay had saved all her articles and school work.

  At the thought of Mack, Laura turned to stare at the mussed up quilt on the bed, remembering last night and how she had felt when she first realized that he had slept in her bed.

  Her night had been plagued by erotic dreams of Mack, with a dark dose of nightmares mixed in. Johnny Tucker chased her through a field of flash drives, on a mechanical horse, his eyes flashing alternately red and green, a mad electronic jockey. Even Adam made a guest appearance, sitting behind his desk and explaining to her that her employee insurance policy did not cover getting blown up by a bomb. In the background a phone had rung incessantly.

  Laura gave up on her hair and straightened the bed. She had donned the old sweatshirt again, even though it had a few holes in it. All the clothes she had brought with her were fit for late summer in Paris, not fall in the Yukon, and the clothes in the closet were of the same caliber as the sweats. Thank goodness for her jeans.

  She desperately wanted to call Adam. She wanted an update on the car bomb investigation. None of the radio reports she’d listened to since leaving Montreal had said anything about a bomb. Ditto the online newspapers. Adam would know what was going on.

  But Adam’s phone could be bugged. The last thing she wanted was to lead Johnny T.’s goons right to her and Fay. They might already know where she was. Who had called last night? There was no way to know. Fay’s ancient phone didn’t display incoming phone numbers.

  The news magazine was due out today. She would wait until tomorrow to call Adam. She shouldn’t have called him from the Toronto diner, but she had wanted to reassure him she was all right. After five years of working for him at the magazine, and running into him for three years before that when she worked for Reuters, he was more a friend than a boss. They had even come close to being more than friends, once.

  Three reporters and Adam had been working crazy hours on a vote-splitting scandal out of Ottawa. Adam had set up his command center in his hotel room, managing and editing the stories before they were e-mailed to head office. Laura’s was the last story to go and they had ended up alone in his room, celebrating with Glenlivet.

  “Good job, Laura,” said Adam, toasting her for the third time.

  “Couldn’t have done it without you,” said Laura, enjoying herself tremendously. She was sitting at the window seat, admiring the view of the Rideau Canal at night. She felt lightheaded from the scotch and almost giddy with the relief of meeting the deadline. Adam, standing next to her by the window, evidently felt the same. As she smiled up at him, his expression suddenly changed, as if he were seeing her for the first time. Then he kissed her.

  It was a nice kiss, firm and gentle, experienced but not rude. Laura relaxed into it, aware of Adam’s warmth and itching to lean into him. A warm tingle began to make its way up her body. Then his hand was on her breast and she came to her senses.

  She broke the kiss and moved away from him. “I may be drunk,” she told him with a grin, “but I’m not drunk enough to sleep with my boss.” And she went back to her own room, alone.

  The next morning they greeted each other with sheepish grins and shared painkillers. They never mentioned the incident, but between them was a new intimacy.

  Laura sighed. It would be nice to hear Adam’s voice again, but she would just have to wait.

  Sticking her head out the door, she listened for signs of her mother. Nothing. She must still be in the sewing room.

  Laura stepped down into the living room. They couldn’t leave the conversation at that. They had never been close, but Fay was still her mother. If she was unhappy, it was Laura’s duty to help.

  But the study beckoned, and feeling like a coward, she slipped through the study’s French doors and immersed herself in the solace of her father’s sanctum.

  She sank into the brown leather club chair, strategically placed to take advantage of the light streaming through the window. Dad had loved to read here. From this angle, she could see only sky, and part of the cliff, now rusty with fall. From the chair behind the desk, she would be able to view the drop off, and part of the cliff on the other side of the river.

  How should she approach Fay? If she had fought with her dad, they would already have made up by now. But she and Fay never argued, never fought, only tiptoed politely around each other. This glimpse into a mother she had never suspected made her uncomfortable. How was she supposed to react?

  Laura stood up and went to the bookshelves. There were mostly technical books on accounting principles and case studies, but several bookshelves contained books on history, aerodynamics, engineering and landscaping. Dad hadn’t been much on fiction, although a few of his favorites, mostly classics, stood out among the dry subjects like wildflowers in a field of hay. Laura traced a finger along one spine and pulled the book out—Moby Dick. Had he actually read it?

  “Laura.”

  Laura dropped the book.

  “Sorry.” Fay stood behind her, a small smile playing on her lips.

  “Tit for tat,” grumbled Laura, picking up the book and replacing it on the shelf.

  “I’ve been meaning to clean out those shelves and donate the books.” Fay stood hesitantly in the doorway, as if waiting for an invitation.

  “Donate them?” A totally irrational resentment rushed through Laura and words burst out of her before she could hold them back. “You can’t get rid of Dad’s stuff!”

  Fay looked as if she’d been slapped. “They’re only books, Laura. Do you plan to take up accounting?”

  “That’s not the point and you know it,” said Laura. She had gone too far, but she wasn’t about to back down now, especially not when her mother used that tone of voice.

  “Exactly what is the point, Laura?” asked Fay, her voice dangerously soft. “That your father was a saint and should now be worshipped? That the wrong parent died?”

  “Fay!” Laura swallowed her shock, allowing anger to roll over, submerge, conceal the raw pain behind her mother’s words. “What complete bullshit.” In two long strides she brushed past her mother.

  “This was a mistake,” she said grimly. “You and I never could spend time together.”

  She left through the back door, slamming it in a fit of childishness she knew she would regret.

  ***

  Fay remained in the doorway. Across the desk from her, the ghost of her husband wavered before the window, staring sadly at her.

  “Get out!” she suddenly screamed. She grabbed the first book she could lay her hands on and hurled it at the apparition. “Get out, get out, get out!”

  Not waiting to see if he obeyed, she ran out of the house, ran to the bench by the cliff, the one he had built for her far enough from the edge that she could sit and enjoy the view without fear. She collapsed on it and hid her face in her hands.

  What did they all want from her?

  After a moment, she realized she could hear rain falling. Surprised, she dropped her hands and opened her eyes. The sunny day remained in front of her, sun glinting off the far away ribbon of river. The sound came from behind her.

  She twisted to look back at the house just as the door slammed shut, startling her. The house was shrouded in nigh
t and rain, but it was not her house. It was the house as it was when they were building it.

  Her heart lurched then thudded painfully against her ribs.

  James stood on the makeshift porch, squinting into the night. The wind drove raindrops against his face, plastering his hair to his head. It was James as he had been over thirty years ago.

  A hundred feet away, a lessening in the darkness betrayed the cliff’s edge. Between the wind rushing through the pines and the rain pelting the unfinished side of the house, she could barely hear the river.

  James turned up the collar of his denim jacket. She remembered that jacket. She had given it to him. The rain penetrated the heavy fabric within seconds.

  He set off down the cliff trail and Fay scrambled to her feet to follow him. The rain pounded down but she remained dry, as did the path beneath her feet. She walked in daylight but her husband hunched his shoulders against the cold and wet.

  He was heading for the cabin Sawyer Leduc used to rent from him. That was how she had met Sawyer, running into him one day when they were both on the trail. It veered close to the cliff’s edge and James kept his head down, placing his feet carefully on the slippery path. Fay avoided looking at the edge, her stomach doing its familiar flip.

  And then Sawyer was there, blocking the way.

  “James.” Sawyer waited, a tall, lean figure, face invisible in the darkness.

  Fay gasped, as much for air as for the shock of hearing Sawyer’s beloved voice again. At twenty-four, Sawyer had been closer to her age than James’s thirty. A flush of guilt ran through her. They had been friends until she came between them.

  Sawyer’s shoulders were hunched against the rain, too. “I was coming to see you.”

  James stopped. “About Fay.”

  Sawyer came closer. “Yes.”

  “You know we’re getting married.”

  Sawyer laughed, the sound muted by the drumming of rain on leaves. “Marriage? Don’t pressure her, man. Let her decide for herself what she wants to do.”

  James’s voice was hard. “It’s what you want that doesn’t matter anymore, Sawyer. Fay’s marrying me. Stop playing games with her.”