The Taken

37

The girl lay utterly still in the boat, her hands laced together in her lap. She had closed her eyes and her head felt like it had doubled in weight on Claire’s leg. Her jaw fell open. She’s so drunk. Her face was peaceful, her eyes shuddering under her lids. What was she dreaming of?

They were going to the island to confront him together, to find him and make him choose. She’d believed Claire; she was a creature of faith. But when the ferry put in, the girl was too drunk to walk and she’d ranged up the little streets looking for a couple of bikes to borrow, still pulling on a bottle of red wine. Coming down behind 6th Street and looking into backyards, they’d seen the boat and Claire knew what they would do. It had been a challenge getting the little vessel out of the gate without making too much noise, and when the girl dropped her end on the sidewalk and collapsed laughing, Claire was sure they’d be caught. But no lights went on and they made it to a concrete launch at the bottom of the residential streets and slid the boat into the water. The girl lay on her back, cradling the bottle against her belly, and murmuring. “You’re good… you’re good to take care of me,” she said, and she raised the bottle to her lips and emptied it. “Crap,” she said. “Another dead soldier.” She put the bottle down as Claire navigated the boat into the dark channel that ran into the centre of the Islands.

The moon slid along the curve of the bottle as she angled into the thin waterway with small sailboats and motorboats moored along its edge. She rinsed the bottle out in the water. When it was half full, it bobbed on the surface like a buoy, but if she filled it to the rim, it began to sink. She watched the bottle begin to vanish into the black water, but then she plunged her hand in and pulled it out. She put it down on its side in the hull. The water gurgled out of it, running into the lowest parts of the boat and filling the little channel in the middle. She filled the bottle and emptied it out eight more times. There was a long, two-inch-wide puddle running down the middle of the boat’s hull, but nothing was going to wake the girl now.

She shifted her body and cradled the back of the girl’s head in her hands. As she lowered her to the floor of the boat, she turned her face so her body would follow onto its side and the girl adjusted and turned into a fetal position, as if she were in bed. The boat bobbed with the shifting weight of the two women. The oars hung in their locks, the paddles dragging in the water as they drifted slowly up the channel between Ward’s and Algonquin islands. Claire kneeled down and put her hand on the girl’s shoulder and pulled it gently toward her. Slowly, receptive to the pressure, the girl turned on her belly, sighing. With one more nudge, her face was centred over the runnel that ran down the middle of the boat, and Claire could hear her blowing bubbles in the inch of water she’d emptied out into the bottom.

Leaning down, she could see her own face in the thin line of water, her long, sad face, full of knowledge. Because knowledge was the problem: if she had known nothing, if she had remained blissfully free of what he’d been careless enough to let her find out, she could have gone on. Welcomed him home in the evenings joyously ignorant, shared her meals with him, his bed, his stories of his work, those stories she knew also to be lies, but she would believe them just the same. It was all she wanted: to remain in the dark. But he could not even do that for her, the women he destroyed found their way to her, full of sorrow and anger and spite, and she could do nothing for them. But this one, this one she could help.

The sky above was clear but empty: all the stars that hung above the city were devoured by its light and the only light in the sky came from the moon. It was a half-moon now, a drowsing moon, and it was as if nothing knew they were here, no mind, no heart knew her heart or mind. She was alone. In some ways, she’d always been alone, victim to a helpless love, but now she was more alone than she’d ever been, decided on an action that she knew would change nothing.

Where were the people who loved this girl, who could have preserved her from herself? These people had failed her when she needed them most, and here she was, alone and insensate, in the dark, with the wrong kind of person. For a moment, Claire felt protective of her, as if, for that moment, she was her mother, trying to show her the error of her ways. But such a love could smother. You could not make other people’s choices for them, you could only suffer along with them and hope they would survive their mistakes.

Claire straddled the girl’s lower back, letting her weight press down. Then she leaned forward, her fingers interlaced, and pressed the girl’s face into the bottom of the boat, her nose and mouth in the water.

At first, nothing happened. Then Claire felt the girl go rigid and resist, her animal self alert to the threat even as her human self was already drowned in drugs and brandy. She bucked, lifting Claire off the bottom of the boat, but Claire kept her tenacious hold, pressing the girl’s forehead hard against the boat’s bottom, keeping her face in the channel, keeping her out of the saving air.

The girl began to thrash now, but even as her body struggled more and more desperately, Claire kept her in place, the tears rolling down her cheeks. Go, she urged the girl. And then the power of the girl’s will and her bodily strength began to run down, and the sounds of choking diminished, the girl’s force began to leak out, and the kicking of her legs became more and more involuntary, until, at last, she lay inert. Claire waited another minute, counting the seconds, and then gradually lifted her hands away from the girl’s skull.

Nothing. No movement at all.

She would have to move quickly now. She lifted the girl off her belly by putting her arms under her shoulders, but as Claire tried to tip her into the water, the boat teetered perilously and she knew both of them would go in. Then someone would see a drenched woman crossing back to the mainland on the ferry. She laid the girl back down and thought for a moment, alert for sounds from the shoreline. Then it came to her. She pulled the oars from their locks and laid them crossways over the gunwales, as if she were going to sit on them.

With effort, she turned the girl over on her back. Her long black hair fell away from her face and the wet skin on her cheeks shuddered a little, as if she were fearful of what was about to happen to her. Her eyes were open, distant, a look of faint surprise on her face. Claire leaned to her left and gripped the heel of the girl’s left foot, lifting it over one of the oars. Then she lifted the other as well, moving the oar into place under the girl’s knees. The torso would be more difficult. She stood behind the girl’s head, her knees braced against the other oar and, balancing herself as carefully as she could, she leaned over the oar and lifted the girl’s head and then shoulders and, with her knees, nudged the oar forward beneath her. The little rowboat shook with the repeated jolts, but it quickly stilled, and then the girl was suspended there, the backs of her hands still resting against the bottom of the boat, as if she were levitating.

Claire rested a moment, but she would have to be done quickly now. She slipped crosswise under the girl, her knees bent up against the side of the boat, and pulled the thin ends of the oars together over her head in a V. The black canopy of the sweater hung down in front of her face.

Then there was a voice, a murmur in the distance, someone on the shore of one of the islands, calling out to her. She lay as still as possible, her heart pounding. And then she realized it wasn’t a voice coming from the island: it was coming from above her.

It was the girl.

Quietly, she was moaning. Words, unintelligible, although she thought she heard her name. Claire reached up and covered the girl’s mouth with her hand, the cold lips brushing against her skin, slowing down, and then stopping. Then Claire braced her feet hard against the side of the boat and, straining, began to push the oars into the air. They curved heavily with the weight on them, but slowly, the girl’s body began to slide toward the opposite thwart. Claire could hear the sound of her sweater rubbing down the wood. She pushed the makeshift slip higher into the air and the girl began to slide faster and faster and now Claire had to hold the ends of the oars down to keep them from flipping into the water with the girl’s mass sliding toward the paddles. Her body flipped once onto her face and then, with a sound like a boulder plunging from the sky, she disappeared beneath the surface.

The girl’s name was Brenda Cameron. She was twenty-nine. She was someone’s daughter, someone’s friend, someone’s lover. It was said of her that desperation and loss drove her to take her own life, but that was not true: Brenda Cameron wanted to live. But, more than that, she wanted to be loved. And for that human wish, she paid with her life.

Hazel hadn’t been inside her house for over two months. It smelled close and felt anonymous, like a museum without its exhibits. They’d made two trips from the house on McConnell Street since early that morning – how had they amassed that much stuff in so relatively short a time? – and Glynnis had just appeared with her back seat packed full of their clothing. “Feel good to be home?” she asked, pushing open the door with her foot. “I got it, I got it,” she said when Hazel rushed over to unburden her of the load. “You just drink it in.”

It did feel good to be home. Or rather, it felt good to no longer be an invalid and a guest. Glynnis went up the stairs with the clothes, like she owns the place, Hazel thought, and she smiled at the thought. But she doesn’t.

She went out to the car to see if there was anything else to bring in, but it was empty now. Glynnis returned and closed the hatchback. “That’s it. If I find anything else, I’ll send Andrew around with it.”

“Make sure you put a tracking device on him.”

Glynnis laughed. “Maybe I’ll bring it around.” She opened the door to the car, but Hazel put her hand on top of it and held it.

“Listen.”

“It’s okay, Hazel.”

“No, I want to say this. You had no good reason to open your doors to me, but you did. I don’t know what I would have done otherwise.”

“You’re not a mistake Andrew made, Hazel. You’re a part of his life. That makes you part of mine.”

“I’m not sure many people in your position would see it that way. I’m lucky that you did.”

“I don’t begrudge anyone the love they feel,” Glynnis said. “Even if it hurts me a little to know of it.”

The two women regarded each other. “It hurts?” said Hazel.

“I can’t help feeling stuff I don’t want to feel. The two of you have a lot of history. I admire that… and sometimes it makes me miserable.”

She didn’t think about it. She just stepped around the open car door and took Glynnis into her arms. They held each other silently for a moment and then Hazel, awkwardly, stepped back. “I’m sorry it makes you unhappy,” Hazel said. “I want you to know how grateful I am for everything.”

Glynnis pushed the bottom of her palm across a cheek. “Is this the beginning of a beautiful friendship?” she asked, and there was the briefest moment of hesitation before both women laughed nervously.

Hazel held out her hand. “Let’s not push it.”

In the dining room, Martha was pulling the drapes wide, opening the windows, and squirting Windex on the panes. Her mother was marvelling at the quantity of dead flies lying on their backs on the windowsill. “You’d think they’d see their buddies lying dead of exhaustion and go try another exit, but no.”

“They’re flies.”

“Ex-flies. Go fetch a broom, would you?”

Hazel passed through the kitchen, where the groceries they’d bought were still only partially unpacked. She was sure she’d seen Andrew carry them in, and it was strange of him to stop partway through a job. There was a carton of milk sitting on the counter. She put it in the fridge and then stood over the sink and looked into the back garden. He was nowhere to be seen. “Andrew?” she called.

She heard him answer from the bathroom in the hall behind her. “Just a minute.”

“Sorry,” she called. She heard bubbling coming from the counter and turned to see the coffee finishing. The sight of a pot of coffee filling would, for some time now, link itself in her memory to the early morning encounter with Claire Eldwin in her kitchen, living the last few moments of her freedom. She’d wept in the car back to Mayfair, but neither Hazel nor Constable Childress had inquired whether she wept for herself, her husband, or Brenda Cameron. When they got to Mayfair, Eldwin was in surgery. They kept her cuffed in a curtained-off part of the ER for two hours, and when they had word he’d come out, they let her into the ICU to see him. He was still unconscious, but his pulse had risen and his colour had improved. The surgeon had had to amputate his right arm at the elbow: the cut wrist had become infected and gangrene was setting in – they’d had no choice. The sides of Eldwin’s head were bandaged as well – they told her if he recovered he’d have to find a plastic surgeon to reconstruct his ears, but for now, all they could do was clean up the wounds and graft skin over the gaping holes to protect the structures within. She stood at his bedside, her hands behind her back, and called to him, but he’d given her no response. “He’ll be asleep awhile yet,” the nurse told her. She wanted to wait for him to wake, but the brief visit was all Constable Childress would allow her: they had a date to keep with Superintendent Ilunga.

Hazel had sent Wingate back to Port Dundas to start on the paperwork, but she lingered behind, hoping Eldwin would open his eyes. She had yet to actually meet this man, whose fecklessness had set in motion the destruction of so many lives. She didn’t know how she would tell him the news of what had changed in his world. She didn’t even know how she felt about it. Would he grieve the knowledge that his wife had killed to preserve an illusion? Would he welcome the new freedom it gave him? She realized she didn’t know the bounds of the man’s depravity. The longer she sat with him – and he continued to sleep – the more she wished there was something she could charge him with. But there was nothing. For once in his life, Colin Eldwin was the victim.

Joanne Cameron was under observation. There would have to be charges – she was not innocent, she had chosen to accept Dana Goodman’s methods – but Hazel thought an understanding judge would take the mitigating circumstances under consideration. Grief was not the same as insanity, but in some cases, it was close.

As for Goodman, the teams that had gone out to Pickamore to bring him in had found his body in the tall grass six metres back from the shoreline. She’d shot him cleanly through the throat: the autopsy showed he’d drowned in his own blood. It was the first time she’d discharged her gun in eight years, and it was the first time she’d ever killed a man. She looked into her heart and she saw that she could live with what she’d done.

Hazel poured coffee into four cups, two milks and two sugars for her, regular for Martha, and black for her mother. She was hovering over Andrew’s mug when she heard him come out of the bathroom. “Are you still double-double, or has your wife reduced your sugar intake?”

He made a mocking “O” with his mouth. “My wife? Good god, you’re really coming around, aren’t you?”

“Don’t push me, Andrew. Seeing you coming out of the bathroom with the newspaper in your hands is making me hallucinate.”

“I’ll go double-double for old times’ sake,” he said. She stirred and passed him his cup. He sat at the kitchen table, tossing the morning’s Westmuir Record down in front of him with a faint slap. “Impressive ending to ‘The Mystery of Bass Lake.’”

“You think so?”

“You’re full of surprises.”

“Still,” she said.

He sipped his coffee, grimaced, and asked for more sugar. As he stirred it in, he said, “You and Gord Sunderland working together. I’m going to watch the sky for pigs.”

“It was the only way to convince him not to print all the scurrilous rumours about Ray Greene coming back to town. Among other things.”

Andrew raised an eyebrow at her. “Scurrilous rumours are usually true. Is Greene coming back?”

She hesitated. “Maybe.”

“And how do you feel about that?”

“My feelings are mixed.”

“Your feelings are always mixed.”

“Then I guess it’s business as usual.”

It could have been five or ten years ago, the two of them bantering at the kitchen table. Any time but now. Except it was now, and her mother and daughter were airing out the house and another summer was beginning in which she would be, in all the ways that it mattered, alone. A great shudder of feeling went through her and the thought came into her mind that maybe this was how it would be, always, maybe she would be alone for the rest of her life. She reached over the table and covered Andrew’s hand with hers. He smiled at her, at ease. “What harm would it do if you kissed me one last time over coffee?”

“None,” he said, and he pushed himself out of his chair and leaned over the table. She met him in the middle, and their lips touched, lightly, chastely. He looked around. “The world still here?”

She laughed. “Thank you for everything, Andrew.”

“You’re welcome. Mi casa es… well, mi casa. Don’t hurt your back again.”

“Are you two arm-wrestling?” said Glynnis, entering the kitchen. She held up an alarm clock. “I forgot this. I put it in the glove compartment so I wouldn’t, and I did.”

“You should have kept it for your collection,” Hazel said.

“Oh, no, it’s yours. It’s a different time zone out here anyway, isn’t it?” She put it down on the table and gave Andrew a kiss on the cheek, but as she was leaving again, Hazel called her back.

“Stay for a coffee. You’ve earned at least that.”

“At the very least,” said Glynnis.

She sat and Hazel got another cup and grabbed the little box of sugar-coated donuts they’d bought. She called to her mother and Martha. Emily came into the kitchen with a fistful of wispy dead flies, which she dumped into the garbage can under the sink.

“Is my house arrest over?” asked Martha, sitting and taking her coffee.

“You’re free to go under your own recognizance,” said Hazel, “but you’ll have to check in with your parole officer on a regular basis.”

Martha nodded knowingly. “You think plastic surgery will help me?”

“Not a chance,” said her mother. “I’d know you anywhere.”

After washing her hands, Emily came to the table. Around it sat a collection of people who made up, in Emily’s opinion, a very strange family indeed.

Andrew opened the newspaper to the conclusion of the summer short story and turned it to her. “Your daughter, the author,” he said. Emily lifted her glasses off her chest and put them on and began to read. “Maybe you have another calling,” he said to Hazel.

“I’m having a hard-enough time with this one.”

“Another lifetime, then.”

“Yes,” she said, a little sadly, lifting her coffee cup to shield her eyes. “Another lifetime.”