Into the Fall

Chapter 3

After the quartet of twentysomethings had disappeared around the point, the reality of Sarah’s situation came into horrifying focus, shadows appearing through murky light: Matthew and the canoe were gone, and she was trapped in the wilderness with no means of getting her family out. She cursed into the wind and frantically thought through her paltry options. Conditions were worsening on the lake, the wind building into a howl, and their little beach was being swallowed by waves. Sarah ushered the kids into the tent while she prowled the shoreline on faint hope.

It was not a day to be out. No boater would have willingly ventured out in these conditions. Sarah had just resigned herself to the fact that they would have to spend another night in the woods when she saw a boat. At first, she was sure it was wishful imaginings. She waved maniacally, nonetheless. Her heart stopped when the driver acknowledged her by turning the boat, letting waves break against the bow. Sarah watched in wonder as an older man deftly maneuvered the craft into the bay.

She waded hip deep into the water, yelling, though the driver’s expression told her he couldn’t hear her above the wind and motor. Still, she yelled. The kids had come out of the tent and stood like statues on the shore as wind whipped the trees behind them.

“My husband,” Sarah yelled above the fading engine. “I can’t find my husband. We—” She gestured to the kids standing on the shore. “We need help.”

“I got youse,” the man said without hesitation.

Once settled in the boat and underway, Sarah told her story while they motored across the lake as fast as the waves would allow. Her words vaulted over each other. It sounded like a movie plot: a man lost, his family stranded. A story was unfolding, one Sarah only partially understood from within its depths.

Twenty minutes later, they were standing in the man’s cottage. Inside the honey-colored log cabin, a picture window offered an open view of the lake, framed by dented wood planks and family-worn spaces. The view would have been serene in nicer weather, but today it carried malevolence like a cudgel. Sarah stood at the window and watched the leaves whip into the waiting water of Nagadon Lake.

“Your husband a paddler?” the man asked.

Sarah turned to look at him. He stood in the cottage’s open kitchen, simple pine cupboards behind him and empty mugs dangling from his hands while a battered kettle sputtered on the stove. The air smelled of Pine-Sol and stale bacon. Out the picture window, Charlie and Bella sat on an old tire swing while the lake lurked behind them, mercifully contained. Farther out, thunderclouds charged across the sky.

Sarah couldn’t catch the meaning of the question. She tried to focus on the man’s face—kind eyes under a bush of silver gray hair. What was his name? It mattered. She needed to remember the man who had plucked her and the kids off the campsite. Gabe. Gabe Doran. That was it. He looked at her, eyebrows raised and shoulders poised for an answer. She knew her answer was important, but her tongue couldn’t shape the words.

She looked instead at the off-white wall behind him, blank except for a faded Red Cross Water Safety poster bleached by sun and time. A mismatch of washed-out red oblong circles and rounded triangles. She stared at the ripped corner, the unreadable pen scratches along the margin, the bold white writing quoting safety statistics. Across the top in black letters: O N AVERAGE , 57 KIDS DROWN EVERY YEAR IN C ANADA .

“Husbands?” she said, on a rushed breath.

“I’m sorry. Say again?” Gabe asked.

“How many husbands drown?” Sarah gestured to the poster and let tears cloud her vision, blurring the colors into a single splotch of red at the center of the paper.

“I’ll get the tea ... give you a moment,” said Gabe.

A short time later, Sarah stood in the kitchen, cradling the handset of an old-fashioned corded phone. She took a breath and dialed. “I think my husband’s lost,” Sarah said to a voice at the end of the line, uttering the words aloud for the first time before giving the woman her name and a skeletal summary of the morning.

Sarah knew where she had left her husband. Behind her closed eyes, she saw his face, the fire far behind but casting enough of a glow to illuminate the cauliflower curl of his ear, his lips wrapped around the oh of a surprise. She heard the thrum of waves on shore.

“How old is your husband?” the operator asked.

Ta-thump, ta-thump, ta-thump. Sarah’s pulse pounded against her ears.

“Hello? Are you there? Can you hear me?” the woman’s voice warbled as if she and Sarah were both under water, calling out through opaque light.

“Ma’am?” the voice said. “I need you to take a few deep breaths. Can you do that? It’s going to be okay. Just breathe.”

Out the window, the lake roiled like a sleeping beast.

Sarah turned her back to the water, desperate to escape its clutches. She pulled in a gulp of air, and her jackhammering pulse softened.

“That’s it. Another deep breath for me. Good. Help is coming, but I need you to give me some information. Can you do that?”

A strangled “Yes” escaped Sarah’s lips.

“Great. Now, can I get your name?”

“Sarah. Sarah Anderson.”

“Good. That’s good, Sarah. Now, how old is Matthew?”

“Thirty-seven. He’s thirty-seven,” Sarah said, perversely pleased that she was able to answer a question.

“Okay, now, does Matthew have any medical concerns? Anything at all you can think of?”

“No. He’s healthy. Active. Always swimming or running or God knows what.”

“You’re doing great, Sarah. Just to confirm, as far as you know, he’s alone? He didn’t go paddling with anyone else?”

“No, it was just us.” A silly question, Sarah thought. “I already told you, we’re on a family canoe trip. We camped on Nagadon Lake. Just the four of us. We were on one of the numbered sites.”

“And how long do you estimate Matthew has been gone?”

The question thudded against Sarah.

“I don’t know,” she said, fear and irritation pushing words forward. “I woke up this morning around eight and both Matthew and the canoe were gone. I thought he went for a paddle by himself—he does that sometimes—but he didn’t come back. He’s never gone off this long before, and the weather. It’s bad. I don’t know where he is. I don’t know what time he left. I don’t know ...”

Emotions ricocheted through Sarah—worry, frustration, fear—they surged and spiraled, as if trapped in a bottle on a rough sea. Each emotion pummeled, leaving her breathless. She collapsed against the wall and slid to the floor, wrapping and unwrapping the stretched-out telephone cord around her wrist as she landed. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the lake, waiting.

“Okay, Sarah, I’m almost through with my questions. Just a couple more. You can do this.”

Sarah drew herself back up, bent her entire will toward the voice on the phone. She could do what needed to be done. Her husband was missing. She would fix things. The way she always did. This could not be happening to her. She would make it right. She drew in a tight breath and wiped her hands on the thighs of her pants.

“It sounds like you’ve been to the area before,” the woman said. “How much wilderness experience does Matthew have?”

“He’s been out here lots, with me and on his own. He grew up camping. He’s been coming to this area since he moved to Ontario. He introduced me to this place. It’s his place, not mine.” Sarah willed her voice to steady.

“Okay, good. He knows what he’s doing out there. That’s a good thing.”

The woman was placating her. Sarah didn’t mind. She lapped up the crumbs of comfort, like a dog lurking beneath the table. “Ya. Ya, he knows his way around the woods. Orienteering, survival skills. He’s done all of that.”

“Okay, last question, Sarah. All this information will help us tailor how and where we look for Matthew. It’s all helpful.”

Sarah allowed herself the slight upturn of a half smile. “What supplies did Matthew have with him?”

Sarah went cold. Words caught in her throat. She saw the campsite in her mind.

Matthew’s fleece jacket poking out from under his sleeping bag, his tuque shoved into the side pocket inside the tent, the food bag still hanging in the tree when she woke up.

“Nothing,” Sarah said, barely above a whisper. “He has nothing.”

It took them twice as long to motor back to the campsite. Sarah and the kids needed to grab a few things before meeting with the police at the county dock. Conditions were miserable out on the lake. The wind worked hard at blowing the boat off course, so Gabe faced into it, letting water break against the bow. It was only midday, but heavy clouds leached daylight out of the sky. They needed to get moving so a search could get started before dark.

Sarah felt only resentment and anger from the lake and woods, as if they were calling up a storm to rid themselves of humanity once and for all.

“Why were you out in this?” Sarah said to Gabe, embarrassed that she hadn’t thought to ask earlier.

Gabe looked thoughtful, considering the question before he spoke. “I’m not really sure, actually,” he said, his voice loud enough to fight against the gale, but with an undertone of warmth as if he were holding a cherished memory. “I almost didn’t. A gust of wind nearly threw me in the water as I was readying the boat. And the lake looked murderous. I thought about crawling back into bed, truth be told. But it’s been hard to be up here since my wife, Jess, passed a couple of years ago. The cottage was her happy place. It ain’t the same without her curled up on that ugly green couch, a cup of tea in her hand and a book on her lap.”

Grief drifted over Gabe’s face, though he fought to contain it, and a sad smile slipped onto his lips.

“Maybe it was the universe telling me something. Although, I like to think it was Jess, watching out for folks on the lake the way she always did.”

“Grab only what you can carry,” Sarah told the kids as they climbed up the slab of granite toward the tent.

“It don’t matter,” Gabe said with a nod, joining her onshore. “It ain’t too far to the dock. It’s just across the lake around that point. We can shuttle back if ya need.”

The kids emerged from the tent, each with a small bundle of clothes and clutching stuffed animals. Sarah shoved everything into a small daypack, as if her feelings could also be stuffed in the bottom. After a peek in the tent and a once-over of the campsite, Gabe stood near the water, holding a line to the boat.

“We can’t leave Daddy,” Bella said. Her feet ground into a small patch of dirt between the rocks.

“We have to get help, Bella. We can’t find Daddy on our own.”

“No. I’m not going.”

Sarah looked at Gabe, trying to dismiss Bella’s tantrum, but it wasn’t going to be that easy. The child had staying power, and her little round face was contorted, not with rage but with pain and an unspeakable confusion.

“Look, Bella,” Sarah said, crouching down to meet Bella’s eyes. “We’ve left Daddy’s clothes, the tent, and sleeping bags. We’ll leave all the food and water in case he’s hungry when he comes back.”

Sarah handed the daypack to Gabe. Bella didn’t look placated.

“We’re leaving his cell phone. It’s turned off, so the battery lasts longer. He’ll be comfortable and be able to call us.” Sarah didn’t think the phone had service here. But it was only a small lie, and it may comfort Bella in the hours to come.

“Then I’m staying too!” Bella punctuated the words by plunking cross legged on a slab of stone. Gabe watched, a sliver of a smile on his lips.

“We have to go, Bella. This is not a discussion. I know you’re worried about Daddy. I am too. The police have said this is what we need to do right now to get him home safely. Staying here won’t help Daddy. We need to help the police. Do you understand?”

Tears broke over the girl’s cheeks. She slashed at them with open palms. Without a word, Bella stomped toward the waiting boat. She glared at Sarah, irises and pupils merged.

Charlie followed behind his sister, letting Gabe lift him up over the gunwales.

When it was Sarah’s turn to climb into the boat, Gabe offered her a firm hand. “They’ll be all right,” he said, out of the kids’ earshot. “Just shaken, is all. Kids are tough; they have a way of making it through.”

Sarah was grateful for the platitudes and burrowed herself in the notion that there could be an okay after this, that Matthew would be found, that they would return home, and all of this would be reduced to an amusing anecdote at dinner parties.

As Gabe pulled away from the shore, Sarah watched the campsite recede. Three spruce sentinels lorded over the bay, holding court, as if in judgment of Sarah and her family. She turned her back to them. Charlie leaned over and rested his head on Sarah’s lap, his small hand rhythmically running along her forearm, a nervous habit he’d had most of his life. Sarah laid a hand on his head, and he closed his eyes.

Bella sat as far away from Sarah as she could, staring ahead, her body unbending as the boat jumped over waves. Of her two children, Sarah worried most about her stalwart child. That unyielding will was formidable, but it could still break, and when it did, Sarah knew it might shatter. Though Matthew had mocked her for it, Sarah had once said that life was better when you acted like a sapling in the wind, twisting and bending when needed, so that the roots stay strong and whole. She wasn’t sure anyone in her family believed her, least of all Bella.

Sarah squinted into the wind as the boat approached the same dock they’d put in from only yesterday. Had it only been the day before? It felt like their arrival were another lifetime ago. Two uniformed officers—one male and one female—waited for her when the boat pulled up. They wore identical uniforms and safety vests emblazoned with POLICE across their chests. A grizzled older man with a scruffy beard and a bright yellow vest accompanied them. The grim-faced trio walked toward the boat.

“Mrs. Anderson?” the female officer said.

Sarah stepped onto the dock. The woman was tall and broad shouldered, and her skin wore the effects of time in the sun, tanned with just a hint of crow’s-feet around the eyes.

“Yes.”

“Mrs. Anderson, I’m Chantal Dubé.” Sarah shook the woman’s hand—it was warm and dry against Sarah’s cold one.

“This is Officer Rob Boychuk,” Dubé said, her voice tinged with a French Canadian accent. “He’s leading the search.”

The second officer took Sarah’s hand with a perfunctory “Ma’am.” Boychuk had a kind face, and Sarah noticed the striking pale blue of his eyes. He wore a uniform cap and the beginnings of middle age around his waist.

Boychuk held her eyes in his, and Sarah wanted to believe the compassion and warmth she read in them. There are moments when a choice must be made: trust a stranger and follow where they lead or stand firm against an unseeable current. Sarah followed. What more could she do?

“Call me Sarah,” she said. She turned to help the kids step out of the boat as the third person joined the officers. He looked like he had stepped out of the last century. His uncombed gray hair formed a makeshift halo around his head, and his heavily lined face had seen many hard seasons in the outdoors. Sarah lifted Charlie up with one foot on the dock, the other on the boat.

“And this is Paul Nowak,” Dubé said. “Paul manages the search and rescue volunteers in this region.”

Search and rescue. The words cut into Sarah, stopping her cold. Charlie dangled in the void between the boat and solid ground, Sarah’s hands under his armpits.

“Mommy,” he squealed, his legs kicking empty air. “It hurts!” She quickly set him down on the dock and felt the officers’ questioning eyes.

“I know it’s a lot, Sarah,” Dubé said. “It’s hard to take it all in. In these cases, our best chance at success is if we move fast. We’ve dealt with a lot of lost people in this area, and we want to do everything we can to bring Matthew home safe.”

“Ya, okay. Thank you,” Sarah said. She sunk into the certainty that she was no longer alone.

Gabe moved a little way along the dock and was joined by Boychuk. Sarah couldn’t make out their church murmurs, but their glances made her feel like a snared animal in the moment before it realizes it’s caught in a trap. She walked over and extended a hand to Gabe, defying the pity in their eyes. Instead of a handshake, Gabe wrapped her in a strong hug. She let him. “I don’t know how to thank you,” she said into his shoulder.

“It’ll be all right,” he said. “These guys got you now. They know what they’re doing.”

Sarah released her grip and wiped her nose with her sleeve. Gabe climbed back into his boat without looking back. She watched until he disappeared around a spit of land, and all that was left was the lake, black under a lead sky.

Rob Boychuk listened to the bones of Sarah Anderson’s story. He bent and molded them in his mind, trying to make them fit a pattern he knew all too well after twenty years with the Ontario Provincial Police. He pictured the comings and goings of the Anderson family, the campsite, the canoe bobbing against the ferocity of the waves. Still, something didn’t sit right about her story. A piece was missing, though he recognized he didn’t yet have enough information to judge. It nudged at him, nonetheless.

Sarah said her husband was a weekend woodsman, happier in the woods than warm and dry in their Ottawa home. That may be true. There were thousands of city dwellers who came to this part of the world willing and able to tackle the rigors in the woods. Maybe Matthew Anderson was one of them. But Gabe Doran had, unwittingly, carved a piece out of Sarah’s story. He’d been to the Andersons’ campsite, saw the gear lying about in the tent, heard Sarah tell her children his clothes were there for him. One thing Boychuk knew with absolute certainty: no experienced woodsman would venture away from camp without taking gear with him, particularly on a rainy morning in September. Warm clothes, a flashlight, a whistle—they’d be second nature to someone who spent time paddling these waters. Why would her husband have gotten into the canoe without them?

Nameless searchers, like bees in a hive, came and went through the open door of the camper van that served as a command center. Sarah sat with Officers Dubé and Boychuk, and Paul Novak, crammed around a small foldout table. Sarah had never set foot in a camper before, and this one was making her claustrophobic.

“Paul has mobilized volunteer ground searchers,” said Dubé. “And the command post is ready to go. What we’re looking for now is a starting point. Do you have any idea where Matthew may have gone?”

Sarah was mute. Another question she couldn’t answer. Three pairs of eyes watched her expectantly.

“No. I’m sorry. I don’t know where he went. He didn’t even tell me he was going.”

Sarah caught the look Dubé gave Boychuk. He’d been quiet, letting his colleague take the lead on questions. But something about Sarah’s answer stirred him. He breathed in and looked past Sarah, as if polishing his words. When he spoke, his voice was soft but solid, like the clang of a distant bell.

“Sarah, you mentioned that Matthew often came to the area,” he said as his eyes roamed the map laid out on the table. “Is there anything he’s mentioned in the past? A special swim spot? A fishing bay? Anything, even in passing?”

Sarah cradled a mug of coffee someone must have given her, though she had no memory of taking it. She stood and stepped toward the camper’s open door. Bella and Charlie sat at a tarp-covered picnic table with one of the volunteer searchers, their heads bowed over mugs of hot chocolate and a stranger asking them questions.

“A miss is as good as a mile here, Sarah,” Boychuk said. “It might seem like nothing, but put it out there, and we may be able to make a meal out of it.”

Searchers beavered away, setting up tarps and checking backpacks. Sarah caught the metallic scent of the lake, like wet cast iron. She heard the angry trill of a nearby squirrel and Charlie’s high-pitched giggle at a sleight-of-hand trick with a quarter. The sounds clashed against each other, causing vertigo. Sarah closed her eyes to steady herself and saw it in her mind—crystalline water against a royal blue sky.

“The rapids,” she said. Her eyes still closed; the image emerged like an air bubble through syrup. “He liked to play in the small rapids near here. There’s a portage there, where the Mirabelle River feeds the lake, for canoes to get around the rapids and into the lake.”

“I know the place.” Novak seized on the information. “Everyone knows that spot. It’s usually hopping on a hot summer day. Had to pull more than a couple of fools off them rocks when they get stuck on the wrong side of the rapids.” He jumped up and strode out to a group of searchers huddled under a tarp.

“That’s good, Sarah. It’s a place to start,” Officer Boychuk said, setting a hand on her shoulder. “I’m just going to confer with my colleagues so we can get things in motion, then we’ll get you settled.”

In the distance, there was a low rumble. The storm, which had been waiting on the edges of the sky, had lost patience.